December 2015 - The Good Neighbour

Touch to Me

Posted on December 8, 2015May 17, 2019 by mindaugas

In Touch to Me Vytas is on the phone, on skype, or just talking telepathically to a lover, a lonely stalker, or an automated voice. He tries to persuade the unseen and egotistical interrogator to pursue something idealistic – that is, above values – where feelings can be true and valid without superficial virtues.

Vytautas Jurevicius a.k.a Vytas (b. 1981, Palanga, Lithuania) is a founder of the Institut of Emotional Bodies. He has studied at the University of Applied Arts, Düsseldorf; Academy of Arts, Karlsruhe; and Staedelschule, Frankfurt am Main.

Jonas Jr

Posted on December 8, 2015May 17, 2019 by mindaugas

In Jonas Jr Lozoraitis is approached at his graduation show and holds a casual monologue.

Jonas Lozoraitis (b. Vilnius, Lithuania, 1987) graduated from Goldsmiths, London and lives and works in New York and Vilnius.

Live creature after Dewey

Posted on December 8, 2015May 17, 2019 by mindaugas

Live Creature after Dewey is a reading by Teets of American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey’s seminal text on aesthetics, Art as Experience, from the rooftop of a Venetian Greek dovecote located in Tinos, Greece.

Jennifer Teets is a curator, writer, and researcher based in Paris. Her research and writing combines inquiry, study of sciences, philosophy, with ficto-critique, and performs as an interrogative springboard for her curatorial practice.

She recently presented (with Margarida Mendes) The World in Which We Occur at the XII Baltic Triennial in Vilnius – an event series taking place over the telephone and formulated around questions addressed by speakers across the world. The World in Which We Occur embarks on modern day issues rooted in the history of materiality and flux as well as pertinent politically enmeshed scientific affairs shaping our world today.

On the importance of being a Neanderthal: In 3 voices and with a fisherman’s exaggeration

Posted on December 8, 2015May 17, 2019 by mindaugas

A reading on the poetics of de-extinction in the economy of clicks based on writings by Valentinas Klimašauskas. Using the structure of traditional Lithuanian polyphonic songs, the video unites fragments, poems, quotes, stories about: new friendships (as a metaphor for an old internet); becoming Neanderthals; why Gertrude Stein would not pass the Turing test; the AI of language; and random companies of post-humanist assemblages. The text is read by Salomėja Marcinkevičiūte.

Born after Voyager 1 left the Earth, Klimašauskas is letters, but also a curator and writer interested in the robotics of belles-lettres and the uneven distribution of the future. His book B and/or an Exhibition Guide In Search of Its Exhibition published in 2014 by Torpedo Press, Oslo, contains written exhibitions that floated in time and space with or within a joke, one’s mind, Voyager 1, Chauvet Cave or inside the novel “2666” by Roberto Bolaño.

Valentinas lives and works between Athens and Vilnius. More of his writings may be found at his website, www.selectedletters.lt.

On colonizing Mars

Posted on December 8, 2015May 16, 2019 by mindaugas

In On Colonising Mars Geiste tells a story about her hometown Siauliai in Northern Lithuania and an area in this town called “Pietinis”. Geiste tells how the experience of growing up in this part of town surrounded by block houses and empty industrial sites echoes in her project on Mars. She is interested in the regimes of how space is represented and owned through images.

When images are abundant and circulating widely then the agency of the imagination is taken away. Martian imagery thus comes to occupy Earth.

Gentrify our bodies: we are liquid green landscapes

Posted on December 8, 2015April 25, 2020 by mindaugas

Sisters From Another Mister have a free-wheeling practice, which embraces humour and absurd scenarios, gender play, witty sculptural forms and musical interludes. Humanity lives in the time of the transitory, near and far, ready-to-go, detachment, juxtaposition, when the impact of the internet and digital environment leads to exploring the imperceptible line between the tangible and topical space of fantasy, situated in affairs between humans and objects. Sisters From Another Mister want to turn away from this illusionary space of illusion, turning art back to the viewer by making them aware of their body.

Milda Lembertaitė (b. Lithuania, 1987) and Amelia Prazak (b. Switzerland, 1987) founded the collective Sisters From Another Mister in 2010 while studying Performance Design at Central Saint Martins. In 2014 they graduated from Chelsea College of Art with an MA in Fine Arts. Will they retire together in 2052?

Exhibitions in London have included: Anthias, Pullman Hotel; Frosted and Defrosted, 44 Albion; DE/TOURS, CGP Gallery; Chroma, The House of Peroni; Accidental Festival, Roundhouse; Sadler’s Wells Theatre; Casablanca, V&A Friday Late for Refugee Week, Victoria and Albert Museum. International exhibitions include Celeste Prize, Centrale Montemartini in Rome; and Rodin Reflections, Scenofest Street Stories, Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space.

On Life

Posted on December 8, 2015May 17, 2019 by mindaugas

In this film Jonas Mekas discusses: the intensity of experiences; his dreams; his past life as a bumblebee; the non-linear narrative of time; the first time he made love to an American woman; why his Lithuanian accent is still so strong after 65 years in America; the Lithuanian state’s refusal to recognize the State of Palestine (after Lithuania having been in a parallel situation); voyeurism; Casanova; and his relationship with the ukulele playing falsetto singer Tiny Tim. Jonas also plays unheard early recordings of Tiny Tim made in 1962 whilst acting as his musical agent. This film was made in collaboration with Jonas Mekas and by his request has been left unedited.

Jonas Mekas (b. 1922) is a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, artist, curator and former music agent. He is often referred to as the “Godfather of American avant-garde Cinema”.

Mekas escaped Lithuania with his brother Adolfas in 1944 having experienced both Russian and German occupation. Whilst crossing Europe they were captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in a Labour camp for eight months. They subsequently escaped and hid in a farm near the Danish border until the War ended. After living in various displaced person camps he studied Philosophy at the university of Mainz. In 1949 Jonas and his brother emigrated to the USA where they settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York.

Visualizing the Song

Posted on December 7, 2015May 17, 2019 by mindaugas

For her performance at David Roberts Art Foundation in 2014 Lapelytė was interested by the history of castrates in Europe, where the Catholic Church would not permit women to sing in choirs. In lieu of this, boys were castrated to prevent their voices breaking at puberty, creating a specific genre of high-pitched voice that was highly appreciated by opera composers. Lina explores the possibilities of reversing this dynamic by instead using females with low pitched voices.

Lina Lapelytė (b. Vilnius, 1984) lives and works in London and Vilnius. She is an artist, composer, musician and performer exploring the phenomena of song. She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2013 and has been exhibiting and performing internationally, including:

David Roberts Art Foundation (London); ICA (London); CAC (Vilnius); CCA (Glasgow); Ikon (Birmingham); BBC Proms (London); Tate Modern (London); Skopje Biennial; Royal Festival Hall (London); Spor (Aarhus); Echoraum (Wien); Holland Festival (Amsterdam) and recently presented a Park Nights project at the Serpentine Gallery (London). Together with Vaiva Grainytė ir Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė they created an opera Sun and Sea to represent Lithuanian Pavilion in Venice Biennial 2019 and it was nominated the Golden Lion award.

Practicing Pathaphysics: the science of Imaginary Solutions

Posted on December 7, 2015May 17, 2019 by mindaugas

Robertas Narkus (b. Vilnius, 1983) describes his arts practice as the ‘management of chance in an economy of circumstances’. He brings together the ordinary and the absurd to explore notions of uncertainty, chance and symbolic capital through unexpected collaborations.

Narkus has a MFA degree from Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam and is the founder of the Institute of Pataphysics in Vilnius.

Towards a New Hybrid Fairland

Posted on December 7, 2015May 17, 2019 by mindaugas

Vita Zaman lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. She is a gallerist, curator, artist and advisor, interested in what hybrid forms the art space can take. She studied both Art History and Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and the RCA in London between 1995 and 2002. She was a founder and co-director of the IBID Projects (London /Los Angeles), headed the PACE gallery (New York) and was Artistic Director for the Vienna Fair (Vienna).

Currently Zamen is starting a new venture – the Perpetual Experts – which is an art production and distribution platform, malleable and adaptive in accordance with ‘the management of circumstances’.

Carving out history: when moments become monuments

Posted on December 7, 2015April 25, 2020 by mindaugas

Šerpytytė’s work is the result of an investigation into war and its consequences. Her recent work 1944 – 1991 is related to the period of “war after war”. Her series of NKVD-NKGB-MVD-MGB photos tell the stories of people that were interrogated and tortured in village houses. Rather than representing the buildings themselves, Serpytyte uses hand-carved wooden models, based on site visits and photographs excavated from the archives. Buildings in her works become the active participants in the process of torture, where everyday surroundings and elements of the house – the doors, handles and walls – become witnesses and partners in crime.

Indre Šerpytytė (b. Vilnius, 1983) lives and works in London. She is a photographer and researcher exploring the phenomena of memory and trauma. She graduated with a first–class MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art (2009) and is currently doing her PhD at the RCA in London. Her work is represented in public and private collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

She is the recipient of numerous awards including: Magenta Bright Spark Award (2010); Hyeres International Festival; National Media Museum Bursary (2009); Hoopers Gallery prize; Metro Imaging prize; Jerwood Photography award winner (2006); the Fujifilm Distinction Award; and the Terry O’Neill Award. Her work has been published and exhibited widely including recent shows at Tate Modern.

Coding the digital: from net art to post-human future

Posted on December 7, 2015May 17, 2019 by mindaugas

“The definition of post-digital suggests it has a feature of hybridity, a balance of physical and virtual. Aside from the hybridisation, we can point to the generation born in the 1990s, who do not remember times without computers; the ‘digital’ is a given for them, per se.“

Mindaugas Gapševičius (b. 1974) is an artist, facilitator, and curator living and working in Berlin, London and Vilnius. He earned his MA at Vilnius Academy of Arts in 1999 and started his MPHIL/PhD research program at Goldsmiths University in 2010.

Gapševičius has been an active participant in international new media art networks, which stimulated the formation of networks between Western countries and the Baltic States in the 1990s. His work is most associated with net art, software and interactive user interfaces.

Publication as practice

Posted on December 7, 2015May 17, 2019 by mindaugas

Povilas Utovka (b. 1981, Varena) lives and works in London. He is a designer who is passionate about “grids and solutions that are simple and well thought through”, working mostly on art publications. Utovka graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 2009 and formed the design practice Present Perfect with Ivan Markovic in 2011.

Together they have worked on exhibition catalogues and identities for Jimmie Durham, Jonas Mekas, Rose Wylie and various other artists. Utovka lives and works in New York.

Where tradition Mmets sinology

Posted on December 7, 2015April 25, 2020 by mindaugas

Eglė Jauncėms (b. 1984) is a visual artist currently working in London. After studying Sinology at university in Vilnius and Taipei, Jauncems moved to London where she gained a second BA in Weaving at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Her recent shows include Khobs at the Marrakech Biennial; Reproduction Failure curated by Slate Projects at Maybe a Vole Gallery (London); and Multiplied Art Fair presented by London Print Studio.

In 2015 Egle was a participant on the The Reykjavik Association of Icelandic Visual Arts residency and later in the same year she was awarded the first Hockney Arts Foundation Grant.