On Friday, 5th of June from 9 pm Rupert’s three current residents – Marija, Aiste and Margarita – cordially invite you to an Open studios session. Through talks and discussions, the session will explore ideas of ‘unlearning’. Each of the artists and researchers will share their ongoing projects and how ‘unlearning’ is deeply interwoven in their thoughts, practices and experiences.
The event will take place in the gallery of “Pakrantė” and its surroundings. One of the presented projects involve video projections so please do stay until sunset to best view this work. Soft drinks will be provided and there’ll be the chance to stay and socialise after the session.
Aistė Abrazevičiūtė Forest Tectonics
Aiste’s practice narrates the unlearning process by teaching how to look around rather than ahead. During the residency she explored the nearby forest aesthetics, multitude of surfaces and patterns thriving around. Comparing self-organising, uncontrolled, patchy, intricate and interconnected bark structures with rational, functional, emotionless built environment of today she observed that our presented reality is a fiction, there are no pure and homogenous surfaces around us. Contemporary culture should rethink the aesthetics that surrounds us, the perception of space, atmospheres and new instruments. By projecting digital surfaces at Rupert walls, viewers are invited to imagine an alternative reality, presenting the possibility to re-create, define, shape it.
Margarita Žigutytė Love loves to love
Walking in circles. Corner to corner. Or in straight lines. Bending legs and random thoughts. Stretching arms and reaching out for to. To touch to care to love. In the background of three weeks radical Margarita was trying to understand the urgent. What is it that we know? What became an invisible habit we grew up with? When this care and love became hostile? The new collection is on its way just in the length of the
arm. Meanwhile some words put together for unlearning rituals will be shared.
Marija Nemčenko Knows no Boundaries
It is commonly known that knowledge is power and the powerful ones are narrating it. In Israel, in the 1970’s and 1980’s migrating birds have caused thousands of accidents when colliding with Israeli Air Forces. This nature’s threat to the military was substantial enough to result in an in-depth study of birds and their migratory routes across the Israeli territories. The grand narratives of nationhood, love for nature and fight for peace have emerged and been applied to the studied subjects. F15 fighter jet’s motto was changed from “Built to Fight Where Others Fear to Fly” to “Take Care, We Share the Air.”. Similarly, the image of birds such as white storks have been altered from enemies to friends, if not brothers, making less important national narratives fade. Marija Nemčenko exposes these grand narratives and suggests to look for the openings beyond them. She will present a fracture of her on-going project LAK, which attempts to document the popular and scientific knowledge about the white storks, their migratory routes and our relationship to them.
Due to current qurantine restrictions, it is recommended to wear masks and maintain the safe distance between the guests inside.
Rupert’s programmes are supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.
Special thanks to Pakrantė for supporting Rupert’s short-residencies programme this April-May.
