Year: 2017

Liutauras Pšibilskis On OCDChinatown

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Liūtauras Pšibilskis / Liūtas Tauras (born in Vilnius, Lithuania) lives and works in New York City. He has contributed reviews and features to international art journals including Kunstbulletin, Artforum, Flash Art International, Siksi and Nu. Pšibilskis has acted as a Scandinavian Correspondent for Artforum and an Associate Editor of Siksi. His curatorial projects include the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale, with Jonas Mekas which was awarded the Jury’s Special Mention. He developed projects for the Performa Biennial and the Emily Harvey Foundation, New York. Most recently, Pšibilskis curated The World According to Fluxus, at the Lithuanian National Art Gallery in Vilnius, Lithuania. Liutauras’ newest project – OCDChinatown, a space under Manhattan bridge in Chinatown, is discussed in this video by Marija Misevičiūtė.

Marija Misevičiūtė is a Lithuanian filmmaker and founder of INLINE artist agency, currently based in New York where she works on multiple film productions, curates art parties/events on boats and spaces like Willem De Kooning Studios New York. Misevičiūtė studied Film Theory and Cultural Analysis at Amsterdam University College where she graduated with a thesis documentary titled ‘The Dream Of Underground Cinema: Amsterdam’ that was screened at OT301 Amsterdam. Previously she collaborated with Cheng Ran on his films ‘Simply Wild’ and ‘Two Pigeos’ that showcased at the Rijksakademie.

Nation State is an Outdated Concept

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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 Eglė Rindzevičiūtė – the Nation State is an outdated concept, she says in the conversation.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).

Sahara Signal

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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).

After Affect

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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

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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

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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.

ADDRESS

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‘Address‘ is filmed in Mulokas’ studio. In this video the artist recalls a prophecy he once experienced in the presence of a Madagascar shaman, who revealed that the self that belongs to him will become itself, only in the state of possession by movement. The artist questions this state of mind in relationship to performance: “performance is a serious business, sometimes it can take hours and hours in the studio” he says before embodying a new nature. This work is about the state of possession by movement, about relationships with objects, materials that become performers, about the labour of performance art and the expressive forms it takes.

“I am the living matter on stage that is searching for a physical match in revitalised matter. Through exercising live actions I look for ways to reveal the full physical consequence of the material. I found that interactions with the same material in a repetitive manner can cause varying associations that constantly redefine the nature of an object. On stage, I intuitively shift from one investigation to another, accumulating in my body the different qualities that are revealed by each encounter with an object. By using my imagination, I let the body carry the adopted qualities of all the materials. Thus a living subject (a performer) on stage becomes a self-produced matter that runs on its own established (more or less) sustainable physical structures.

Being in a position of an artist requires a certain attitude towards playing. Inside culture this attitude persists. Once I arrive to a level of identity I move to the second part of my process: I create a video. The video demands the role to present itself.“

– Andrius Mulokas.

After studying visual arts and architecture, Andrius Mulokas’s artistic interest shifted to space in relation to the moving body. He studied dance in Finland (North Karelia College), later he moved to Amsterdam where he studied on the BA Choreography programme (SNDO) at the Amsterdam School of the Arts (AHK). Born in 1983 in Kaunas, Lithuania, he is currently based in Amsterdam and Tel Aviv and works in the artistic scene there and abroad.

Cognitive EMP

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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).

Home Entertainment

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Morenotyet is a series of exhibition documentaries made in collaboration with the Lithuanian artist Gediminas G. Akstinas. Morenotyet aims to capture the continuity of exhibitions, their reciprocal relationship with all other things around them. The 4th episode of the series is dedicated to Home Entertainment 4 metres, a work by the British artist Chris Evans. The piece was temporarily installed in Yorkshire Sculpture Park as a part of the exhibition At Home, curated from the Arts Council Collection and marking the collection’s 70th anniversary. The episode celebrates travelling, weather changes and scaling.

Gerda Paliušytė (b.1987) is a Lithuanian video artist and curator currently based in Amsterdam. Her practice is focused on the shifts and delays of representation, the ways that it is shaped by predominant – yet mutable – power structures, time and social needs.