++++ What are the children in Riga really like? Some of them have freckles, most of them are alert, and a couple of them have decidedly snub noses. The girls (and this they have in common with most girls in the rest of the world) start at around the age of twelve to become a little bit self-conscious, affected and awkward when they want to say something. Apart from that, they all want to become Britney Spears. Most of the boys, on the other hand, do not find that it is anything special to talk into a camera and want to get it over and done with as quickly as possible and then run off to play football or do something else that boys do in Riga.
I Want to Be is a film by Liga Marcinkevica from Riga who was born in 1975. The film was made in 2000 and has a very simple concept: clips of school pupils at the age of 12 or 13 who stand in front of a wall and answer the question what they would like to be when they grow up. The density of Britney Spears in this matter, at least in the year 2000, is noticeably high and the reason is mostly than the girl wants to be a singer or admires Britney Spear's clothes.
Boys mostly name Latvian sportsmen or film stars and some of them even name a vocation. The acquisition of abilities, the development of talents, as Liga Marcinkevica had hoped, were named by scarcely any of the boys asked as the desired aim of growing up, and that was that.
The Manifesta video film does not go beyond a survey and has rather the character of a finger exercise in film-making which incorporates a bit of a sociological study. Even the hoped for, sensible child is not anything surprising. The girl who does not even look particularly pushy sensibly only wants to become what she is. Asked for her reason, she says soberly, "Because I cannot be anything else". The kids in Riga are clever sometimes.
Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Holbeinstraße 1, until 25 August. hoh