I WANT YOU!

I Want You! is a collaborative project between Latvian photographer Renis Hofmanis and Estonian artist, designer and critic Margus Tamm. Following the finest traditions of commercial advertising and propaganda posters, it calls on everyone to join the Baltic “magical army,” in which the imagined and the real merge into a single invincible machine. Hofmanis’ photos from the LARP series have been placed in the advertising spaces at several Riga public transport stops, featuring portraits of several outdoor role players from the Baltic States together with recruiting slogans created by Tamm for the project-inspired Baltic military forces. A game is played in its natural environment under the guidance of a gamemaster, with the participants assuming the role of a hero from a popular movie, literature or pure imagination, not infrequently turning the role-playing game into a dramatic production, a learning opportunity, a form of artistic expression or a political act. By putting the LARP heroes onto advertising hoardings, the project’s authors are following the example of gamemasters in changing the rules of the game or, more likely, opening them up to the possibility of endless variations.

I Want You! is an ironic jab at policies of increased armament, the search for heroes and Baltic historical identity which is greatly influenced by fear of the superpower next door, particularly today when tensions are high due to the European Union’s political instability, the protracted war in Ukraine, and confusion regarding the new US foreign policy vis-a- vis NATO, Russia and the Eurasian landmass as a whole. The first decades of the new millennium have been coloured by political instability. As a consequence of 9/11, the war in Iraq, the GFC, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the rise of ISIS, the refugee crisis and cyberwars, what once seemed to be happening a world away now casts a threatening shadow very close by indeed, signalling the decline of stability in Europe. NATO has reacted by urging every member state to spend 2% of their GDP on defence, which means the strengthening of European armed forces and, indirectly, raises the prospect of bringing back the military draft. In parallel with the threat of World War 3 or apocalyptic nuclear exchanges, the role of the invisible war has also grown, especially after the leaking of information about state surveillance by Edward Snowden (2013) and the work of internet trolls during the US elections (2016). In the latter case people also have not been sitting idle, instead they are setting up Tolkien-style “elf units” to fight the internet trolls. Somewhere between peace and threats, invisible internet armadas and patriotic heroes, soldiers are also being recruited in the Baltic States. Somewhere in amongst the peace and the threats, the invisible internet armies and the units of soldiers recruited from patriotic heroes, there are also the Baltic States.

During crises, society has a tendency to search for heroes, who are then mythologised and transformed into supermen worthy of DC or Marvel comics. Characters picked up from the cinema, literature, computer games or reality shows become sources for a new soldier identity for a new identity of soldier. In this project, Reinis Hofmanis offers prototypes of these mythologised soldiers, while Margus Tamm packages them into a product suitable for advertising.

Participants: Reinis Hofmanis (LV), Margus Tamm (EE)

Curator: Šelda Puķīte (LV)

Organizer: Riga Photography Biennial

Image: Reinis Hofmanis and Margus Tamm. I Want You!, 2018