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.