THINGPLACE. A performative discussion about Embodied Space with Vaida Stepanovaitė, curator of the nomadic project space Kabinetas, in the backyard of the Kaunas Artists’ House.
– Hello and welcome to the luscious backyard of the Kaunas Artists’ House. This green spot occasionally serves as a space for short gatherings, and as being nameless, it will be tried out as a Thingplace (Daiktasvieta); having in mind the old understanding of a Thing as a place of assembly, also remembering Marc Augé’s thoughts on non-places and spaces, and using the open-ended meanings of Platz [space, place, room, square, etc] found in the name Dingplatz (literally Thingplace) as well.
Making the kinda obvious joke about a performative lecture that is so frequent today, the performative discussion is intended to be the event inside an event or a process within a process, focusing on how to turn the supposed power structures around from the initiator to the participants to the space itself.
As the event is constructed from the initial proposal from KAH to share some working experiences of the past year when being part of art projects in Europe, this discussion is also knit together in the context of an ongoing research about Embodied Space, conducted under her curated nomadic project space Kabinetas.
This event is a part of a series that follow the establishing of the KAH residency program. The program of residences at Kaunas Artists’ House has been created in 2018 with the aim to present the most relevant contemporary artists, curators and cultural researchers working in Lithuania and abroad to the residents and guests of Kaunas city. The residency program aims to foster intercultural, cross-institutional and cross-sectoral cooperation, to provide artists and cultural producers with the opportunity to become acquainted with the historical and cultural context of the city during their residency, to facilitate their cooperation with other artists or cultural producers and local communities.
Vaida Stepanovaitė curates, manages, produces, creates and lives between Lithuania and Germany. This event is in line with her recurrent topics of spatiality, methods of collaboration, philosophy of ‘how to’ and mindset of processuality, as well as putting inside jokes out there as concepts. The very recent titles to name would be with artist Lukas Danys co-curated group exhibitions ‘Paranormal’ in Copenhagen and ‘Unfinished Tales’ in Berlin this May.
This event will take place in Lithuanian or if needed in English.
