Memories are first-person perspectives, not omniscient ones. They are fungible and imperfect, biased through our favored experiences, and shaded by external conditions. Yet, they remain our primary tools to self-diagnose our ailments and parse our significance.
On Monday, 12 May at 6 pm, join us for the Moving Images at Sapieha Palace screening organised together with Rupert, the centre for art, residencies, and education.
‘Against Forgetting’ presents films from Rupert residents Sweatmother, Annie Crabtree, and Siru Wen. All three artists were selected last summer via an open call, and invited for this focused season of residencies concentrated on cinematic practices, with coordinated mentorship and public programming. Though each artist approaches filmmaking through different means, they all address how memory is tenuous, traumas compound, and contest the obsolescence of our flawed, gossamer biotechnological hard drives. The programme’s title, ‘Against Forgetting’, relates to Sweatmother’s Otherness Archive project, which they are working on while at Rupert between April and May 2025.
The programme is assembled by Rupert curator JL Murtaugh, with curatorial assistance from Tea Gradassi. Sapieha Palace head of research—curator Inesa Brašiškė will conduct a conversation with artists Annie Crabtree and Sweatmother following the screening. The event will be held in English.
Rupert is a centre for art, residencies, and education in Vilnius operating since 2012. Its mission is to establish close cooperation between artists, thinkers, researchers, and other cultural actors through its transdisciplinary programmes. Rupert’s residency programmes are supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Tech Zity.
Tickets. [1]
Film Programme:
Aunt, a Tricycle
Siru Wen / 2021 / USA and China / 23’
On the back of a tricycle, Siru’s aunt carries her from elementary school to her grandma’s old apartment. Memories are relieved, spaces are reframed, sound is fractured, bodies are worked, and family matters are discussed.
Siru Wen (based in Los Angeles US and China) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice moves through installation, film, and photography. In her work, she meditates on the meanings, energies, and sentiments that flow or pause between space and time, exploring how time sculpts spaces and beings and how spaces and beings disclose time. Siru’s work has been shown at Sheffield DocFest (UK), A.I.R. Gallery (New York US), the CChV Concurso Internacional Juan Downey (Santiago CL); B3 Biennial of Moving Image (DE), and others. She was an artist in residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, US), 18th Street Arts Center (Los Angeles US), and MASS MoCA (US).
Untitled
Sweatmother / 2022 / USA and UK / 9’
In this live performance, the artist works with his synth methodology to synthesize a ‘woman’ who is a reflection of their past self. Technically complex, the film parallels the trans body and how our bodies are equipment—tools to guard us, tools to help us ‘pass’, tools towards euphoria, discovery and experimentation.
Sweatmother (based in London UK) is an artist and filmmaker. His moving image work experimentally blends performance, self-recorded documentation, internet, and archival footage to explore and make visible queer lived experiences through collaborations and live experiences. Sweat is the creator of the Otherness Archive, an accessible online-based archive, that combines pioneering contemporary and historical audiovisual works representative of the trans and queer experience. His work has been shown internationally at the 2024 Venice Biennale, ICA, (London, UK), and the 69th Oberhausen Short Film Festival (DE), among others.
Withins Within (excerpt of a film in progress)
Annie Crabtree / 2022– / UK / 12’ 22’’
Merging digital and analogue footage shot at the supposed site of Emily Brontë’s novel ‘Wuthering Heights’, the film evokes the cyclical nature of traumatised memory in a futile attempt to pursue closure and reconciliation amidst the landscape of the artist’s childhood.
Annie Crabtree (based in Glasgow UK) is an artist working with moving images. Their work explores subjectivity and emotion as vessels for challenging dominant social and cultural norms in the frameworks of feminism, autotheory and emotional geography. They are invested in the communal ways moving image comes into fruition, and how co-authorship intersects with the artist’s role. Annie has exhibited with the Edinburgh Art Festival (UK), Glasgow International (UK), Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival (UK), and the London Short Film Festival (UK), amongst others. They are supported by the Hope Scott Trust and Creative Scotland.
Total run of the programme: 45 minutes.