Screening of “Unconditional Love” by Agnė Jokšė

27.04.2024 (Saturday), 16:00
Screening of  “Unconditional Love” by Agnė Jokšė

Free admission, the show will take place in the educational room “Plac Zabaw Arsenał” (Arsenal Playground) on the ground floor

Unconditional Love consists of several interlinked chapters, exploring themes related to care, compassion, and love through the lens of intergenerational relations that are constituted in parallel to the societal and political changes taking place in Lithuania around the 1990s when transitioning from the Soviet Union and its economic and ideological models into the independent state of today (and its neoliberal, capitalist, and so-called western ideology).
 
With this specific geography and sociopolitical context in mind, Agnė Jokšė questions how two sociologically distinct generations – the so-called “lost” and “independence” generations, formed prior to the 1990s transition period and born after the reestablishment of sovereign Lithuania, respectively – became so connected while remaining politically and ideologically far apart? And how do their generational clashes affect the relationship dynamics of these two groups that are often closely linked by a family bond?
 
In Unconditional Love, Jokšė observes and follows the thread of family relations as it takes her to seemingly ordinary, but tender emotional places. By filming and interviewing her extended family in Lithuania and the Lithuanian diaspora in Europe, she chronicles their rituals and collects their memories in an attempt to piece together the portrait of this “lost” generation that her parents belong to. Even though Jokšė’s research originates in the idea of generational divide and cultural trauma, the space of Unconditional Love is tranquil. It reaches beyond disappointment or conflict into a state of shared familiarity, where one is resigned, resting, joking, worrying, and sharing with each other. The hours reveal the banality of unconditional love and its necessity and brilliance against the banality of evil.

The work has been co-produced by Nida Art Colony.