Performance evening ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ At Lewben Art Foundation, Vilnius
27 January 2023
Performing:
Julius Pristauz and Cæcilie Heldt
Rønnow Persona (Pire Sova and Ando Naulainen)
New York (Gretchen Lawrence and Coumba Samba)
It’s fascinating how we see history repeating itself, yet always in a distorted way. We imagine change and the possible futures, but it never seems to happen the way it’s predicted in our logical thinking, science fiction, wildest dreams, or data analysis nor based on history and knowledge. At the end of the day, the aleatory element that humanity has been so keen on removing for the hope of progress, seems to be the only indisputable component we know will always be there. In times of uncertainty, we tend to imagine the possible futures, the “what-ifs”, the changes which would lead us through the current political, economic, ecological, technological, power-and-resource- greedy, unequal state of the world. To somewhere better.
In the performance evening named after Herbert George Wells’ science fiction novel The Shape of Things to Come (1933), we do not see the vision of the new perfect world, but rather the bumpy, funny, anxious, emotional, curious, weird, unimaginable, non-linear paths that might lead us to the verge of something else. Better? Who knows.
While navigating this worldly concern and yearning for a better one, the artists guide us through the questions of equality, gender, technology, ecology, and politics, but won’t forget to have a dance party or a few while putting up with this never-ending turmoil.
Curated by Lilian Hiob
Photography: R
