Beyond its spaceship-like entrance, the multimedia ARMPIT has eight distinctive spaces inspired by every man who eludes his family under the guise of fixing the car or working a project, when they’re usually tinkering and indulging in their hobbies.
The artists constructed ARMPIT largely with discarded materials from houses and office buildings in Latvia, taking advantage of their historical patina and social history. They gutted an old washing machine to fashion a futuristic lampshade from its shiny metal ring, and built the outer walls of the Rotating Computer Head, one of the eight spaces, with the doors of file cabinets from a Latvian tax office. Two people at a time sit for two minutes on the repurposed car seats in this module, which gently turns on a military tank turret ring. Here the viewer experiences a catharsis, where a boys’ choir enters into a dialog with a men’s choir, symbolizing the developmental continuity of male creativity from childhood to adulthood.
