Literally a Very Small Celebration: A conversation between Kristaps Ancāns, Pauls Rietums, and Inga Šteimane

For a decade, Art Station Dubulti – a unique hybrid of a functioning railway station and contemporary art space in Jūrmala, Latvia – has served as an inclusive experimental platform for contemporary art. Rather than being repurposed from one function into another, the Dubulti Station has evolved into an environment where passengers and gallery visitors coexist. Over the years, this overlap has shaped a layered and inclusive cultural experience, integrating contemporary art into daily life for the broader public. The iconic building was constructed in the Socialist Modernist style by Russian architect Igor Javein in 1977. More than thirty years later, Art Station Dubulti was founded (2015) and continues to be run by art critic and curator Inga Šteimane, who initiated the unique collaboration between the real estate owner, National Joint Stock Company Latvian Railways, the property’s supervising authority, Jūrmala State City Municipality, and the NGO Art Station Dubulti, to create the artistic programme that we experience today. 

Kristaps Ancāns and Pauls Rietums sat in conversation with Šteimane on the occasion of their exhibition Literally a Very Small Celebration at the venue, which will mark the 10th anniversary of Art Station Dubulti and will be on view from June 6, 2025. Since its inception, this space has redefined how contemporary art can inhabit and activate public infrastructure, something that Ancāns and Rietums explore in their collaborative practice – the fragile boundaries between art and design, and attempts at redefining the categories of creative conception and fabrication.

Inga Šteimane: You’re creating images for public discussion that reach beyond art, design, or architecture. In your proposal for Literally a Very Small Celebration, you emphasise the idea of expansion. What does that mean and involve? And what are its points of reference?

Pauls Rietums: It’s about creating intersections between disciplines. Each field can draw from another, making the process more informed and refined. The act of making art or design is no longer self-contained – it opens up to other languages and bodies of knowledge. It’s more a matter of overlapping than expanding.

IŠ: I understand that your goal is to update both aesthetic and ethical aspects. Your ambition also seems social in the sense that you aim to create better objects, better attitudes, and better relationships for people and the environment. How important is the ethical dimension?

PR: At the risk of sounding self-righteous, the ethical aspect matters a great deal to me. For this exhibition, we’ve been working extensively with public funding, and it’s important how that funding is used – in ways that enhance the quality of space and return something of value to the public environment. I care deeply that public money isn’t used selfishly or as a vanity project, but instead contributes to the collective experience, to a space where public life unfolds. The aim is to work with the quality of space, not just to use it.

IŠ: Speaking of overlaps, an important point of contact is the exhibition venue. Dubulti Station and Art Station Dubulti coexist. Passengers and exhibition visitors share the same space and time – often, they are the same people. Everyone has their moment. The space is one hundred percent a station and one hundred percent a gallery. As you wrote in your exhibition proposal, the form of this work supports both concept and body – the object is made to hold the weight of a visitor and the weight of an idea. How did the concept emerge?

Kristaps Ancāns: I’ll link this question to the previous one. My approach is perhaps more abstract – I don’t focus so much on functionality, but I’m fascinated by what functionality brings, and the conversations with Pauls are very important to me. I engaged in interdisciplinary collaborations and dialogues with scientists at Imperial College London, which raised questions for me about construction blocks and systems – abstract systems of building. That’s when the conversations with Pauls began. I’m interested in what an abstract building block – essentially a module – can become. In my work with Pauls, I see a new dimension opening up: allowing the module to continue developing and to become something. It might sound a bit like an ego trip, a little selfish, but in fact it’s about letting it grow, letting it find and inhabit a place and then watching it develop – like a researcher or observer.

IŠ: So, this watching and projecting into the future involves both form – its self-movement, characteristic of art – and functionality, which is more typical of design and architecture. This generates additional conceptual layers.

KA: Exactly. It opens up a new field of possibilities. It’s like climbing in the mountains – what’s beyond this peak? What’s behind the next? It may not sound very logical, but it opens up a spectrum – new colours, new tools, new ways of constructing. Expansion, then form, functionality, and spatial relationships become a kind of material. A broader material vocabulary emerges. I became curious how these materials can be composed and used together. Although I wonder – is what’s happening in my mind perhaps disrupting logic or distracting from the core?

PR: You make some fantastic points! This was exactly our working process – merging a structured, functionalist way of thinking with an element of surprise and an expanded outlook. I’d also like to add that the Dubulti Station building itself is geometrically unique and sculpturally rich. It’s fascinating how this public space was built in the 1970s – an example of a public environment that is formally expressive yet also functional and contributes to a more meaningful everyday life.

IŠ: Would you say that the formal language of Dubulti Station echoes in the forms you created?

PR: I wouldn’t say we directly referenced the station’s shape or visual situation. At no point did it become stylised. The forms we arrived at grew from our collaboration – from long conversations and a sustained design process, as well as from material research. The art process and the design process merged. We both had a lot of fun with it. The final form is highly formal yet technically clever. It allowed us to use materials more economically and make the best use of the budget.

IŠ: One of your project’s innovative aspects, as you note in the exhibition statement, is that working with industry isn’t just “behind-the-scenes production.” The contribution of the companies is not only material but also conceptual. These relationships also carry ethical dimensions, as the manufacturers bring their context into your work.

KA: We’re collaborating with Latvijas Finieris and its subsidiary Troja, both of which manufacture veneer and veneer furniture. Another partner is Iglu, which produces children’s furniture and also manufactures its own base materials. What struck us as interesting is that both companies make the end products and the raw material itself.

IŠ: Did you choose the manufacturers based on the forms you were developing? Or did the partnership come first, followed by the form?

KA: In this case, we knew we wanted to work with these manufacturers, but we were looking for a material that would support the form – that wouldn’t resist or distort it. It was crucial that the material didn’t compromise the form. We searched for how the form could resolve itself in the physical world. That mattered. A functionally clever detail gave the green light for us to go deeper.

PR: I also really liked the micro-project within this project – how we designed the exhibition poster. The poster is almost entirely covered by the logos of all the partners as its only graphic element. I find this formal solution quite interesting – the project isn’t just about physical compositions or objects, but about a composition of many collaborations. It’s not the most visible aspect of the exhibition, but we put a lot of effort into making this a genuinely collaborative process – redirecting resources towards a broader public benefit, a broader aesthetic experience. In other words, towards the quality of space.

IŠ: A question for Pauls: Both your solo show C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C at Tu jau zini kur art space in Rīga (2021), which featured twenty inflatable “tubes” made by hand from greenhouse film, as well as the concept behind your master’s thesis, centred on the idea of emptiness in the urban environment, with a word play around “vide,” which means “empty” in French and “environment” in Latvian. You seem to create both form and narrative from emptiness. Do you have a special sensitivity to zones of emptiness?

PR: The two projects that you mention at first can be called empty, but I think of them rather as not fully defined: malleable, places to ask questions of how else can we live and share space. During my studies I had a tutor – Rubén Valdez – an architect and artist who often uses the term “spatial practitioner” to characterise someone working across the two disciplines. He really helped me find a way to integrate what fascinated me into a coherent practice. What interested me in his approach was that, above all, the focus is placed on the quality of environments, and a common lived experience of them. This influence has led me to ask similar questions when engaging with a range of contexts and scales. It has also helped me to not get boxed into a specific discipline. 

IŠ: Working with the quality of public space has an obvious socio-political dimension. I get the sense that when working with space, you also give a social commentary.

PR: I’d say I do. I try to find ways of doing that without falling into clichés.

KA: Regarding the quality of public space, it can be understood in functional terms, or in terms of visual experience – as something visually enjoyable, acceptable, or not. Like, do we want to be in certain spaces? Perhaps we enter a space, and our head starts hurting because the visual quality of the environment is unpleasant. I think it’s important to emphasise that quality is not just functionality or accessibility, but also how we perceive the space; what mental structures operate within us.

PR: I completely agree – everyone deserves beautiful spaces.

IŠ: A question for Kristaps about your particular attitude towards mechanisms: You have a device that “can move both your big and small dog to the other side.” You have mechanisms that fly butterflies, that move a giraffe and a duck. In your earlier works, space was always connected to mechanisms. How is it in this project, where, if I understand correctly, there are no mechanisms? How do you realise your passion for construction here?

KA: In works from this period that you mentioned, the text is important – the text is actually abstract. For example the saying, “the chair stands on the floor,” creates a curl of meaning. Naming very static things and actions abstracts them.

IŠ: They become non-functional?

KA: Yes, the descriptive element changes the meaning of functionality. I think this is a good way to approach abstract things – by giving them a very descriptive name or definition. Saying a mechanism or object does only one thing makes it non-functional. Why would a device move only dogs and not squirrels or rabbits? Giving it one narrow function makes the device abstract.

IŠ: There it is, critical discourse emerging! That was my next question: Does your joint project, Literally a Very Small Celebration, include some critical discourse, such as criticism of departmental planning, when each sector is planned separately? Or is it something completely new?

PR: I don’t know if there is criticism. It’s more about joy – the joy of working together and learning from each other. Though perhaps there is criticism against traditional barriers or just the persisting tradition in design, architecture, and art.

KA: There is criticism of habits.

PR: We allow ourselves not to be so defined. One sector can flow into another.

IŠ: The Dubulti Art Station concept merges two sectors, two public infrastructures – transport and culture. From a bureaucratic planning perspective, these departmental interests do not intersect. But Art Station Dubulti is a space where they overlap, merge, and connect.

KA: I want to continue with resourcefulness – a concept describing resource intelligence, acumen, and ingenuity. It can be applied to the Dubulti station and also to Literally a Very Small Celebration. Pauls and I were very motivated in this direction. It’s like joining hands. Collaboration gives the project a different meaning and vector. Resourcefulness and collaboration allowed us to get along very well. We were both interested in how far we could go by pooling our resources and working together. Trust grew from this basis.

IŠ: Have there been disputes about materials or technologies?

KA: No disputes. We understood that coming from different schools, fields, and backgrounds, we could find common ground. Our “literacy” level was surprisingly compatible. Pauls can think within the visual arts and I can address functional issues.

IŠ: By Chance or Appointment – the installation in the forest – was this your first collaboration?

KA: That was the platform where we realised we could understand each other.

PR: I want to add that how well we understand each other makes one ask why these fields are usually separated in professional practice. Because values, visual codes, and the sense of material are surprisingly similar. Our projects develop across disciplines. It seems perfectly logical to ignore and reject boundaries when they get in the way. When they are put where they don’t belong.

IŠ: Can we talk about letting go and going along with a mutual intervention in your collaboration?

PR: To me, that sounds like building walls where there were none.

KA: At the start of this conversation, Pauls spoke about the quality of space. The concept gave me new impulses for talking about building blocks and structures. So the process felt gratifying for each of us. By Chance or Appointment showed that we trust each other’s quality of thought. It may sound vain, but that’s one way to say that the quality of thought is vital throughout the project. Every idea that comes in must spark joy.

IŠ: This is our only editorial suggestion from MOST – to touch upon the anti-intervention intervention, and your explanation is fitting. Your collaboration is a good example of anti-intervention. You both have a separate background – Pauls developed his master’s thesis as a series of spatial interventions in Rīga to expand collective discourse and imagination about how to use vacant buildings without immediately turning them into commercial objects. Meanwhile, Kristaps created Polar Rainbow, an augmented reality solution that enabled mobile users to observe a rainbow spanning the 74th meridian across the globe, with political connotations in the LGBT context. In a sense, Dubulti Art Station is also a gentle intervention – the art gallery “occupied” the station. Your project, Literally a Very Small Celebration, looks at both these contexts, creating an exhibition as a public space proposal. Please tell us about the experience of intervention and discourse expansion in your individual and joint projects.

PR: While working on my master’s thesis, I was deeply engaged in the process and was convinced my practice would evolve towards spatial reprogramming. But then I realised reprogramming had a time and a place. Doing it as the only practice can become automatic and start ringing untrue. The right contexts, reasons, and goals must exist to work this way and ask these questions.

IŠ: What would be the right reasons and proper goals for spatial reprogramming?

PR: Asking questions that matter. In my master’s, the question was how to respond to Rīga’s massive depopulation and the fact that quality living space in the city centre becomes an abstract financial tool rather than space for the people. Dubulti Station is an amazing example of how a complex understanding of an inclusive environment can be. It shows that a fine, accessible space is an asset that can appeal to many. Intervention methods can be used to raise issues or start things off, but they shouldn’t be instrumentalised for their own sake.

KA: The Polar Rainbow project grew bigger than I expected; it gained its own momentum, an independent place and resonance. The project is ongoing – finding new meridians and places to intervene. It has partnerships with more than fifty human rights organisations worldwide. A community has formed around it. And the rainbow is visible forty kilometres from the central axis. There were discussions, for example, about rainbow burning in Poland. But a touching conversation happened in Chile, beyond the LGBT discourse – people travelled to the coast to see a very delicate rainbow line. They went all the way to the ocean cliff to be part of this dialogue. To reach this discourse. That was very moving.

IŠ: In your proposal, you write that the exhibition centres on proto-industrial modular systems. What lies ahead – for instance, do you plan to create furniture combining art, design, and architecture?

KA: One context shaping our narrative was “anniversary furniture.” As we know, Dubulti Art Station is turning ten. Anniversary furniture became a motif for us to play with. But the form itself isn’t representative, it’s free and democratic. The form has two complementary parts; it’s built as a module and contrasts the historic connotations of “anniversary furniture.”

PR: I’m very curious what will happen to our modules in public space during the exhibition. I don’t want to plan everything out, I want to see how the forms and objects will live in the space and what will happen to them.

IŠ: This makes the project so fascinating – until the final assembly is built, we really don’t know how this form will fully manifest. Your process in this project includes something like a painterly nominal, and the “painting” unfolds through assembly. In the Dubulti Station context, a crucial element in the exhibition is the replica of the original 1977 concrete ceiling panel, reimagined using IGLU Soft Play technology. Up on the ceiling, the suprematist motifs and the homage to Malevich’s square often go unnoticed, but now, they will be right there on the floor. How should we interpret this mirroring of the ceiling onto the floor? Is it a play with gravity?

KA: Reflecting the ceiling element on the floor invites an entirely different way of looking. You can even lie down on the form and gaze up at the original overhead. One of our starting points, when Pauls and I began working on the project, was the idea of offering new ways of seeing the station – experiencing the space through the works, through the vantage points and perspectives they provide.

PR: One of our earliest conversations was about viewing the station as a waiting room – where you slow down, look around, and wait for your train. We wanted to explore this sense of physical presence, this slower state of being. How do you become aware of a space? How do you experience it? The artworks are like prompts or signposts.

IŠ: With this ceiling-floor element, you’re introducing yet another physical posture – one that’s usually off-limits in a typical station: lying down. Public space normally allows for standing or sitting. You’re offering a third possibility – to recline.

PR: I was really passionate about this opportunity when Kristaps mentioned that we could work with IGLU Soft Play. I stand by it through and through. For one, I’m a big fan of taking naps. Secondly, I’m amazed how unacceptable it is to lie down in a public space.

KA: So true! Pauls can easily take a nap during work sessions.

PR: I’m used to it. I think it’s great.

KA: I’ve become used to it now, too.

PR: Yes, and I was genuinely interested in the idea of providing the possibility to lie down in the waiting room – an opportunity to legally lie down. And I was wondering what new qualities this brings to the station space – the fact that you can take that moment for yourself.

IŠ: Lying down, the view through the window looks different, too.

KA: For me, the question of trust is also essential. What kind of society do we trust? Where do we want to live and place our trust in each other? In Japan, it’s entirely normal for someone in a train or metro to put their head on your shoulder and take a nap. This opportunity – to allow lying down at the station – has a slightly futuristic perspective.

IŠ: I see an ethical discourse!

KA: Exactly. We would like to live in a society where we don’t design benches where it’s impossible to lie down. For example, our society favours anti-homeless spikes on benches. While studying in Japan, I experienced that you can leave your laptop and other belongings, go 500 meters to a café and come back to find everything where you left it. Or that universities have no security guards. Why would anyone harm you? And why would you take someone else’s things? I would love for us to live in a society where we trust each other, where you can fall asleep in public without having to clutch your bag.

PR: The overall feeling of the project is also about trust. We trust the manufacturers, and the manufacturers trust us. The artist trusts the architect, and the architect trusts the artist. The curator trusts the artists, and the artists trust the curator. You trust the station and the people around you, and you can lie down or even fall asleep in the waiting room. This project asks: why can’t we be like this more often? Why can’t we care for each other?

IŠ: For my part, I can only add that Art Station Dubulti also began with the trust that a regular railway station could function as a fully-fledged art space. It wasn’t a simple decision. It was a longing for a slightly transformed life where public space is less divided and exclusive.

KA: Literally a Very Small Celebration is sensitive to contexts. Let’s call things by their proper names – it’s about the hybrid war happening right here, on our doorstep. The project doesn’t come with pompous representation but offers something democratic, rooted in simplicity. I like the English words “modesty” and “resourcefulness.” In our situation, I wouldn’t support a pompous project getting “parachuted” into the hall. We absolutely shouldn’t lower our ambitions, but attitude matters – our attitude towards our life and society.

PR: Kristaps and I have had many valuable conversations throughout our collaboration – including about current geopolitics. We share similar views on what it means to live near borders, and what responsibilities come with that situation – how we are responsible for our actions and behaviour. Collaboration really matters to us both.

IŠ: Collaboration as a principle?

PR: Collaboration as a principle and also as a way of cultivating community.

IŠ: That’s a very interesting point, because artists tend to take over an entire space. But in your project, both of you and your partners have to be present together – in the same space, at the same time. Your project has vision and ideals. The foundation is pragmatic, but what’s above is almost utopian. Extremely beautiful!

PR: There’s a good English word – hopeful. It’s about how we could be. We could be more communal and stronger together.

IŠ: Many thanks for the conversation! 

Kristaps Ancāns holds a BA in Painting from the Art Academy of Latvia (2014) and an MA from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (2016). Since 2017, he has exhibited at Tate Modern and Peer Gallery in London and has worked with the gallery domobaal since 2021. His public art project Polar Rainbow, launched by Times Square Arts in New York (2022), is an augmented reality sculpture – a virtual rainbow stretching from the North to the South Pole. Ancāns has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Flora Fantastic at Apex Art, New York (2022). He currently shares his time between London and Latvia, maintaining studios in both locations. He is also one of the co-founders of the interdisciplinary master’s programme POST at the Art Academy of Latvia.

Pauls Rietums holds a BA in Architecture from the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art (2020), and an MSc in Architecture from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (2024). He was awarded the Orlando Lauti Award for his master’s thesis on speculative and performative reuse of vacant urban spaces. His solo exhibitions include C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C at the “Tu jau zini kur” exhibition hall in Rīga. He has also contributed image-based work to various publications and platforms. Since 2020, Rietums has worked as a scenographer and architect in Latvia and Switzerland, engaging in projects that span architecture, visual storytelling, and site-specific design.