national character of lithuanian art, echo gone wrong online magazine, 2012

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National Character of Lithuanian Art

Ten years have passed since I read Lev Manovich's texts and since I was thinking thattrying to differentiate cultures within the globalized and networked world is quitetricky. While Manovich continues defining Western and Eastern features[1] I came upwith a discussion on national characters with Dutch artist Marguerite van Sandick. Thetalk started while considering a possibility of seemingly impossible – to define featuresof national art – and ended up with some resumptive examples, where French contem-porary art came to be conservative, German art turned formalistic with a slight politicalhint and Dutch art had a documentary undertone.

Working and festivity space "POT" in Kassel during summer 2012 was opened by Topassociation in parallel to the ongoing "dOCUMENTA (13)". Artists from Vilnius Acade-my of Arts and Lithuanian interdisciplinary Artists' Association were invited to findways of co-operation for this undertaking. Thanks to One Night Only gallery, POT at-mosphere was also moved to Vilnius for a one day. Šarūnas Akelaitis, Lina Albrikienė,Neringa Černiauskaitė, Vitalij Červiakov, Mindaugas Gapševičius, Ugnius Gelguda, Do-natas Gurklys, Marija Jociūtė, Simonas Kuliešis, Milda Laužikaitė aka MC Nietzsche,Saulius Leonavičius, Robertas Narkus, Andrius Savickas and Rūta Songailaitė amongothers took part in the project.

If somebody would have asked me to talk about national character of Lithuanian art, Iwould have never dared to talk about it before POT activities in Kassel and Vilnius. Iwill probably never talk about it later as well, though driven by this short study I willuse this "chance."

"Chance No 7" was a project by Robertas Narkus, who, hiding himself behind a vow ofsilence was waiting for his public Friday presentation. According to the artist himselfhis recent activity is based on the management of chance in the economy of circum-stances: chance encounters an unpredictable (or rather predetermined?) activities. Aftertrying for a long time to find out what will happen on Friday evening,some rumors reached of awaited thunderstorm. The Godot showed up.

Another unpredictable activity – the use of pirate radio transmitter – was led by artistduo Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda, who were broadcasting the dOCU-

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MENTA hypnosis session hosted by Marcos Lutyens without a permission. What if therecording device would have been noticed? Interestingly, when the hypnosis sessionstarted, the transmission unexpectedly interrupted and started again after the sessionhas ended as if someone was preventing artists from stepping the barrier of allowed andnot-allowed.

Emerging artists from Vilnius Academy of Arts went even further while playingwith/against rules and etiquette. dOCUMENTA as most of galleries and museums of-fered a privilege for media people: the so called "press pass" worked as a magic wandproviding free entrance to the exhibition. This was an unplanned catch for artists fromVilnius Academy of Arts, resulting in collaboration of faking up press passes and enter-ing dOCUMENTA free of charge. Simple and straight.

Lina Albrikienė, a yet another artist who took part in POT, was close to her "chance,"while performing a stenographic recording of outside activities. Masking tape used for aperformance became a recording tape while writing on it in real-time. If I would thinkof common features in Lina's and other above mentioned artistic outcomes, I would notfind anything political or economical. It would rather be close to life situations at a casu-al level.

The above mentioned examples carry in themselves an unforeseen result expected whileinteracting with audiences. It feels like there would be quit a bit of Fluxus influence.Would it be possible then to "define" a national character of Lithuanian art as a "Fluxusschool"?

[1] Designing Shanghai, or Why East of the New West, 2007 and How to Follow Global DigitalCultures, 2009 to mention a few.

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Robertas Narkus Chance N° 7, POT-Kassel

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Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda Interruption, POT-Kassel

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Mindaugas Gapševičius presents Interruption by Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gel-guda, POT-Vilnius

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Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda Pirate Radio, POT-Kassel

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Vilnius Academy of Arts students Breathe and Relax, POT-Kassel

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Lina Albrikienė Tape Performance, POT-Kassel

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Lina Albrikienė Tape Performance, POT-Vilnius

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Mindaugas Gapševičius googMENTA, POT-Kassel

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Mindaugas Gapševičius googMENTA, POT-Vilnius

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Andrius Savickas Polaris, POT-Kassel

Photographs by Mindaugas Gapševičius, Dovilė Aleksaitė, Lina Albrikienė, Ugnius Gel-guda, Robertas Narkus, Michael Glen, Vitalij Červiakov & others