Last Monday, July 15th, Nida Art Colony have opened the exhibition under the title “Appropriated Territories: Attack, Defence and Creation”. It coincides with the theme of Thom Mann festival – “In Search for Homeland” – inspired by the book by Czesław Miłosz. Thom Mann along with Czesław Miłosz are two world-renowned writers, a German and a Polish, that have worked and lived in Lithuania in their time (Thom Mann has spent a few summers in Nida, while Czesław Miłosz as a child lived in the northern part of Lithuania). Both of them loved their homeland, but given the politic circumstances, their rapport with their homeland was a problematic one.
Exhibition adresses all of the surrounding contexts – that of the nature, the culture-political, the artistic-creative, with an attempt to find some uniting threads. The main subject of the exhibition is so called “homeland” – a territory that we perceive, feel and define as ours. “Home” might be a cosy nest as well as gigantic political constructs, such as the state, even the communities as those of soccer fans, or scientific truths that give us the feeling of security.
The defense of ones own territory is more often than not binded with conflict – it might be football fan riot, a scandal between the neighbors, scientific dispute or wars consuming human lives. This exhibition gives a sort of a transparent insight to the creation of the territories, their attacks and their defense.
The exhibition is not about concrete “homelands” or self-identification with them, it is dedicated to the mechanisms that create “homelands”, the mosaics that they generate and their reciprocal processes.
Curator Eglė Mikalajūnė
Have a glimpse of the exhibition:
Marcus Coates. Out of Season. 2000
Video, 9 min 40 sec
Property of the artist, Kate MacGarry and Workplace Gallery
Bird songs are usually perceived as natural music, i.e. uninterested beauty. However, birds sing in order to affirm their territory or, by joint forces, to defend themselves from the enemies. In the video by Marcus Coates a soccer fan backs bird songs with fierce chants in the middle of the forest. He is also interested in protecting his territory – soccer team – and to find common language with his “tribesmen” – fellow fans.
Robertas Narkus. Stars are Holes. 2010
Digital Print
Property of Žaneta Fomova
According to the Inuit – the inhabitants of the furthest northern regions – stars are holes, through which the light of the ulterior world is radiating. Following this logic, the pitch dark hole of the birdhouse, which separates the native nest and the outer world, and the shining Moon circle, which opens the way to the ulterior world, are just two sides of the same coin, depicted on the different parts of the photographic diptych.
Mark Lewis. Algonquin Park Early March. 2002
Super 35mm transferred to HD, silent, 4 min 6 sec
Property of the artist
The miniature film, taken in the oldest Canadian provincial park, reveals the greatness of rigorous nature. On its background the passion of the hockey players seems rather insignificant. However, the indeed impressive Alonquin Park, just like the Curonian Spit, is a protected area, and its “wildness” directly depends on the human will.
Mikko Kuorinki. The Order of Things. Karlsruhe: Mark Pezinger Verlag, 2012
Property of Renata Dubinskaitė
Les Mots et les Choses (The Order of Things) is a book by one of the most famous philosophers of the 20th century Michel Foucault. In the book the author reflects upon the significance of such sciences as psychology, sociology, biology, linguistics and economics in structuring the human thinking and defining the truth. Inspired by this treaty a young Finnish artist Mikko Kuorinki published his own book under the same title – The Order of Things. The book contains the words of Michel Foucault treatise, arranged in alphabetical (linguistic) order.
Société Réaliste. Culture states: Greater Europe. 2008
Digital print
Property of the artists
The map shows bloated Europe, made of “dream states”: Lithuania covers the territory of King Mindaugas times; Austria – the Austrian Empire; Sweden stretches through the present Finish and Estonian grounds. Since different states often dream about the same territories, distorted Europe includes duplicates – there are for ex. four Vilnius, three Brussels, two Prague and two islands of Ireland.
Photographs: NAC archive and Vytautas Paplauskas
