The Most Beautiful Catastrophe

The Kosovsko-Laskár wetlands are located in the Central-Western Slovakia and are probably the first example of newly emerging wetlands and marshes in Slovakia. They formed as a by-product of the underground extraction of coal near the Nitra river. These wetlands have been created during the past forty years of coal mining. The landscape has changed: large sinkholes have been created affecting both housing and the natural environment. This change in the environment forced people to move away from the area, forming an unusual habitat as a way for nature to find balance with the radical change of the ecosystem. After several years the situation was made worse by a crisis at the still operating mine, when water was discharged from its flooded tunnels up to the surface. As miners began to pump this water into the nearby creek, it burned their skin. The mixture of ash and hydraulic emulsion managed to kill all life in the creek.

 

Formed in 2011, APART is an artist cooperative based in Bratislava.  APART performs research, creative and artistic production, project- and exhibition-making / curatorial production, publication and archiving. The artists initiate, create, organise and exhibit group manifestations (often inviting and giving space to other artists and theoreticians) but they also operate individually. Today, its members include Ema Hesterová, Denis Kozerawski, Chiara Rendeková, Peter Sit, Andrej Žabkay. www.apart.sk

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Blue Carbon, Intertidal

Blue Carbon, Intertidal is an interstitial section of Hydrangea. Written by Holly Childs. Music by J. G. Biberkopf. Voiced by Elif Ozbay. Film by Holly Childs

Co-produced by The Good Neighbour and Runway Journal. Originally commissioned by Runway Journal for Issue 39 Oceans.

The Good Neighbour: I got a familiar feeling from watching this work. The voice seems to channel many meanings from subjective line to computerised self to poetic voice, and the images are very global, pointing to different parts of the planet. How did it all come together as a piece?

Holly Childs: I recently learned that a step-cousin who I’ve never met is an expert in “blue carbon”, the name for underwater and coastal ocean ecosystems that hold carbon. This piqued my interest, and after researching coastal ocean ecosystems, I came to think of how much time I spend in intertidal zones, the areas that are underwater at high tide, and dry land at low tide, and to contemplate what records I had taken of these beach-and-other locations. All footage used in Blue Carbon, Intertidal was shot over a 3 year period in which I lived in London, Naarm (Melbourne), Auckland and Moscow.

In the summer in Auckland, and my routine was that I would work every day and when it was close to high tide, I walked or jogged (depending on how hot the day was) to beaches on Waitemata Harbour to swim. Each day, high tide occurred approximately 50 minutes later than the previous day creating a stretchy rhythm across weeks. I found no documentation of water from this period.

The voice, several people have mistaken for a computerised system voice, is actually Elif Özbay. The text, and the work in general, purposely invites various projections and interpretations.

TGN: The image of an Ocean as an entity and Ocean politics are continuously reverberating in today’s global ecological thought (resulting from Anthropocene effects). What qualities of the ocean (as an idea, image, metaphor?) could you describe as inspiring and connecting to you?

HC: I grew up in proximity to the ocean, took it for granted and only later moved to landlocked regions where I experienced strange effects. In Moscow, every night I dreamt of beaches, and in the Netherlands, surrounded by water in every conceivable way, but with none hitting land in the satisfying beachy way I knew from home, for months I stopped dreaming. Blue Carbon, Intertidal is a poem, longer than the excerpt used in this video, that iterates like tides. Awareness that the edges will always change, iterating almost imperceptibly over a scale of days, while shifting dramatically over larger timescales.

Some years ago, I stayed up a hill, overlooking a zone that was anecdotally and socially projected to be underwater in the near future due to the effects of climate change. It was claimed that the local government was aware of this impending reality, but didn’t or couldn’t let its residents know, as to do so would render their pre-sunk properties worthless, and void residents’ insurance policies. Climate change creates a range of catch-22s, direct and indirect.

TGN: Hydrangea is a long term project you’ve been working on together with J. G. Biberkopf. What is at the core of Hydrangea, what kind of tools and thinking?

HC: In a performance context, Blue Carbon, Intertidal is an interstitial section connecting Hydrangea I to Hydrangea II, both sound works for performance in greenhouses. A spray of salt between the emotion of Hydrangea I and the lost forest of Hydrangea II. The nature of the project is essentially a mystery, and we are happy to keep it that way for the moment.

Holly Childs is an Australian writer and artist. Her most recent work, an evolving performance series for greenhouses made with J. G. Biberkopf, is Hydrangea, a myth about myths, in which every flower is a story in a forest of never-ending branching narratives. Other recent works include writing for Angela Goh’s Uncanny Valley Girl, and the co-creation of Patternist, an augmented reality sci-fi urban exploration game. She is the author of two novels: Danklands (Arcadia Missa) and No Limit (Hologram). Her third novel Greenhouse Parking will be published in 2020.

J. G. Biberkopf is an artist based in-between Amsterdam and Vilnius. They work within the fields of sound, documentary, performance, and installation. Their recent solo work and collaborations predominantly work to deconstruct the political imaginaries effective in the Western world. In previous work, they have focused on aural memes, while their ‘Ecologies’ album series explored initiating ecological discourse in the realm of experimental electronic music.


 

Today Is the Color Day Meets at Day

‘Today Is the Color Day Meets at Day’ glides through the exhibition under the same title by two artists Laura Kaminskaitė and Antanas Gerlikas, curated by Audrius Pocius at P/////AKT, Amsterdam in September-October 2018. Ieva Kotryna Skirmantaitė glues transitions and movements in the exhibition space with moments from the opening and a voice-over reading a text written by Laura Kaminskaitė.

‘Art is more than meets the eye’, the folk saying goes, and I believe there might be some truth to that. Despite its fragility, related to its thingness, it acts as if it were space within a space, bigger on the inside, as if it is a portable black hole. It devours every-thing around it without consuming anything, transforming objects into time, creating cracks in the sameness of our days, letting us feel the futility of our everyday in the background of which we may encounter the richness of reality itself.

This ‘richness’ is a relative term, obviously, generally indicating something that is out of reach, a longing for things that are yet to come. Maybe, this is why there is another saying – ‘a man who has everything, has nothing at all’. To be rich, then, means to be able to appreciate a lack.

Perhaps, it is within this lack where the meeting between an artwork and the observer’s eye occurs. It is a distant gaze, although a loving one – a gift that is being gifted both ways, forming a relation. A bond, where the ones bonded cannot touch, but nevertheless constitute each other. Similar to how one imperceivably recognizes oneself through the reflection in another’s eye or like a memory of a glass, which refuses to be touched by lips.

So, what is ‘more’ within a meeting with an eye? What is this excess dwelling inside a lack? Artworks, so it seems, just like us, are their own doppelgangers: double, dual – a movement between the first and the third person in a sentence, perpetually seducing us to entangle them in language, while at the same time constantly evading an explicit definition. An object craving for a gaze, though evaporating as soon as we think we start recognizing it as familiar.

That is why exhibitions are peripatetic – more suitable for movement than observation. Move through the space, or better let the space move you and the path will bend accordingly to the steps you take. On your way, you will find a Station in Conversation lurking, waiting for the right moment, ready to catch the possibilities that are yet to be envisioned. Or a Researcher’s Outfit, inviting the curiosity of others to whisper alien questions in passing, leading you to a space of dreams and uncertainty, offering to cease control and give yourself up to the passage of time. This time becomes a space in Prototype of Dunes.

On the other side there are three Nameless surfaces which came from the past and by which you possibly once passed, reflecting your present gaze back at you in the form of a memory or a wish. You will also find a piece, which is Not Yet Titled, but suspended in a state of eternal becoming; a thing patiently waiting for its word, anticipating a sense of belonging. Walk some more to find a shoelace dangling from the ceiling – an object of the everyday, standing before you Today. And if sometimes time ceases to pass in this space, can there still be any News? Through the multitude of these ‘todays’, time reveals itself as a vehicle, a mode of travel, a rhythmical Exhition. Eventually, you will notice that you are not alone in your travels, with Friends’ Names delicately watching over, revealing nothing but the difference they profess. These appearances, as vivid as they may be, once touched will quickly melt away as if they were a kind of Sugar Entertainment – sweet to the eye, saturated for the tongue.

An exhibition is a kind of promise that cannot be delivered. It is untouchable, yet fragile, a meeting point enabling a difference to be noticed, yet disenchanting any illusion of its realness. It is a lack, that needs to be addressed with love. Soothingly, there is no magic here.

– Audrius Pocius

 

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.

Antanas Gerlikas (b. 1978) has recently taken part in group exhibitions in Vilnius, Riga, Tartu, Bucharest, Rome, Athens, Moscow and Reykjavik. His solo exhibitions so far have been held at Plungė House for Culture (1999), Tulips & Roses gallery (with Liudvikas Buklys, 2008), CAC Vitrine (2011) and CAC Kitchen (2014), Art in General in New York (2013) and Objectif Exhibitions in Antverp (2013).

Laura Kaminskaitė (b.1984), lives and works in Vilnius, Lithuania) has exhibited her works in solo exhibitions, including Something something, Vermilion Sands, Copenhagen (2016); Exhition, BWA Warszawa, Warsaw (2013); Walking in a Title, The Gardens, Vilnius (2012); Exhibition, Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2012); and in group exhibitions, including A Rock That Keeps Tigers Away, Kunstverein Munchen, Munich (2017); XII Baltic Triennial, Dailes theatre, Riga (2016); A Million Lines, Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Centre, Krakow (2015); Helsinki group, Hiap Augusta gallery, Helsinki (2015); A Cab, Kunsthalle Athena, Athens (2014); The Moderna Exhibition 2014 – Society Acts, Moderna Museet Malmö, Malmö (2014); The excluded third, included , Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna (2014); Vilnius Pavilion, National Contemporary Art Centre (NCCA), Moscow (2013); Thinging , Frutta, Roma (2012); Sparrows, CAC, Vilnius (2012).

 

 

Flight Mode

The narrator of Flight Mode navigates between private, public and virtual spaces, dividing her attention between action and thought, while contemplating the role of individualism and complex asymmetries among individuals and the society.

‘I was thinking about subjectivity. And how, regardless of how embarrassing it can be, especially when exercised in an intellectual context, how almost always, almost inevitably, it speaks some kind of truth. It expresses a state of mind that at least one person is in. And if one person is in that state of mind, perhaps it would be safe to say, that the community that person belongs to is, possibly, in a similar state of mind. It’s as if the society itself is internalized and then externalized again, through an individual.’ – excerpt from the video.

This video carefully and subtly pictures this minute of the truth – a slow transient moment from a full body indecision and insecurity, to a small but bright change of the thought and the rising of determination. By exercising the subjectivity, this work speaks about larger symptoms of the individualistic society and its affirmative effects on depressive experiences. The work by Daiva Tubutytė shines a light on a short-lived individual experience as part of a bigger picture of the society.

 

Daiva Tubutytė (b. 1986) is a visual artist based in Berlin. She works with text, moving image and sound. Recent presentations include Wavelenght series at Toronto International Film festival, Kreuzberg Pavillon and Ashley Berlin. Daiva is a graduate of the graphic design departments of Gerrit Rietveld Academie (2012) and Vilnius Academy of Arts (2009) and a nominee for the 2013 Berlin Art Prize.

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Sahara Signal

Stemming from the Athenian context, the work reflects on the current issues of migration, displacement, resistance and the perspective of the Other. The title originates from the Sahara sand brought to europe by wind.

The text originally composed as a reader for a solo exhibition in Athens named “Raptor’s Eye” transposes into the video piece.

Made throughout the period of documenta 14 in Athens, Greece between February and July 2017.

Jokūbas Čižikas (b. 1988, Vilnius) is an artist living and workig in Athens and Vilnius. His practice combines installations, video and sound compositions, sculptures and collaborative performances. Recent work shown in exhibitions, projects and residencies:

European Everything, Documenta 14 Kassel, DE (2017); Raptor’s Eye, A-DASH, Athens, GR (2017); Marres Tourist Office, Marres House for Contemporary Culture. Maastricht, NL (2016); Riddo Duottar Museum, Lakselv, NO (2016); Abteiberg museum. Mönchengladbach, DE 
(2016); Master of Fine Arts, ZHDK University of Arts, Zürich, CH (2015); EIB Art Collection, Luxembourg (2013).

Cognitive EMP

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).

Live creature after Dewey

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

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.