An interactive art object with elements of storytelling — “SURVIVE”

The title of the art object, “SURVIVE,” plays on the dual meaning of the word — both the act of sustaining life and the act of living through or embodying a story. The work takes the form of a board game that allows participants to construct and live through a narrative about deportation to settlement sites. It simultaneously reflects on the diversity of individual experiences, which often differ from the dominant narratives presented in film and literature.

The interactive installation invites participants to choose the character of a deported person, each with different conditions of deportation — one might have had only fifteen minutes to pack their belongings, while another had two hours. The storytelling focuses on human resilience, compassion, and the multiplicity of lived experiences — on the stories of courage.

By engaging participants through play and empathy, the work fosters an experiential form of education about the many realities endured by deported people — because, in the game, you become that person.

This artwork does not aim to retell history; instead, it works with memory and the imaginative nature of remembrance. Each story created by the participant has never actually happened — it is constructed in the process, as one of many possible versions of how a story could unfold.

The material for this work was gathered through research — studying deportation case files, reading diaries and life stories of the deported, exploring oral history archives, and viewing video testimonies from the extensive collections of the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, as well as materials from the Kuldīga Museum archive.