When the Wind Blows from Everywhere, We Make Art and (Sur)render Reality

On February 24th I woke up because of huge explosions, and they weren't fireworks (and not another New Year's celebration), but bombs from Russia. I jumped on the search engine, several news platforms, and Amazon trying to find out how to get batteries, solar chargers and other backup devices for an emergency reserve. I found a few units offered by the Red Cross that can generate electricity and connect to the radio. The internet went down very quickly, and Elon Musk's Starlink satellite Wi-fi stations hadn’t arrived yet. As I ran to the bomb shelter, a bullet hit me in the thigh. Luckily, it stuck to my iPhone and all I was left with was a pinkish blue bruise. Since then, I have had an iPhone replica made of green glass (created by artist Diana Nakrevič). When I feel the cool surface and weight of the glass in my pocket, I calm down. However, my mood keeps getting gloomier. The start of the war in Ukraine revealed a new scenario that made virtuality more real and believable than everyday life. The aggression of the neighboring country made many of us in Lithuania feel insecure and think carefully about an action plan in the event of an extreme war situation. In a sense, we had an excuse to create situations of survival and communication in case war or some form of siege happens. How would we live and how would we relax? How would we calm down? How would we communicate? What would social media look like, without which we can no longer seem to exist?

Ultimately, what would we expect?

Models of Used Car Market

Ignas Pavliukevičius (LT)

Right after the pandemic, young artists in Lithuania were hit by the war. The unrest in neighboring countries enabled them to work out how to calm down, find new ways of communication, come up with methods for resilience and survival. Let’s make art and (sur)render new virtualities to help Ukraine win. All in order to strive and continue making art. We already have Planet B more real than ever!

CN V CN V₁ CN V₂

Jan Georg Glöckner (LT)

“I think in the west we seriously underestimate or at least are not aware of the impact of smells on our behavior. Alongside this we are also not aware of the powerful tools we are provided by our bodies to detect and interpret smells. I think if we use the last two sentences as a hypothesis to work with, there is the possibility to be propelled into new areas of composition and choreography!”

[ɡrɐ’za]graza

Tata Frenkel (LT)

This is a performative lecture during which a certain socio-poetic reference book called Anti-saving Instrumentary is taught. These are anti-preservation instruments. Mental drawings, verbal constructs, tornadoes. [ɡrɐˈza] concerns the methods of excessive interpretation — which the author creates here and now based on the principle of synecdoche.

Talking cube

Gailė Cijūnaitytė (LT)

The Talking Cube is a multisensory, multifunctional masterpiece for therapeutic training and interactivity, designed to teach the principle of action and consequence, color recognition, picture recognition, hearing, motor skills and concentration. It also encourages physical movement — reaching, grabbing, throwing, rolling the cube. This way the patient not only plays with the cube, but also with the entire room controlled by the cube. Carefully and precisely designed, the talking cube is designed to befriend people of all ages and abilities. Based on ROMPA Description of the talking cube

Metatouch

Natalija Lokcikaitė (LT)

Metaverse as a post-reality universe where physical reality merges with digital virtuality. When physical reality is gone, humans need to feel the simulated environment will remain. Innate senses will give way to a new sense of touch, and embodiment will become one way to experience the environment, matter and bodies. Visual experiences will deceive the brain that we actually merge or are there and we will materialize in the space around us. I invite you to sit on the fake grass and experience the confrontation with reality and think about how strong and complex the sensations are.

Computer hug

Julija Kuprijaškinaitė (LT)

Phones and computers are daily companions of our lives. We spend a lot of time with them, they are almost always with us, nearby. A certain connection/relation is established between personal technological devices and a person: they begin to function as “self-therapy” instruments. Using a phone or computer, immersed in the virtual world, we try to take a break from the difficulties of everyday life, satisfy our social needs, or calm down. Often, just the physical presence of a phone or computer nearby provides a kind of sense of security and peace. I have noticed how much physical contact we have with these technological devices on a daily basis, and how little compared to another person, and how often we look to them for a helping hand.

Moeshroom

Jokūbas Vaicekauskas (LT)

Mesh — Merging different things that suit each other, work perfectly together. Network. Mush — Different things are combined, becoming one, no longer clear, no longer separable from each other. As technology is constantly being renewed, people’s relationship with the world is also changing, we live in times when, wearing “glasses”, we can stand on a magnified mushroom and look around, fly through the inside of the mushroom. Conditions have been created for viewers to view, explore, and play with digitalized mushrooms grown from an organic mycelium network in a digital network.

Control

Pijus Chraptavičius (LT)

Control can be lost in love, at work, through death or physical illness. Everything becomes fragile and like in slow motion. It seems to make the situation difficult to manage or even out of control.

Russophobia

Yuliia Yeromina (UA)

Our Russophobia isn’t big enough. Isn’t our Russophobia big enough? Our Russophobia still isn’t big enough. Isn’t our Russophobia still big enough? Our and your Russophobia still isn’t big enough. Isn’t our and your Russophobia still big enough? Our Russophobia just isn’t big enough.

Green apple J.I

Diana Nakrevič (LT)

Same shape. Same action. Less noise.

Relic

Evelina Bernatonytė (LT)

From icons suddenly bursting into tears to pieces of saints’ bodies becoming commodities, relics have acquired the ability to chimerically change the identity of their subject-object identity. In the Middle Ages, the relics of the most prominent saints were perceived as worthless until the church confirmed their authenticity. The most reliable proof of the authenticity of the relic was the fact that the sacred body did not rot. The production, distribution and competition of relics between different religious communities has become like turning parts of bodies into a commercial trade in peculiar souvenirs.

Vegetabilia Fractals

Ainė Petkūnaitė (LT)

In the work, fractal figures are constructed from fragments of aquatic plants, which are transformed into a synthetic simulation. After being born in the biological medium, the figures return to it. It integrates into the environment, adapts, merges with it or modifies it. And what is a biological medium? Maybe it is also generated?

Unidentified Object

Vilija Simutytė (LT)

This piece explores the problem of cognition of the ontology of the object, inviting the viewer to encounter an unidentified object and to experience a primordial contact with it; the wonder that the Greeks already considered the main source of knowledge. Where knowledge ends and philosophy begins, a series of questions arises, possibly being the origin of new knowledge. In this work, therefore, I aim to raise questions rather than to find or provide answers. How is objective knowledge possible? The work attempts to appeal to everyone’s conception of reality by inserting into it an object that is not recognizable at first sight, thus allowing the subject to rethink their own individual scale of categories, to free themselves from the network of associations and to come closer to the Kantian “thing-in-itself.”

Please Do Not Play with Me

Eva Rodz (LT)

A doll that should decorate a man, indulge him. Even in childhood, we are already separated by wearing not just pink or blue clothes — putting on the definition of the principles of behavior, so-called masks of gender. But why are these masks made up of outdated, negative attitudes? Why does society still teach a man that he is stronger, but does not teach that a woman’s body is comparable to a field of flowers? And although at the beginning I only asked you not to play with me, at the end I found the strength to admit that I am no longer your toy.

Kodleduk

Martyna Kairaitytė (LT)

In a small, strange town lives an even smaller, round man named Kodleduk. This guy’s passion for recording and archiving the actions of the whole town has possessed the town with microphones and cameras, nothing goes unnoticed by Kodleduk. All recorded sounds and images travel to semi-organic, semi-mechanical machines of his own construction, which contain the archived spirit of the city and Kodleduk is never alone in his small apartment on the very top 22nd floor.

Man with a Render Animation Camera

Žilvinas Baranauskas (LT)

This audiovisual work represents a gaze towards our urban surroundings. It asks how the city is expressed in contemporary times; in what forms it surfaces from a digital and post-Soviet state of being. The city is constantly affecting us, while at the same time we are continuously generating it within digital environments.

4408 New Messages (comment: I didn’t open Telegram for a day)

Margarita Valionytė (LT)

Borders between territories change when groups of people encroach on land area, cultural heritage or national identity as property. During the conflict, state-forms lose their stability, destruction (deterritorialization) takes place in the peripheral, transitional spaces next to chaotic movement — buildings are destroyed, local flora and fauna are killed. Not only that, watching people suffer is difficult. Information, sounds and images from the horrifying areas circulating on social media. on media platforms, e.g. on Telegram, tired of the abundance of traffic, a feeling of helplessness takes over. According to Susan Sontag, the emotional response to shocking news is short-lived, so sympathy fades in comparison to actual action, leaving no change however small.

media-van-lab: when the wind blows from the East, we make art and (sur)render reality

Vilnius Academy of Arts (LT), MENE (LT), INSTITUTIO MEDIA (LT)

Right after the pandemic, young artists in Lithuania were hit by the war. The unrest in neighboring countries enabled them to work out how to calm down, find new ways of communication, come up with methods for resilience and survival. Let’s make art and (sur)render new virtualities to help Ukraine win. All in order to strive and continue making art. We already have Planet B more real than ever!

Biography

Credits

Commissionaire and curator Dr. Vytautas Michelkevičius, co-curator Gailė Cijūnaitytė
Partners and supporters: MENE, Institutio Media, festival „ūmėdė“, Vilnius City municipality, Lithuanian Council for Culture, FAMM, department of Photography, Animation and Media Art at Vilnius Academy of Arts