Over the last five or six years, when reading exhibition descriptions, I have become used to the term ‘infrastructure’ mostly in the context of virtuality. A number of artists all over the world employ it, to say nothing of examples in Vilnius itself. Take Pakui Hardware’s exhibition ‘The Metaphysics of the Runner’ (2014) at the CAC, Ignas Krungelevičius’ ‘Private Syntax Virus’ (2015) at the Vartai gallery, or Robertas Narkus’ ‘Träger’ (2017) at the CAC. They all spoke about the reign of virtuality against materiality in the contemporary every day, and about conditions for cultivating that virtuality: an infrastructure made of routers, nets, servers, microchips, programs, platforms, databases, and so on.
Kipras Dubauskas’ exhibition ‘Daynighting’ at the CAC (curated by Ūla Tornau, with architecture by Povilas Marozas), from July to September, also focused on infrastructure. Being used to its aforementioned connotations, I semi-consciously attempted to discover virtuality in this exhibition on the roof of the CAC too. To some extent, it was present in a few of the guest-artists’ films, such as Alexandre Bavard’s ‘Bulkyri’, or Mykolas Cibutavičius’ computer-generated visual experiences. However, quite obviously this was not the core question for Kipras. Ascending through the scaffolding on the way to the CAC’s rooftop, walking on the constructed platforms (so that the soft covering of the roof would not be damaged), observing a life-size model of a plane tow, a rehearsal studio and the guest-artists’ video programme, and then moving past a checkpoint towards the ‘underground’ of the exhibition (the black box at the Northern Hall set up to showcase Kipras’ film), one came to the realisation that Kipras’ infrastructure was an infrastructure of material and social needs, not virtuality. It is material and substantial: you touch it with your hands and walk around on it with your feet; it is about live encounters, and the spaces for those encounters to happen.
In the post-quarantine pandemic state of mind, we have begun to get used to virtuality’s prevalence. On the other hand, once you get a chance to meet in person, to come to a live cultural event, or travel abroad, the experience hits you like never before. ‘Daynighting’ provided an unbelievably great reaction to the post-quarantine situation: although initially planned for the Northern Hall, in order to comply with pandemic safety measures and recommendations, it was relocated to the CAC’s rooftop. Once on the roof, I was overwhelmed by a sense of privilege, as described in Jon Benjamin Tålleras’ film ‘Impressions of Topography’, which was part of the exhibition’s video programme. First of all, I could feel the wind in my hair while looking over the unique scenery of Vilnius’ Old Town. Moreover, the next time I go to the CAC, I could try to find where my gaze fell through the famous V. E. Čekanauskas skylights. The admirers of Lithuanian Modernism felt as though they were investigating the greatest archaeological site. Surely this feeling was strengthened by the forthcoming renovation of the CAC’s building. The scaffolding around the building became an accurate emblem of its pre-reconstruction state.
Kipras’ journey around the water collector system in Vilnius provided exhibition both with spatial logic and system for reasoning. This engineering organism, unknown to mere mortals but tamed by urban explorers, allows one to ‘daynight’, to dive into complete darkness during the day, to distance oneself from the hustle and bustle of the city, from its time flow, common traffic trajectories and obstacles, at the same time staying within the city limits. Across the globe, underground tunnel systems have already been explored for a long time, and these explorations sometimes end up as public cultural enactments of those sites: the Parisians’ ‘Urban eXperiment’ became well known for illegaly fixing the Pantheon’s clock by using the urban tunnel system, and for holding cultural events there [1]. While in Washington, part of its tunnel system was devoted to cultural events on a legal basis [2]. Planning to transfer the underground experience into an institution, Kipras still wanted to maintain the stance of the underground; thus, hypnotic, non-typical posters reminiscent of street art aesthetics were hung across the whole city; what is more, a password for entering the exhibition and its events might have been needed. However, the institution’s requirements and the general situation at the time overlapped, so the ‘underground’ turned out to be rather metaphorical, as the physical exhibition was in fact extremely friendly, sustainable and immersive to its visitors (a great contribution from the architect Povilas Marozas).
The exhibition’s sustainability enchanted me the most. What I mean by that word is how an existing infrastructure is used, recreated or improved, to make something qualitatively new. A reusable scaffolding structure (this time used as part of the exhibition route) would be the most obvious example of such a sustainable approach. However, I also see including the video film program of the guest-artists into the exhibition as sustainable. This network of artists, all interested in the similar questions of urban experiences, forms a new ‘social’ infrastructure, a medium for new ideas or images to emerge. By sharing his ‘screen time’ with them, i.e. by setting up a screening room in the CAC’s cinema hall attic, Kipras created an infrastructure for their work to be seen more publicly. By the same principle, he set up a studio in the CAC’s inner yard for local and foreign musicians, which provided space for rehearsals, creative work, and a new platform to be heard from. Music recorded in this studio was supposed to end up as soundtracks to Kipras’ film. Unfortunately, due to travelling restrictions during the pandemic, the project was only carried out in part; there were only two participants, ‘Truck’ from Dresden and ‘Woodstone Kugelblitz’ from Rotterdam.
The third level of reusability or reconfiguration of infrastructure became clear watching Kipras’ films. In the ‘security guard booth’ on the CAC’s rooftop, with a threatening yet apparently ironically loose turnstile, you could watch Kipras’ video project ‘Lost Hour’ (2011–2019, 60′). It was there to make a crack in our perfectly time-wise tightened and controlled system. To be more productive and make better use of the brighter part of the day, the clock is turned backwards by one hour on the last Sunday of October at four in the morning every year. The result is an extra hour, which most people use to have a good night’s sleep. Meanwhile, since 2011, Kipras has been documenting that hour, which is an unarticulated error of the system, or equally, a gift. He usually films in various ‘non-places’, in transit urban locations, where, although he never expects much, extra-ordinary out-of-system interactions happen almost every time. And every last Sunday of March, when the hour is brought back, he returns to the same place, to show the hour he had filmed the previous autumn. Within a controlled system, Kipras discovers a tiny gap, which he then manages to control himself.
The main piece in the exhibition is Kipras’ film ‘Daynighting’ (2020, 9′), shown at the exhibition’s ‘underground’, in a black-box set up at the Northern Hall. Due to its 16mm aesthetics, the film has an aura of avant-garde (therefore, utopian) cinema, which is suitable to poetically express artist’s socially engaged position. The film tells a story about how a messenger coming from the land of melting glaciers travels to our land via underground tunnels and on a floe on the River Neris. He is unfortunately rescued by firefighters against his will before he has a chance to deliver the message about the state of glaciers to the endpoint. Having travelled such a long distance through the underground tunnels, as soon as he steps into the daylight, he is recognised as someone who does not act according to the existing rules, doomed to be ‘taken care of’.
In the film, the underground infrastructure functions both as its scenographic setting and as a parallel reality which generates artistic images and metaphors, thus subtracting the need to create something from scratch. Travelling through the tunnels and constantly reaching different yet equally poetic natural sceneries at their openings, the journey talks about directed movement, which isn’t meant for humans , and about the framing of images, which is a result of solving an engineering problem (it is completely irrelevant to the tunnel constructors what the view at the drainpipe end will be). By documenting and showing it to us, Kipras opens up the scenario carried out by engineering constructions, inviting us to pay attention to how engineering directs the everyday life of all of us.
Three sculptural objects created specifically for this exhibition are the real-life scale plane tow replica, a slice of Vilnius’ new pipe system with a set-up of panoramic photographs taken at the tunnel openings, and a model of the messenger surfing on a floe, positioned behind the black-box at the Northern Hall. The amount of material and effort required to create these objects, and to put two of them on the roof, at first seemed to be contrary to the whole hypothesis of sustainability. Nevertheless, these objects became more convincing once I recalled in my mind how important materiality was for creating an immersive experience. The tow with its volume and (illusory) weight was brought on to the roof to make us believe that roof was the floor, while the CAC was underground. A plane would not be able to take off without the help of a tow; therefore, it was an essential part of the infrastructure, it provided a basis for the exhibition’s narrative to ‘take off’. The photographic object, its ‘pipely’ materiality and the framed natural scenery advertised the experience of travelling through the underground tunnels, still awaiting in the exhibition. Meanwhile, the model of the messenger, lit with a blue projector light, functioned as a post-climactic, retrospective look at the experience within the film. As I was walking around it, it began to feel as though I was visiting some Earth history museum somewhere on a cosmic ship 100 years from now, scrutinising a taxidermy of a hero that tried to save humanity. A perfect cinematographically directed route drew each of the visitors into Kipras’ film, whose sequels can be created in our own minds.
[1] https://www.wired.com/2012/01/ff_ux/ [1], https://longnow.org/seminars/02012/nov/13/preservation-without-permission-paris-urban-experiment/
[2] https://www.dupontunderground.org/aboutus [2]
Photography: Lukas Mykolaitis.
You can find photo documentation of the show here. [3]