Total Solar Eclipse Viewing Party at Blue Sky
Monday, August 21
9am-12pm
The Eclipse Show is curated by Blue Sky co-founder and photographer Christopher Rauschenberg. The exhibition will feature over 100 artists in honor of the total eclipse of the sun in Oregon on August 21, 2017. The enduring project Sit Silently portrays the signs of time in rites of subcultures surrounding the capital of Latvia and its outskirts. The photographer seeks to identify those points where contemporary Europe meets different layers of the past (like the Soviet and National Awakening period in Latvia) which conflict and complement each other at the same time. The pictures capture the author’s urge for a slower time zone that results in more vivid and open self-expression, as well as a sense of home and a creativity of daily routines beyond the usual urban experience. This project is also an author’s journey of re-creation—looking for her own (Latvian) identity or core, while admiring peripheral moments with their own significance, values and feeling. The images tend to portray silence in its aspect of contemplation, introverted rest, retrieving or saving energy, unpretentious celebration of life. On the other hand, the silence emerges as a manifestation of dealing with inner dramas via resignation. To remain silent representing a detached monument of inner resentment still seems to be quite common for this (Post-Soviet) territory, at least along the route often traveled by the author. This reminds one of a passage from Franz Kafka: You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.