typography © Gailė Pranckunaite
2018.08.18 17:00-21:00
Žeimiai Manor House, Aikas Žado Laboratory
🕹👾⚗️Opening of the group exhibition „Bio-fantômas’ic sessions”👾🕹⚗️
In 2018, the programme of Invisible Man’s Cinematheque is based on the ideas of eco-centeredness that here, in local and problematic small town of Žeimiai, are calling for heterogeneity and diversity, following a rhizomatic and anti-hierarchical conception of multi-species co-existence! In the wake of the global ultra-right hurricanes and superstorms, the exhibition curated by the Invisible Man Cinematheque, established in Aikas Žado Laboratory, Žeimiai Manor House, invites to see and hear that, what is hidden and invisible, that, which is deleted or inaccessible in the VHS cassette, that, which are just fantômas’ic figurations, critical left-kicks on a hot summer night, rough homophobic marks of torn up by the roots wooden fence planks in your face, all the possible masks, gendered apparatuses, undarned gaps, cracking splits, steaming doughs, flowed oils, forged promises, that, which fits in and that, which slips through the whip and time of si-bioarchitecture.
Artists:
⛽️Eglė Ambrasaitė (LT) „Lankesa Acceleration”
Series of sound and video recordings, installation⛽️
During the 80’s and 90’s an experimental sewing bar – „Lankesa” was operating in Žeimiai Manor House, in a little town of Lithuania, called Žeimiai. Here was the place, where the unexpectedly cut clothes were made in reflection to the cynical and disillusioned mood of the times. Each of the garment, furniture or a room at the time was as a solid historical narrative that could be also read nowadays. In 2014, the vision of the sewing room was created by Eglė Ambrasaitė as an archive that preserves the material memory of this experimental factory, while „Lankesa: Acceleration”, as its continuation, an installation and a series of documentary video and audio recordings, seeks to encipher and to activate those narratives by assembling the witnesses – a labour force of the sewing bar, its storekeepers and tailors, mechanics and directors. By making an assumption that capitalism in the era of Soviet Union and during a period of transition is latent and encoded with specific keywords, „Lankesa: Acceleration” aims to assist in unfolding the fantômas’ic figure, which, in this installation, questions a scission of communism (in this case – suits for milkmaids) and capitalism (in this case – Levi’s jeans). Following E. Thacker and K. Swenson, „Lankesa Acceleration” asks how affective bodies are filled with organs (social functions) and are transformed into organisms or, in other words, into administered derivatives? How does affective orthopaedia work, which is capable of normalizing and homogenizing affects, or otherwise, how do machines or machinery work, how does the oil flow? The gender apparatuses here affect the position of a woman, the perspectives of their experience unfold through the feminized / masculinized sectors of labour, a woman becomes a surrogate proletariat, embodying the figurations of a mother, machine, monster.
🏰Domas Noreika (LT) „Smugleviche”
Si-bioarchitectural performance, duration: 1 hour.🏚
Bio-performative installation, operating in Žeimiai Manor House is a contextual, architectural art work, created specifically for the space of manor’s library. The title „Smugleviche“ is a playful combination of names belonging to different historical-cultural layers (P. Smuglevičius plus G.Versace). Domas Noreika explains the idea of si-bioarchitecture in the context of global neoliberal capitalism and uses narratives of bio-tensions to describe this formed political, economic and cultural situation, as, for example, a cynical commentary by a Lithuanian political figure on the “collapse of one part of the mansion’s building, and the management of another”, or the eternal desire of the wedding people to have “romantic photoshoots on the staircase of the abandoned manor”. During the performance, the library chamber of the Žeimiai Manor, the techniques and philosophy of heritage protection, the figure of P. Smuglevičius, who brought classicist aesthetic traditions from Rome to Lithuania in the 18th century, iconography and the context of cultural activities become the main conceptual axis through which the potentiality to speak on the global issues of socio-economic relations, geopolitics, cultural heritage, conservation and preservation and to act on and create eco-critical theory and practice from the local si-bioarchitectural position of the manor actualizes. The post-humanistic bio-performance “Smugleviche” is in itself a social fabric, a phantasm performed by the trýpo invisible man. Who is this hybrid, this cyborg, which is more than calculated but less than one? Perhaps this is the working class pushed into the socio-economic, social-political margins, perhaps a heterogeneous non-white, non-heteronormative queer communities? What is made silent, invisible, unimaginable, deleted from the pages of national or cultural history, – is exactly the si-bioarchitectural capital. Both the organs of materials and/or concepts clog up the holey, the leaky, the trýpo person: the detail (person’s or Ancient Rome’s ruins) is cemented by the skin, which is vertically projected by populist political characters such as S. Berlusconi. The invisible man, living in the architectural assemblage of the library is precisely the matter and form of these non-recorded, not-encoded vibrant bio-tensions and bio-streams. These artists-participants have contributed to the realization of this installation: Margarita Servar, Albertas Okunevičius, Enrika Stanulevičiūtė, Eglė Ambrasaitė, Aleksandra Skripnik, Aušra Kaziliūnaitė, Arlene Gibbs, Andrėja Apalainytė, Marco Mansi, Dustin Cauchi, Adil Janah, Rokas Vaičiulis, Martynas Stirneckas, Rimantė Stankūnaitė, Urtė Katiliūtė, Austėja Dobilaitė, Simonas Pigulevičius, Urtė Budnikaitė and others who have shared their photographies to the collection of the library.
🕳Anna Belousova “Interference”
Performance, duration: 3 hours.🕳
Anna Belousova participates together with Domas Noreika in the si-bioarchitectural installation in which she becomes a robot, machine, algorithm. Her performance “Interference” refers to Thomas Young’s scientific experiment after which he concluded a new conception of light, the one that differed from the dominant idea at the particular historical time. “The light is a wave, rather than a particle”, he claims. The significance here is not to merely address the old scientific-theoretical innovation but how a new, actual philosophical, onto-epistemological change is possible and necessary. For Anna Belousova, such potential for transformation can be initiated from the artist’s act of drawing or painting, in other words, an artistic experiment, interference. Her performance is always conditioned by social space and time. The social, si-bioarchitectural, material-materialist intervention and subversion range from the relation between the “active” artist and the “passive” participating spectator to the modification of an architectural assemblage, consequently modifying the organic and the non-organic.
🔮Gailė Griciūtė and Viktorija Damerell (LT) „Session”
Sound session, duration: 15 min.🔮
Gailė Griciūtė and Viktorija Damerell are inviting to place oneself in a comfortable position and let oneself loose in their ero-irony-session. In this session the music stimulated by the improvisations of barocan operas and prepared toys will guide one through the streams of pop songs, charms and eye gymnastics.
💊Jack Finerty (US) „dr. zuma zuk SS 2019″
performance, duration: 30 min💊
Invisible Man Cinematheque introduces the performance of Residency o-yo’s resident – Jack Finerty (delegated by WE ARE PROPAGANDA) that will integrate the presentation of a series of sculptural works-cum-menswear garments with the reading of a written analysis of “chemsex,” a phenomenon of sexualized drug use currently affecting urban gay male communities across the global west. Jack Finerty will be producing all garments and written material, and this will be the second instantiation of the project, which was originally developed in Portland, Oregon in 2016.
❕🔋In a need and wish to reconstruct the shivering of our own little skin hairs and to tear off of what has “invisibly” happened or, to be more precise, “invisibly” fell in oblivion in 2016, July 23rd at the queer festival (Sapfest Fest) in Žeimiai Manor House, the Invisible Man Cinematheque feels the need to collaborate with WE ARE PROPAGANDA and invites you to further participate in the WE ARE PROPAGANDA’s performative VHS session (https://www.facebook.com/events/466798040453208/ [1]).🔋❕
Curator of the exhibition: Invisible Man Cinematheque (Eglė Ambrasaitė)
Coordinator and guide of the exhibition: Rokas Vaičiulis
The author of exhibition texts: Eglė Ambrasaitė and Rokas Vaičiulis
This exhibition is part of these projects: „The Projects of Invisible Man Cinematheque for 2018”, „Lankesa: Acceleration” and „McFlurry (request sent)” and is funded by Lithuanian Council for Culture and Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.