DABAR!/NOW! Art from Lithuania

An exhibition of young and the youngest generation of artists from Lithuania. Photographs, films, spatial installations, paintings. Presented artists tell their private stories, build fictional narratives, tackle philosophical and existential problems; they relate to popular culture, think over the artist’s position within the contemporary world, where everything has already been done (they are ready to play with
the tradition of conceptualism); they find traces of the recent history reflected on the contemporary landscape or they try to record the process
of social, political and economical change occurring nowadays in Lithuania.

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Artists:

Akvilė Anglickaitė
Eglė Budvytytė
Ugnius Gelguda
Arūnas Gudaitis, Laura Stasiulytė
Kristina Inčiūraitė
Rudolfas Levulis
Domas Noreika, Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė
Rokas Pralgauskas
Eglė Rakauskaitė
Andrius Rugevičius aka PB8
Andrius Zakarauskas
Darius Žiūra

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Valentinas Klimasauskas

A short guide to Vilnius art glossary

(in non-alphabetical order)

Vilnius – European Capital of Culture 2009

Title of “European Capital of Culture 2009” and its celebration provides themes for the current artistic life in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. One may see today’s Vilnius as the screen for various artistic, political projections and the scene for public discussions regarding its current status. Artists respond very differently to the program of “European Capital of Culture 2009”. Some of them participate; some organize art strikes, some simply continue their artistic practices regardless the general fuss, while others act critically and creatively at the same time – for example Darius Mikšys proposed to rename the newly “rebuilt” simulacrum-like Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania as the Museum of Corruption. Thus Vilnius itself became the central motive, artwork or goal for various artistic practices and, what isn’t less important – a perfect platform to practice the democracy.
more…

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Neringa Černiauskaitė

Future artists and the territory of culture:

invasion, infiltration or guerrilla war?

Almost each person having come across with art in Lithuania knows – that almost all contemporary young Lithuanian artists are being prepared in Vilnius Art Academy. For a long time there has been annually organized event The Students’ Art Days (SAD) in this institution and it was one of the most important means for a young artist to present himself to the society for the first time. At the exhibitions and mini-festivals, organized on the initiative of students themselves there used to enthusiastically participate the creators of the youngest generation, quite often presenting interesting and unexpected (as they came not from the official educational program) projects. SAD of Vilnius Art Academy of this year has become the uncanny exhibition visually, but at the same time it induced to think about the initial goals of this annual event and inert aspiration of them in the changed contemporary art situation. The topic of the latest SAD – Invasion of a young art – said that “the right time has come for young artists” and tried to investigate the invasion of students into the culture. But is it really so that all the students who have graduated from Vilnius Art Academy are aggressively breaking into the closed territory of culture? It is natural that it is not so: not each graduate of Academy desires to be a new “infantryman/woman”. So, what happens to the future artists after the graduation of Academy in Lithuania? What strategies do they choose in order to penetrate into the field of culture? With the help of concrete examples from the scene of the young contemporary art scene it would be possible to point out three most striking positions of the future artists with regard of culture: invasion, infiltration and guerrilla war.

Invasion reveals itself by clear and open strategy – young creators use all possible “artillery” (sending of portfolio, acquaintances, participation in competitions, active participation in exhibitions etc.), in order to penetrate into the closed territory of modern art and keep there as long as possible. These artists try not only to conquer much wider space of art but also to make as it possible more significant impact there. Almost each department or speciality of Vilnius Art Academy annually launches a successful “infantryman/woman” at least, including such nearly consolidated artists as Eglė Budvytytė, Liudvikas Buklys, Gintaras Didžiapetris, Ugnius Gelguda, Žilvinas Landzbergas, Andrius Zakarauskas and others.

Almost all above-mentioned creators cooperate with modern art galleries both in Lithuania and abroad, that, in their own turn, are already using their own strategies of popularization and consolidation of artists. So, for the implementation of a successful invasion the support of institution is necessary or the demand of such invasion from the internal part of the system. For the system that is acting for a long time and permanently, the “nourishment” with new names and creation directions is necessary, therefore, the representatives of the institutions are continuously searching for contacts with suitable “infantrymen”, who quite often are being absorbed by those institutions before they’re properly prepared. In the same way, having found themselves in the institutional patronage, young artists may bravely execute their visions, being sure, that the institutions will legitimate those visions. So, the artists of the youngest generation even still being students of the Academy, start naturally treat those creators and their activities as successful and contemporary one (quite often young artists joke that after showing themselves in the Modern Art Centre, they at last officially become contemporary artists). Then those creators start being followed consciously or unconsciously, as it is believed that the direction they have developed (the invasion strategy) has brought them to the centre of the art territory. Some young artists, for example Gintaras Didžiapetris, has got especially clear and strict creation strategy of his name and status that includes control of the documentation of his pieces of art, laconicism of explanatory texts and exclusive talks with the artist himself about his artistic creation.

Nevertheless, in spite of application of different strategies, the artists who have no original creative expression and do not develop it, quite often lose institutional support and gradually are being pushed out from a narrow and crowded Lithuanian field of art.

Infiltration strategy is one of the most popular among the graduates of the Academy – it limits with imperceptible (consciously or unconsciously) penetration into the cultural life of the country. Without taking into consideration those, who have adapted their skills, acquired at the Academy, in the field of advertising and design, quite a lot of the initiative graduates found personal or group forces of applied art. They often participate, develop and implement social projects, supported by the state of different international funds, in this way balancing between commercial and artistic activities. The example of such unions might be pvz.lt. It is a union of seven creators working on video, photography and films, beginning with a recently shown documentary “Viens, du, trys…” (“One, two, three…”) about Lithuanian Song Festival, and ending with a video clip for a young Lithuanian singer Alina Orlova. In this case (though it is mentioned only one, but there are much more creative unions), they work especially widely, creatively and professionally, but they remain within the framework of applied arts, do not pretending to the conquest of the territory of contemporary art. Such infiltration fills in the niche of applied-social-commercial art, where competition is going on both in creativeness and technological know-how as well as professional directions.

The third, which is not so widely spread and it is the most dangerous one, – is the position of a guerrilla war with regard of culture. They are similar independent initiatives and unions, the same as in the case of infiltration, but they differ in this way, that the strategy of warfare is to create and develop projects and products having no applied format. Quite often they are either consciously controversial or exaggeratingly imitating pop culture or even popular contemporary art tendencies, but there dominate “make yourself” aesthetics everywhere. As it is peculiar for a strategy of a guerrilla war, those unions most often act in peripheries, provincial places of the country where the local population either collaborate with them or try to eliminate them. As these initiatives maintain themselves and have no external support, they do not live long or take different paid jobs in order they were able develop their “guerrilla” activities in parallel. One of the most significant representatives of partisan war – is ŽEMAT (the College of Žeimiai Esthetical Idea and Anonymity) and former annual independent artistic workshop – project Žagarė.

ŽEMAT was founded by two graduates-painters of the Academy Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė and Domas Noreika (they prefer calling themselves as the artists of Žeimiai). According to the founders themselves this College is a communal PR agency using especially subtle PR methods. As one of the main disciplines of the College is anonymity, the artists of this province involve both a big number of the actors of culture and simple local people to this permanently, widely but imperceptibly working project, while the latter do not even realize it. Such method helps to maintain in ŽEMAT partisan position for a long time and not to incur trouble from the cultural system. In this way they can act in two fronts – both, inside the territory of culture and its periphery where this College is located.

Other version of guerrilla war strategy – is the independent workshop of artists Žagarė that was taking place since 2005. There used to gather 10-15 persons in average and for two and a half weeks they used to live and create in a small town of Žagarė. Young artists tried to create such pieces of art that should hold out not only during the workshop or exhibition time but remained in the town as a sign about the former artistic environment (in this way there appeared in Žagarė “Meno kioskas – Ledų nėra” (“Art Kiosk – No Ice-cream“ of Žilvinas Landzbergas ). According to the initiators themselves, the most interesting thing was to see what those workshops meant for the inhabitants of the town. “It may appear like an attack of an organized terrorist group, and maybe it was so” – say the authors of CAC TV themselves (2006-11-15 part I) in the telecast about Žagarė. In the same telecast it was shown how they came back to Žagarė in several months and asked the local people about the artistic attack of eighteen days in summer. But the local people could vaguely remember what was happening, mixing facts, fictions and legends in their talk and in this way reminding stories about secret partisan groups from time to time appearing in the towns during the resistance movement to the Soviet occupation (1944-1953). Similarly as ŽEMAT, this initiative did not try to come out into the wider context, seeking to make impact on local conquest of the territory of culture or the fight with local culture turning it into the ignoring of the “highest” culture itself.

Who knows, maybe such ignorance will develop into one more position of young artists with regard of culture?