“Avant-Garde is not an Avant-Garde” is research and publication looking at the overlaps between art and publishing when international avant-garde culture were introduced and spread among wider audiences in Latvia between the 1970s and 1990s. It is a period, during and shortly after the socialist regime, when the means and the content of information were considerably limited. This activity is based on several still unexplored archives: the archive of Latvian-German art mediator, curator and artist Valdis Āboliņš (1939–1984), the archives of Latvian avant-garde artist and poet Juris Boiko (1954–2002) and Hardijs Lediņš (1955–2004).
The rewriting of art history by including ever new people and events expands the understanding of the modern Western art since it restores the thread of the story which was interrupted during the Cold War on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The aim of these research activities is to engage the experiences of the past with the present, and to examine and develop an understanding of audience development in transitional times, the roles of mediators and audiences and overlaps between art and publishing throughout this process.