Artist Residency as a Black Rectangle. A Conversation with Tomas Grunskis and Laurie Lax

Talking about artist residencies as an alternative or a new model of artistic practice makes no sense if you take a closer look at the tradition of this phenomenon and the density of residencies today. Just like talking about the black square and all the attempts to deconstruct it. Yet one has to constantly re-acknowledge both of these phenomena as inevitable and necessary points of departure for artists. Thus, one might compare an artist residency to the rectangle poured from coal dust on the Parnidis Dune by the artist Laurie Lax: it is an artist’s ephemeral state in a certain place at a certain time, when the surface layers are blown away and what is left is a thin and fragile, yet very ornamental awareness why one has become and still is an artist. On the other hand, artist residency resembles a black coal rectangle on the lagoon ice as a place which absorbs more light and helps melt the ice faster. This conversation with former residents of Nida Art Colony, the Lithuanian architect Tomas Grunskis and the British artist Laurie Lax, addresses the fact that there is not enough time in daily life to construct such a black coal rectangle around oneself and reflect on one’s condition.

It would seem that artists who plan to participate in residency programs are eager to escape from the familiar local cultural field as far as possible, as if engaging in deliberate self-exile, isolating themselves from the habitual context, field of vision, language, people, memory and local stories. How much of this desire did you have? Why did you choose the seaside periphery of Lithuania and Nida Art Colony for this escape?

Tomas Grunskis: I don’t believe in the state of “affect and first impression” in creative work. I think that if I find myself in an unfamiliar context, research it and create in it, certain nuances and depth which I am concerned with at the moment would be lost. I also believe that finding a new brim of identity in what seems to be perfectly familiar and habitual is much more difficult and interesting. Hence, I am interested in challenges rather than illusions of exodus, all the more so because I am not an adherent of highly personalized art forms. Sociality is very important to me, because I always research and interact in my work. So I don’t run anywhere because I don’t feel an internal need for that.

Keeping in mind that you are an architect, place should be particularly imporant for you, but one must admit that the most impressive architecture in Nida is perhaps the dunes, designed by nature. What did you as an architecture practitioner and theorist as well as a sound artist find the most interesting in this unique context, where natural creations inevitably obscure the human ones?

Tomas Grunskis: I agree that place is very important, but currently I perceive it as a field or network of microphenomena. I see the nature here in a similar way. After all, we rarely notice that Neringa is a cultural (as opposed to just natural) reserve, it is a giant engineered object – a result of interaction between humans and nature. That interaction is precisely what interests me, because it contains phenomenological layers which intrigue me and the stories related to them. The fact that this place is “natural” is never questioned, but people often forget that it is also “cultural”. Thus, to me Neringa and Nida has long been a place of modernity rather than of archetypal eternal time, because it was modern-thinking people who helped create it. In Nida, I am interested in obsolete and hidden things, not the ones that are obvious. When I am there, I can ignore the dunes or the sea if I am researching something specific and cultural like modern mythology, for instance… The sea, the woods and the sand are superficial local archetypes, an image that is often simplified. It is a level which I have to dive under.

To reside, from Latin residere, literally means to have a permanent place of sitting. This almost amounts to an act of colonization, and in the case of Nida Art Colony the words also imply a paradoxical counteraction – the ones who have colonized the place are themselves closed in a colony by the place itself. What creative objectives did you as a kind of colonist set for yourself before the residency, and how much did you eventually surrender to chance and circumstances? What were those circumstances?

Tomas Grunskis: I find colonialist mentality unacceptable. I have long ceased to try colonizing something or claiming some territories through my thoughts and ideas. I seek to think in a somewhat different way, even though it might seem that it contradicts the architect’s profession, but that is not so… It is the inner state that is important, not isolationist connotation.

Before the residency I had several pilot studies and ideas which I had come up with a year earlier. Together with architecture students at Vilnius Academy of Arts we had been researching the phenomena of local identity in Nida, and I had discovered some contradictory facts which I then began to test and explore. Those were my personal insights which I shared with my peers, the sociologist Benjamin Cope and the socioarchitect Miodrag Kuč. They raised some questions, and those questions prompted me to develop this project.

It was my first residency, so, perhaps like most people in such situation, I had planned and anticipated much more, but now I think that it was a mistake. In the process, a lot of unnecessary and non-essential issues naturally faded, and I managed to focus on the essential things quite quickly. Although I tend to be skeptical about “hyperproductivity”, one circumstance – the participation in the Interformat Symposium, which coincided with my residency, enabled me to sum up several sonic and visual ideas and present a certain result. Hence, circumstances were important in this case. An intermediary result of my artistic research, demonstrated and explained to the audience, provoked many questions and discussions, which helped me flesh out my ideas later. So sociality is a very important factor in my creative process.

At Nida Art Colony you were working on the project DISappearentmyth (Disappearances: Modern Mythologies of the Place). Could you tell more about this project? What was your aim and did you succeed in realizing it as planned?

Tomas Grunskis: This project was quite concrete. I was researching three defunct or destroyed architectural and related objects in Nida of the modern times (the interwar and Soviet periods): Nida Gliding School, the Government Villa, and the architect Zaviša’s skiing trail. For me, these objects are architectural symbols of the state of modern mythology, which reflect the problematic nature of that state. All of them are controversial in their own way and simultaneously represent the oppositional mythological structures – the romantic/canonized and the problematic – inconvenient/erased. Thus, with this project I sought first of all to deconstruct the archetypal, popular mythology of Nida, and at the same time to reactivate the other two – the erased/Soviet and the controversial/canonized ones. I mythologized both of those fictionally with the help of specially generated image and sound, and this almost always depends on purposeful shaping.

I was able to realize only some of my objective, because the fairly intensive month-long process resulted in a lot of textual, sound and visual material which remains not fully processed to this day. I think a month is not quite enough for such a work, but the impulse was huge. I guess I will have to come back to Nida to finish my shooting and recording, especially keeping in mind that I had planned a winter session.

How would you describe your time and experience during your residency at Nida Art Colony? How much do you think residencies in general are necessary and useful for a (Lithuanian) artist today?

Tomas Grunskis: I think everything, including experience, depends solely on personal intentions. For me it was very important and motivating, perhaps even one of the essential impetuses behind what I am doing today. Thus, in my view residencies are very necessary, if not as an opportunity to focus mentally then at least as a chance to break away from the routine environment for those who need it. Yet now I realize that a residency is definitely not some kind of creative holiday, certainly nothing like that. A residency requires resolution and preparation.

You were a resident at Nida Art Colony twice. How did you find out about NAC? What was the most attractive thing about it that made you come here the first time, and what was it the second time? Could you describe the differences between the first and the second residence?

Laurie Lax: A couple of friends Anna Clawson and Nicole Ward completed a residency at NAC the year previous to me. They thought I would like it and they were right! The most attractive thing the first time was journeying into the unknown, mid-winter, on my own. It was a great adventure and I found the extreme cold (-20 when I landed in Vilnius) to be really quite funny and novel because I had never experienced cold like it before. The second time I was attracted because I knew that it would be an incredibly free and supportive environment in which to make work. The two experiences were very different in that it felt much more remote mid-winter. We developed into a tighter community. Outside pressures were removed and time was less of an issue. In the springtime, Nida felt more transient, which is not surprising because it is much more accessible transport wise.

Although only a year and a few months had passed between your residences at NAC (the first was in February-March 2014 and the second in April-May 2015), did you have a chance to get a sense of Nida’s seasonality, its advantages and disadvantages? It’s obvious that your creative work was influenced by the seasons, as you powdered and sifted charcoal onto the frozen Curonian Lagoon during your project “Oblong (Kuršių marios)”.

Laurie Lax: The first time, I experienced fishing on the lagoon maybe a mile out, whilst ice-pancakes were bobbing around in the Baltic Sea. By the end of the two months, the lake was fully thawed and I was sunbathing in the dunes. I find the remoteness useful to my practice, but this is due to my personal interests, and prefered conditions for making work. For example: when tangible differences are felt in the environment, I feel compelled to make work. However, if it suddenly froze over in Bristol (where I live) I doubt I would gather wood to make 3ltrs of charcoal powder and then sieve it though a rectangular grid onto ice. The interns (Natasha, Ugnė and Kotryna) their friend filmmaker Saulius and the other artists at NAC really helped me to make the Oblongs, and they were also my primary audience.

Please tell me more about the projects you were working on during your residence at Nida Art Colony.

The first time I worked with installations. Charcoal was made, powdered, and sifted onto the frozen Curonian Lagoon. On the install day during misty weather, the velvety-black charcoal sat on top of the undulating ice. By day three the sun caused the charcoal to absorb more sunlight and ice below to melt, followed by a freezing night when it re-froze flat. The charcoal then sank and was suspended in ice about an inch below the surface. The rectangle soon dropped out leaving a pool of water before all the ice completely melted. Onto the giant Parnidžio sand dune I powdered and sifted charcoal produced from locally found driftwood. The Initially velvety-black charcoal sat on top of the undulating surface, forming a crisp black rectangle. Over the following few days the Baltic sea winds gradually removed the charcoal, revealing the patterned sand waves beneath. All that remains of the original drawing is photo-documentation. This piece was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2014.

I‘m exploring the visual and physical dynamic in between the reality of experiencing nature and representations of it, also I enjoyed the challenge of intuitively and sensitively responding to a place. More about my second residency at NAC you will find in the Nida Art Clolony Log No.7.

How were you projects influenced by the residence conditions and the place itself? Did you accomplish what you had planned, or did you have to adjust your plans? Did you continue and develop your usual creative themes and motifs, or did you discover something new?

Laurie Lax: When I am living the city life in Bristol, I usually only make work for a specific purpose i.e. an exhibition, event or commission. That’s all great and I love my home, but I wanted to use my time at NAC to let ideas unfold naturally, without time constraints, without pressure, without pre-conceived ideas. It turns out that some of my best ideas comes from this place of relaxation. At NAC I can pick up a book and actually finish it, which seems like a luxury when I’m in Bristol. At NAC I can have dinner at midnight if I want, and stay up until sunrise drawing. That’s not very socially acceptable back home either. I did not learn anything new as such, but I discovered what I already knew because I had the time and space to notice it. NAC helped me realise how my practice relates to drawing, as essentially depositing layers of raw material onto surfaces. This has been a useful underpinning for me since.

Last year you had a graphite bombs manufacturing workshop at the annual art festival “The Brick” held by the Žiburys high school in Šakiai. How important is it for you to establish a relationship with the local communities? What do you think such exchange of experiences gives the artist and the locals?

Laurie Lax: This was a absolutely brilliant opportunity which I took it up partly because a friend who I met the year previously, happened to be living there when NAC received the festival invitation. As I mentioned earlier, I rather like journeying on my own into the unknown, as I had no idea what to expect of “The Brick” in Šakiai. I would describe it as a relatively unmediated experience of Lithuania, which is important. I was lucky enough to meet my friend’s grandfather who had spent twenty years in Siberia, which puts a lot of things in perspective for me. Personally I think it’s important to establish relationships with local communities, but it may not be necessary for other artists / organisations. Who are communities and what is art without them? I make no distinction between them, it’s all research that feeds onto the work. What do they get out of it?

 

There is indeed a lot of artist residencies in all kinds of incredible locations all over the world. Could you describe how other residencies differ from Nida Art Colony? What did this experience give you as an artist?

Laurie Lax: Residencies come in all shapes and forms, but it’s clear that some exist to take advantage of artists, whilst others support them: NAC is safely in the latter camp. I find Nida unique for it’s specific geographical, historical and political situation. Without going into too much depth, I can definitely say it caused me to research and think about these particulars, which fed into the work. The fact that a very open contemporary art centre exists in this place, is rather remarkable. I also find the elective social aspect very organic, rather than forced, expected, or even required.