On Friday, 8 September, 6 pm. “Counterfates”, an exhibition by Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer Andrius Arutiunian, will open at the Lithuanian Artists’ Union art space “Medūza” (Šv. Jono g. 11, Vilnius). In 2022, Arutiunian received recognition for his Armenian pavilion “Gharīb” at the 59th Venice Biennale, one of the world’s most prestigious cultural events. The four new works on show in Vilnius will act as a continuation of the “Gharīb” series and will invite to explore the notions of artificiality through contemporary and historical sonic phenomena.
Andrius Arutiunian is an Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer who studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. The composer works with hybrid forms of sound, using media of installation, film, sculpture and performance. The artist’s work is shaped by sonic contradictions, alternative ways of political and musical structuring, and explorations of the esoteric, as revealed in the exhibition “Counterfates”.
According to Arutiunian himself, “Counterfates” functions as a rethinking of artifice and reality through sonic and political implications. The title of the exhibition can therefore be read in two ways – as a counterfeit or as a contradicting fates. The idea of the counterfeit as one of the exhibition’s themes was dictated by an incident that occurred during the Venice Biennale in 2022: the vynil of the “Gharīb” pavilion was stolen and replaced by a fake blank one. The blank vinyl becomes one of the works in the exhibition, titled “A Gift That Keeps on Giving”, but instead of playing noise, the record itself is transformed into a vibrating speaker, emitting the sounds of Arutiunian’s compositions.
The exhibition also features “Synthetic Exercises”, a composition created with the help of artificial intelligence, which uses the sound of the human voice, recreated according to a special protocol and harmonised using an autotune programme. Interestingly, the origins of the technology used for auto-tuning can be traced back to the petroleum industry, to the exploration of underground oil pools – an unexpected juxtaposition that will be reflected in the exhibition spaces.
“Counterfates” will also include “Armen”, first heard in Lithuania in 2016, which is being presented in a joint programme with the “Muzika erdveje” festival. “Armen” is a composition that draws on the music of the Armenian diaspora, drawn from the artist’s personal record collection. The latest version of “Armen” will be heard during special drives around Vilnius, by getting into an old Mercedes car at the Meduza art space and travelling a 40-minute route.
According to Arutiunian, “Counterfates” should be seen as a coherent work that has its own distinct cosmology and aural narrative. “The works in this exhibition are inevitably intertwined with the space of “Medūza” itself, as if they grew out of it. I have never shown any works of the Gharīb series in Lithuania before, so it is interesting to see how, in a new context, they begin to engage in an unexpected, new dialogue with each other,” says Arutiunian.
Audrius Pocius, curator and director of “Medūza”, emphasises that A. Arutiunian has a unique narrative style, which is unusual in the Lithuanian art context: ‘Touching upon phenomena that are important both in Lithuania and globally, Arutiunian questions the habits of thinking that are typical of modernity. This allows us to rethink our own identity and to look critically at the sometimes inert Western values and vices. Arutiunian’s work juxtaposes oil extraction with autotune, both of which can be seen as the limits of Western culture. Just as oil is the engine of our economy, auto-tuning permeates popular culture, standardising thinking in a Western tuning principle. Such themes encourage us to look creatively at the context in which we are all steeped and often habitually miss the nuances and possible directions of social and political critique.”
The exhibition “Counterfates” will be on show at the “Medūza” art space from 8 September at 6pm until 28 October.
