Antropomorphic Trouble

Anthropomorphic Trouble is a collaborative project initiated by Goda Palekaitė and joined by Adrijana Gvozdenović, Curated by Arts Catalyst in partnership with Delfina Foundation and Whitechapel Gallery. 

Adopting the lens of “Earth as a historical figure” as a mode of storytelling and as a narrative device, the project takes the coastal region of Dorset (UK) as a speculative context through which to simultaneously address ecological challenges, deep time and geological formations to unearth the troubled relationship between humans and the Earth.

From Mesopotamian personification of Ki to Incan Pachamama, to Greek Gaia – the narratives related to Earth – have often endowed the planet with human, often female features, behaviours and occurrences, including family tree, romantic relationships, personality, and other humanistic description.

Since the 18th century onwards, ‘historians of the earth’, scientists, philosophers, writers, and political figures have warned about the rapidly changing conditions of the environment. Yet these warnings have been left unheeded and the mechanisms of growing capitalism, global trade, displacement of humans, animals and plants, and military powers have continued to increase the exploitation of the earth.

Johnston Sheard documented and edited a two-day performance over the 20 – 21st November at Whitechapel Gallery, London where over six performances Goda took participants on a journey, exploring geological time, living and dead fossils, the weather on the Adriatic sea, animal horror and the effects of stones on human eyes. Rosemary tea was served and enjoyed, which has the effect of enhancing focus and slowing down aging, bringing everyone present closer to the time of a stone.

The project was produced collaboratively by Arts Catalyst and Schizma (LT), and supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture, Lithuanian Ministry of Culture and Hasselt University. The video production is supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture. 

Goda Palekaitė (Lithuania) is an artist working in the intersection of contemporary art, performance, artistic research, literature, and anthropology. Her practice evolves around projects exploring the politics of historical narratives, the agency of dreams and imagination, and social conditions of creativity. Her recent solo shows were opened at the Centre Tour à Plomb in Brussels (“Architecture of Heaven” 2020), Konstepidemin in Gothenburg (“Liminal Minds” 2019) and RawArt Gallery in Tel Aviv (“Legal Implications of a Dream” 2018). In the last years, her performances and installations have been presented at the Vilnius international theatre festival “Sirenos”, “Swamp pavilion” in The Biennale Architettura 2018 in Venice, Atletika gallery and Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius, The Institute of Things to Come in Turin, among others. In 2019 Palekaitė received The Golden Stage Cross and the Young Artist’s Prize from the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture. Goda is based in Brussels. In 2020 the artist published her first book of fiction “Schismatics” (LAPAS books) and started an artistic Ph.D. position at Hasselt University. palekaite.space 

Adrijana Gvozdenović (Montenegro) is an artist interested in artists’ motivation and ways of resisting (self)institutionalised structures. In the last three years, she has been developing methods of collecting and annotating symptomatic artistic practices that recognise their anxiety as a prerequisite state for criticality. One of those is a card-reading publication “7 anxieties and the world” that she performed during the 2019, among some: at FairShare: self-publishing as an artistic practice (CIAP Hasselt), during the “victories over the suns” in Brussels and for “The Hub – Between the iliac crest & the pubic bone” (GMK Zagreb). The research in these forms of “otherwise exhibiting” was supported by a.pass (a platform for artistic research, based in Brussels) and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and it has been published this year in an online publication ArchivingArtisticAnxieties.me.

Johnston Sheard is a London based Scottish artist. His work focuses on experimental film with scored song-cycles, and intricate sculptural constructions. He combines a baroque architectural sense with anti-digital aesthetics, creating sentimental narratives reflecting on a theological universe. Johnston Sheard is one of he founders on The Deep Splash, his artistic vision in 2015-6 helped to transmute the interview format into interpretive films, serving as works themselves. Sheard studied in Central Saint Martins and University of Westminster. Recently he had a show at Kunstraum, London and Outset Contemporary Art Fund, London and was part of the group exhibition ‘The Future Is Certain; It’s the Past Which Is Unpredictable” in Calvert 22 Foundation, London and Blaffer Art Museum, Houston.

 

Feedback

Saulius, or Sal as his friends from London called him, was a Dj, a passionate vinyl collector aswell as one of the creative minds behind the last.fm internet radio project in its early beginnings. He was a universal restless character, a rebel, an anti-system, always part of collaborations and multiple creative projects, organizing parties and events, listening to music and gathering people. Born as Saulius Čemolonskas in 1964 in Kaunas, he escaped Soviet Lithuania with forged documents in 1989 and spent most of his life in London. Countless hours of his archive of music, sound and videos recorded on VHS, DV and 8mm cassettes encapsulates Saulius’ rebellious character, his playfulness and creativity aswell as his surroundings from times of turmoil and revolt in 1980’s Lithuania to the late 90’s London music scene to recent times and his own private past.

In this video, filmmaker Simona Žemaitytė who had known Saulius for almost a decade, uses his archive material to depict the story which could be called a universal human quest to escape or an attempt against the system (any, really). The longer we look beyond the ‘patina’ of time through the VHS and the DV (bringing images of long lost cities, both Kaunas and London) the more we understand that perhaps Sal was one of such persons that each of us had known once, anywhere, anytime in our lives. Saulius had passed away in 2017. His ashes are in his friend’s music studio in London.

Simona Žemaitytė (b. 1984) is a Lithuanian artist and filmmaker, living and working in London and Vilnius. It took Simona almost five years to find VHS tapes that Sal occasionally mentioned in their conversations after giving her a copy of his entire archive. She had filmed Sal performing with Terry Burrows and Laure Prouvost among others and made few projects based on his biography. She is currently editing a full feature on Sal and his life.

Simona’s own work was previously awarded at 15th Tallinn Print Triennial, also nominated at Sheffield Documentary film Festival. Previous exhibitions and shows include Kasa Gallery, Galata Perform (Istanbul); BAFTA, RichMix (London), CAC (Vilnius) and others.

 

Unreality of reality of Jurgis Baltrušaitis

‘It was a mysterious person. Everything he wanted to say he wrote in his books’ wrote art historian Jean-Francois Chevrier in his biography about Jurgis Baltrušaitis (1903-1988), art historian and art critic, a founder of comparative art research. The video invites to a journey with art historian Odeta Žukauskienė through the books of Jurgis Baltrušaitis and main topics of his research – Medieval decoration, imaginary forms, anamorphoses, aberrations and irregular perspectives. It was important for Baltrušaitis to find common mechanisms of fantasy or imagination that float from one culture to another by acquiring different forms. Baltrušaitis brought innovation to art research, by publishing books on art from the Caucasus, the interaction between Eastern and Western art during the Middle Ages, the imagery of fantasy, distorted perspectives, and enigmatic vision. His work received wide recognition: his books, written in French, were awarded prizes, and translated into Italian, Spanish, English, Romanian, Japanese and other languages.

Ieva Kotryna Skirmantaitė (b. 1994) is a video artist interested in alternative documentary forms in theory and in practice. By capturing and connecting real events, other people’s practices, discussions, sounds and bits from everyday life, she has found a way to create an imaginary path and to reveal invisible excitements and anxieties. She explores how different technical qualities of the digital image act as separate memory systems and represent different contemporary political and economical values.

Akvilė Kabašinskaitė (b. 1990) is a professional film researcher working in film production in parallel. She lives and works in Paris. Previously she had studied Culture Mediation in Sorbonne Paris 3 and wrote her masters on the research for documentaries. Currently she is doing an MA thesis about the construction of a documentary film.

Jurgis Baltrušaitis spent most of his life in Paris and wrote in French, though he never lectured there. Born in Moscow, a son to a Lithuanian diplomat and writer, Juozas Baltrušaitis studied in Sorbonne, lectured in Kaunas and Warburg Institute London. After WWII he delivered lectures in New York University, Yale University, Harvard University and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On Cinematic Things

Lukas Brašiškis presents his ideas on ‘cinematic things, a research in progress. Lukas Brašiškis is a PhD candidate at New York University Department of Cinema Studies. In his academic work and courses taught Lukas examines the history and theory of representations of the non-human in film and media, explores various aspects of contemporary world cinema (with an emphasis on representation of material constituents in the post-Soviet Eastern European films of the 1990s and the 2000s.), as well as investigates intersections of philosophy, cinema and contemporary art.

Lukas has a chapter in a book Film and Philosophy (Vilnius University Press, 2013), he has contributed many essays and film reviews to film journals (Senses of Cinema and Lithuanian quarterly Kinas), as well as curated a number of film programs and events (e.g., a film program Human, Machine, Material (with Leo Goldsmith), a retrospective of films by Nathaniel Dorsky, a film symposium Welcome to Anthropocene, among others.

Nation State is an Outdated Concept

In this video, a conversation with the theorist evolves on the subject of the Nation State, while in the background we see helicopter views of the unfinished National Stadium of Vilnius. This Stadium was started building in 1987 but due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and later financial shortage, wasn’t finished up to this date. The image of the Unfinished National Stadium stands here as a testimony of the idea opened up by dr. Eglė Rindzevičiūtė – the Nation State is an outdated concept, she says in the conversation.

Eglė Rindzevičiūtė is a cultural historian and cultural sociologist, she is interested in how societies organize themselves. Dr. Eglė Rindzevičiūtė holds a PhD in Culture Studies from Linköping University, Sweden, and is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Kingston University London, UK.

Before coming to Kingston, Dr. Rindzevičiūtė did research and taught at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), the University of Gothenburg and the University of Linköping in Sweden. In 2016-2019 she is a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Public Administration, Gothenburg University, Sweden. Dr Rindzevičiūtė has published widely on Soviet governance, scientific expertise as well as cultural policy in such journals as Slavic Review, Cahiers du monde Russe, Current Anthropology and The International Journal of Cultural Policy. She is the author of Constructing Soviet Cultural Policy: Cybernetics and Governance in Lithuania after World War II (Linköping University Press, 2008) and The Power of Systems: How Policy Sciences Opened Up the Cold War World (Cornell University Press, 2016) and the editor of The Struggle for the Long Term in Transnational Science and Politics: Forging the Future (Routledge, 2015) (co-edited with Dr Jenny Andersson).

Qso Lens

Emilija Škarnulytė (b. Vilnius, 1987) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Tromsø, Berlin and Vilnius. Her films look into the cross sections of invisible structures, deep time, geo-traumas, identity and geological ungrounding processes. Škarnulytė holds a BA from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Italy, and an MA from Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art, Norway.

Her films have been screened at the 15th International Venice Architecture Biennale (2016); SIART Bolivia International Art Biennial (2016); International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands, 2015); Manifesta 10 (Russia, 2014), 31st Sao Paulo Biennial (2014); Pompidou Film Festival Hors Pistes (France, 2014) and International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (Germany, 2013) among others.

Et in arcadia ago

Vincentas Seneckis (1868 – unknown) was born in Vilnius, then part of the Russian Empire. He studied Architecture in Riga Polytechnicum and worked in London as a landscape architect from 1893 to 1904. Influenced by the intellectual Barallat, whom he met at the turn of the century, Seneckis wrote the book “Et in Arcadia Ego: on the relation between landscape and the mind”, that earned some recognition. In the British capital, Seneckis met a Portuguese translator, Maria Júlia de Cardoso Mendes de Campos, the only daughter of the 4th Baron of Candal. Vincentas and Maria Júlia married in 1904 and lived in the North of Portugal – between Porto and the São Cosme e Damião coastline forest – until 1911, the year of the tragic and mysterious murder of Maria Júlia, a wrongful victim of a gunshot intended for the baron. After the death of Maria Júlia, it is said that Seneckis, in the couple’s favourite place on the coastline, designed and built all on his own a mausoleum where he buried his wife. Today, this “cemetery of the Lithuanian”, as it is known locally, is considered a funerary architecture reference in Portugal for its intricate relation with the landscape. Seneckis went back to Vilnius around 1913. He stayed there for two years until the German army occupied the city. Around this time, he tried to go back to Portugal. However, there is no evidence that he ever arrived there – it is speculated that he made it to the United States, where he dreamt of going in his youth.

Eglė Bazaraitė is a PhD candidate in architecture, in Lisbon University (UL-IST), where she is completing her research on Catholic cemeteries in Europe and their pagan dimension. www.eglebazaraite.net

Eduardo Brito works in cinema and photography. Recent works include the short film Penúmbria (2016), the screenplays for Paulo Abreu’s film The Scoundrel (2012) and Manuel Mozos’ The Glory of Filmmaking in Portugal (2015). www.eduardobrito.pt

Eduardo Brito and Eglė Bazaraitė reconstructed a story of Vincentas Seneckis using facts each of them knew about this persona. Et In Arcadia Ego is a docu-fiction that leads the mind through the landscape of one person’s life, tied and torn apart from Lithuania.

Eyebrow

Ulijona’s practice embraces the margins of popular culture. She is interested in harmony and tunelessnes while looking for a moment when recognisable things lose their purpose, like a word repeated many times becomes a sound and loses its meaning.

In Eyebrow Ulijona reads a text about her grandfather.

London based Lithuanian artist Ulijona Odišarija makes video, photography, music, objects and installations. She also DJs and performs under her musical alter ego Sweatlana.

On Life

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.

Carving out history: when moments become monuments

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.