From May 8th through to May 19th Šiauliai Art Gallery (Vilnius str. 245, Šiauliai) features (De)Tour exhibition as a part of the Enter’12 Media Arts Festival .
A world of media holds with it latent potentialities, waiting upon encounter that we ourselves cannot anticipate. We wander this environment of over-saturation listless and anaesthetized. It is here that artists have taken the opportunity to intervene, by re-contextualising all-too familiar signs, using techniques that act to transform its narrative before our eyes.
But these signs, autonomous in themselves, possess a life that extends beyond ours and have histories that entirely precede us. They are brought back into the present by artists only through reference. With this in mind, creative processes of appropriation and postproduction serve to manipulate meanings which are later activated by viewers at the point of exhibition. In this, the readers’ consumption of the artworks also entails the production of subjective interpretations, as the artwork is once again conceptually reformed. This very act can generate an anxiety about a lack of fixity in meaning and aesthetic; the way in which artworks appear fluid, and lend themselves open to further change, becomes in itself a startling reflection of our own malleability.
The generative culture of open source, multiplicity and digitization is participant in an accelerated circulation of copies. The plural nature of these artworks, which allow them to exist in varying spaces and times simultaneously, loosens an understanding of the original while opening avenues for ‘detouring’. The valuation of the art object is no longer contingent upon a reverence of the singular original; it has turned into an exercise in the re-use and mis-use, of content, aesthetic and form in attempts to contemplate this downgrading. The aesthetic of the downgraded becomes a standard in itself, answering to a particular criterion and operating within a certain schema. Although these visual and narrational dynamics are indebted to contemporary concerns that bring the artworks into currency, the continuities and discontinuities they emphasize ultimately create a cohabitation of old and new senses.
(De)Tour is an exhibition attempting to capture the amalgamate quality of these concepts, presenting the artworks in such a way that they themselves come to partake in multi-media displays and site-specific installations through playful and dense curation. This exhibition proudly presents a dynamic range of new works by both recognized and emerging artists so as to highlight a seeming preoccupation with the idea of détournement. It is an invitation to consider the creative interplay between media, artists and audiences that raises questions about the condition of art today.
Curated by HAND THAT FEEDS Elaine Tam and Judith Nezri, in collaboration with Geistė Kinčinaitytė.
Participants: Johann Arens, Oliver Hickmet, James Howard, Lottie Hughes, Evelina Kerpaitė, Geistė Kinčinaitytė, Alana Lake, Rachel Libeskind, Sasha Litvintseva, Jacob Love, Vladislav Novicki, Sabrina Ratté, Maja Rozbicka, Nicolas Sassoon, Imantas Selenis, Ruta Songailaitė, Sven Steinhauer, Dan Szor, Gedvilė Tamošiūnaitė, Anne de Vries.
