Category: POST-HUMAN PERSPECTIVES

Tinkering With Acid: Studio Visit With Urtė Janus

Posted on by Monika Lipšic

In the interview for The Good Neighbour artist Urtė Janus shares her creative journey and reflects an ongoing exploration of materiality, time, and the intricate relationship between art and the environment. She is speaking to us while picking up the bones, stones and plastic pieces on the shores of the Thames and tinkering with acid in her London studio.

Urtė Janus is a London-based Lithuanian artist, whose multidisciplinary approach stems from a photography degree, gradually evolving into video art, sculpture, and set design. Her latest work, “All the Seas Long Gone,” displayed at the National Gallery of Art as part of the JCDecaux Prize exhibition until December 3, 2023 reflects her journey in finding diverse forms of artistic expression.

Janus recently completed a year-long residency at the Alexander McQueen Sarabande Foundation before pursuing an Art and Ecology MA at Goldsmiths. There she continues her experimental approach, blending theoretical insights with sensory perception. Janus’ introspective and interdisciplinary approach prompts discussions on the ephemeral nature of art, disrupting traditional perceptions of artistic longevity and engaging with broader ecological and existential dialogues.

 

Produced by The Good Neighbour in 2023
Questions: Justė Kostikovaitė
Photography: Urtė Janus

Music: NataTeva – LASKA
Filmed by Elena Reimerytė

Supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture

Partners: UK Lithuanian Youth Association,
the British-Lithuanian Society

Antropomorphic Trouble

Posted on by Monika Lipšic

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.

 

One day in three years when the light and the temperature are just right

Posted on by Monika Lipšic

One day in three years when the light and the temperature are just right (2021) is a drowsy observation on constructed environments and bodies positioned there. The perception of slow-paced time merges with everlasting paradise space turning into a diminished unit of existence.

The video film is continuing the artist’s ongoing research exploring loneliness and its scale — from very personal, contained in one body to the one which pervades all the universe. In this work, by observing captivity, Gedvilė focuses on  the deep desire for an emotional connection we seek in animals where …protracted stress and disappointment with our lives and relationships coincides with fantasy projections onto wild animals we see on screens according Margaret Grebowitz.

One day in three years when the light and the temperature are just right also resembles the desktop-wallpaper-videos, where the view is un-constructed, the camera is still, and the very presence of oxygen is questionable. The frames in the film connect different moments from the lives of animal persons in the zoos. The melancholy penetrates through the images of beautiful paradise-like, yet somehow odd environments, where animals turn away from the viewer, frozen in the moments of forced slowness, in the unreality of the place as such. 9 minutes of uncanny meditation, then the body observed mirrors the body of the observer/viewer merging space and time into all-inclusive boredom.

In her artistic practice, Gedvilė Tamošiūnaitė (b. Lithuania, based in Berlin) focuses on ways of transferring contemporary human emotions and feelings into visual digital culture and non-verbal codes. Taking the former as an emotional collective entity — non-organic, bloodless, and painless — she aims to detect gaps that expose it to reality and allow for influence. Urban materiality, textures, mundane compositions, merging of nature with technology – these things fascinate her and outline the aesthetic she continues to explore. Her prior artistic experience led to an expanded creative field situating her commercial and personal work between photography, video art, and art direction.

 

Unknown Mushrooms

Posted on by Monika Lipšic

“As I’ve mentioned not once in my previous interviews, besides my main activity and business (a gallerist at Galerie Uberall), I’m a dedicated mushroom picker and, like the majority of gallerists, have a great passion for collecting. Currently I own quite a large collection of mushrooms consisting of specimens picked in Lithuanian forests in 2016.

While building this mushroom collection, I couldn’t but notice a new mushroom species that I keep coming across… (I’m not sure how it should be called…) But it’s a highly resilient or, perhaps we should say, invasive mushroom species, which multiplies at the speed of geometric progression and is found in forests, near expanding settlements. I’ve never picked this species, but in this year, 2018, I decided to give it a try.

As I don’t know how this species is called, I’m going to call it ‘Unnamed’ or ‘Unknown’.

Mushrooms of these unknown species are presently found in almost all forests all around the world. It’s difficult not to notice them… It’s even more difficult in the woods of Mickūnai environs, where I go quite often… or what’s left of them…

Perhaps these woods have such a large population of these mushrooms because there’s enough humidity and darkness…? Or perhaps these mushrooms grow in exactly the opposite climatic conditions…? I have no clue…

It is thought that these mushrooms reproduce via spores. It is also thought that spores are carried by animals in their stomachs. They also say: “mushrooms ‘travel’ underground, together with tree roots and species…”

Sometimes it seems to me that like all the others, ‘Unknown Mushrooms’ are reproduced not only by rodents or hoofed animals, but also by ‘Animals Wearing Boots’…

Some people say: “It’s better to pull out mushrooms”,
and others say: “It’s better to cut them”.

Myself, as an experienced collector, I follow the classical tradition/rule of picking mushrooms – I cut them slightly above the root.

It’s important to distinguish known mushrooms from unknown.”

– Andrej Polukord

Andrej Polukord (b. 1990) is an artist based in Vienna and Vilnius. He is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and co-recipient of the 2016 Kunsthalle Prize Vienna. His painting, installation, performance, and video art create unpredictable environments and absurd situations that produce double meaning and ambiguity.

Andrej Polukord’s work was presented in GAK, Bremen, –20 degrees biennale, Flachau, Austria, Zachęta Project Room, Warsaw, Survival KIT, Riga and elsewhere. Polukord is also a co-founder of Galerie Uberall, a mobile art gallery that is one of the first private mobile galleries, founded in 2014. Since then it has traveled and exhibited internationally including Vienna Contemporary 2015, documenta (14), Athens, Hoftallungen | mumok, Vienna, Austria and more.

After Affect

Posted on by mindaugas

Hyper-realistic pictorialism and hyper-productivity problematics of the world that came with utopian thinking of bankers/politicians, and later utopian internet and post internet thinking in the global ecologies of economics and societies driven by illusions and false ideals. We live in many worlds, in overlapped realities, or dimensions if you please. “After Affect” is here to remind us of how one should not take everything for granted.

Vsevolod Kovalevskij (b. 1988 in Vilnius, Lithuania. Lives and works between Vilnius, Tromsø and London. Vsevolod’s practice is based on critical thought and humour by which he is rethinking ever changing human condition, his works are driven by research of collective /individual memory/ies, anthropological studies, empathy and in that he creates tools to better question conditions of ones surrounding. This results in process-based installations, video works, objects that establish a relationship between the active spectator, the artist and members of the broader community.

The artist attended the Rupert Educational Program in Vilnius, LT (2014), holds a BFA and MFA from the Vilnius Academy of Arts (2015) and is a MFA candidate in Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Arts (2018) and Goldsmiths University (2018). Recent exhibitions include After Affect, Kurant (Tromsø, NO – 2017 ; Dimensional Verge, National Art Gallery (Vilnius, LT – 2015).
www.vkovalevskij.eu

Becoming A Dog

Posted on by mindaugas

Becoming a Dog is an ongoing project of becoming that started in 1991. Justinas Vilutis describes it as “From one terrain to another, the heart wants what it wants. Video runtime is 189 seconds. You see 52 images, 6 seconds per slide. 1 second for fade in, 1 second for fade out. Voice is provided by Ashley, a computer generated voice software. What remains is forever.”

Justinas Vilutis currently resides in Lausanne, Switzerland, studies at ECAL.

AI never blinks

Posted on by mindaugas

AI never blinks is a video made entirely by convolutional and generative adversarial neural networks, created using more than half a million images. All of the images seen in the work are completely artificial, the results of optimisation process performed by these networks in order to generalise or learn from a myriad of images of faces. 

The video proposes itself as a test to calibrate the senses, for both human and artificial agents, like a distant and speculative relative of ‘captcha’ software – used to prevent internet ‘bots’ from accessing secure areas of a website. The work proposes an inverted Turing test (the ultimate test for a robot, if it can convince you it is human), the backward gaze of the screen, which uncovers the slowness of human knowledge production.

Miša Skalskis (b. 1994, Vilnius) is a Lithuanian artist, currently based in The Hague and Vilnius. His recent work revolves around exploration of vision without image and hearing without sound. Skalskis explores pattern recognition and its repercussions within the fields of reception or perception and the deployment of such systems and consequent resonances within wider socio-political frameworks. His project investigates various notions of infrastructure to come, from extraneous synthesis of identity, to suggestion based economies.

Cognitive EMP

Posted on by mindaugas

Soft Screen Alien imagines future aesthetics for technologically augmented post-human perception. It is conceived as an active installation work, a dynamic composition using sculpture, architecture, audible sound and visible light. But Soft Screen Alien also operates in an extended region of the spectrum, from infrasound to ultrasonics, from radio frequency electromagnetic waves to ultraviolet light; a radical update and expansion of Robert Barry’s seminal 90mc Carrier Wave (FM) (1968, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York). Cognitive EMP Blast is a new composition performed within the installation using its elements as instruments, a full-spectrum sensory assault designed to induce what the artist calls a “cognitive reset”.

This text is based on the material prepared by Kunsthall Oslo for Krunglevičius’ 2016 exhibition, that featured the sculptural installation Soft Screen Alien and performance work Cognitive EMP Blast.

Ignas Krunglevičius (b. in Kaunas, Lithuania), is visual artist living and working in Oslo, Norway. His installations, videos, and sculpture often combine sound, and text, where he explores the intermix between the agency of power, economy, nature and existential realities generated by global technological development.

Since 2001, Krunglevičius has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. In 2010 he was nominated for the Nam June Paik Award. Recently, he has been invited to participate in many major international art venues, such as Sydney Biennale, Australia (2011), Aichi Triennale (2016) in Nagoya, Japan, ICA Philadelphia in USA (2017), the 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Artists (2018), Nam June Paik Art Center in South Korea (2018).

Qso Lens

Posted on by mindaugas

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.

Kiss Ai and wear Ai like a modular construction

Posted on by mindaugas

Created in 2014 by Dorota Gawęda (b. Poland) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (b. Lithuania), Agatha Valkyrie Ice is an ongoing, multi-platform, multi-user, participatory, self-performance project that aims at developing a fictional postgender character within an existing confined framework of social media platforms. Agatha is a companion species, here to think with and with which to invent a body and sexuality of one’s own. Agatha is immersed in a constant process of becoming; a loop of re-posting, re-staging and re-appropriating expressed in textual form, on social media as well as IRL.

The video presents documentation of an extended enquiry into non-spaces, following the exhibitions: EPISODE X/CHAPTER 3: BEDROOM, art monte-carlo, Monaco, 2016; Agatha 1.2.0.1 and Agatha 1.2.0.2 (conceived of in two chapters in separate location in Berlin, 2015). The projects imagined Agatha’s character in several distinct spaces: a veranda, a hotel room, within an established art institution, within an art fair and bedroom setting, and were simultaneously a presentation of scents developed with the support of International Flavours and Fragrances, New York (IFF Inc.).

Live creature after Dewey

Posted on 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 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.

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

Posted on 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.