Review of the first Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art …&? — part 2 ‘&’

After traversing the step stones of the ellipsis, we encounter an ampersand, lost in thought in the shade of a yellowing maple tree. I’ve always loved this seated being, excitedly interjecting tangents while simultaneously holding itself in meditative quietude.

The performances within this category either reflect or elaborate on an idea, movement, moment, narrative, etcetera. They develop a particular discourse or simply invite you to sit, listen and maybe even daydream.

The Tautological Congress / BRUD

From the conference hall of the Vilnius TV tower, three people will soon begin transmitting a broadcast on Radio Vilnius that will be amplified into outer space. It somehow slipped my awareness the broadcast would be eight hours long so I message the Vilnius biennial Instagram account to ask whether there will be live elements.

It’s a really minimal setup, but I definitely think it’s worth checking out.

Grabbing my headphones, I head for the TV tower and await the broadcast, curious about how this audio membrane will reframe my experience through the city. While on the bus, they begin by explaining about the art collective BRUD, whose founder Aditya Mandayam passed away in 2019 and this broadcast is in tribute to. They explain what BRUD is (or could be) in various terms, my favourite being ‘a sentient collection of recordings, defending its right to opacity’.

It’s very encrypted and hard to understand if you don’t have the context about the artist.

As part of this collective, the broadcast is a way for them to continue the work of BRUD. It’s also an attempt to communicate with Aditya, leaving traces that will echo through the cosmos. They reminisce about him and his philosophies on art and digitality, interspersing their memories with experimental recordings that sound as if they’re laced with LSD. They are approaching it quite straightforwardly as a radio show and I wish they had chosen to explore it in a more structured, artful and immersive direction to play with the form.

Hearing them talk, I question whether they’re performing for us or we just happen to be here. As the broadcast goes on, I decide they’re performing for Aditya.

I’m struggling to understand what the connection is between this movement and Vilnius.

Lost between the bus stop and the TV tower, the sonic atmosphere they’ve built starts to feel a bit cult-like. I picture them in white robes, channelling photons into deep space with ritualistic movements, using physics only available in anime to generate concentrated beams of invisible light from their palms.

This is all shattered when I arrive at the conference room and see them sitting at a table, entangled with technology but extraordinarily regular—bored, checking their phones, fidgeting, going for a cig. I liked my narrative better.

There are some images, a modest shrine, two screens for video and lights throughout the space, yet these elements don’t coalesce and instead appear meek in their disparateness. Why did they decide to open it to a physical audience? Is it because they felt the work needed a kind of ‘material liveness’? Performance has moved past this strictness and if you’re approaching these digital mediums as sentient, aren’t you undercutting yourself by not committing to them fully?

I’m not sad about coming here. It was worth it.

I tune back in throughout the day but don’t find anything new. In the end, it feels strange to critique their work. More than anything, it’s a healing moment for three friends and I’m glad they got to have it.

We are sending light into the darkness.

Still Standing / Aleksandra Janus, Weronika Pelczyńska, Monika Szpunar

At the Piromont Old Jewish Cemetery, in front of the abandoned Palace of Concerts and Sports, two performers dressed in white (with pink socks) direct the audience.

Not here, but there.

Before starting, they explain there’s a ten-minute recording for us to listen to while we watch them and encourage us to change our perspective by moving around. I already downloaded the English version last night but decide to wait a bit and just observe them first.

That is until someone behind me starts playing the Lithuanian version on her phone and the women seated next to me call her over to share.

Koks jausmas stovėti šioje vietoje?

The recording periodically stops when the screen falls asleep. A few hurried seconds before it continues.

Now at a distance, they stand close to the road, framed by trees on either side. They bend their torsos in all directions, sometimes in parallel, other times in opposition.

Moving out of the midday sun and into the shade of the trees to the side, I begin listening to the English version. Its main purpose seems to be giving context to the space and the performers’ actions within it. They speak about the relation of site to memory, encouraging us to think about caring for the past, rather than remembering it.

The movement shifts from what feels like a warm-up to something more carefully choreographed—mechanical, angular, controlled, coordinated. They are using the physical space very technically, as if tracing an invisible map. Anticipating my question, the recording informs me this is Noa Eshkol’s choreography they’ve managed to find and elaborate on.

As I’m moving, I become a monument.

One of them picks up the other, whose tense body looks like a sculpture. They make it look easy. I wonder if they’ve done this before…

They’ve done similar performances at similar sites, like in Poland. I think one of them is doing a PhD in this field.

This tightly choreographed system feels precise and never veers into emotionally evocative. I understand they are writing in space through their movement but I’m not sure what the meaning of this ‘text’ is.

I’ve never been here before and ask someone where the ‘actual’ cemetery is, to be answered by a waving gesture—the grass, trees, concrete pavement, everything we’re standing on. This makes my body feel heavier.

What is it like to move in a site of death and life at the same time?

Catching myself in a daydream, I see they’ve broken out of this system and begun walking off into the distance, drawing our attention to the vastness of the open space as we literally watch reality become memory.

After they’re gone from view, there is silence. At least they stopped people from clapping.

But still, eventually, the clapping comes. Who are they clapping for? Themselves? Their comfort? To punctuate this experience and break its continuity?

Enter Exude / Teo Ala-Ruona

At the back of the old Lelija factory, chairs are arranged in a crescent at one end of what appears to be the concrete foundations of a recently demolished building. There is a slight lip around the rectangle evoking the world’s shallowest swimming pool.

As soon as the performance begins, the rain decides it also wants to perform, quickly proving the phrase ‘when it rains, it pours’. It’s not long before the swimming pool starts being filled.

One at a time, three performers emerge from the back, whispering a text that is rendered inaudible by the torrential rain pummelling the concrete (even despite the fact they’re all miked). Slowly moving towards what remains of the seated audience with slightly unhinged expressions on their faces, they eagerly study our bodies and umbrellas, as if discovering ancient artefacts.

Called by the blow of a whistle, a deep purple car rolls up onto the concrete and towards us, stopping a few metres away. I know (and care) very little about cars, so all I can say is that it looks like one of the expensive ones a man would buy as a result of a mid-life crisis. The rain is easing now.

The majority of the performance centres around the car. They begin polishing it with cloths, but it’s not long before they start licking it, rubbing their bodies against it, swigging from an opaque petrol can… At one point, they take out a long plastic hose from the back seat and begin toking on it, blowing out large clouds of vapour.

It’s so sensual and we’re all wet right now!

The mood feels ‘Titane’ coded. A reverberating sax plays over velvety synth pads which makes me think this performance should’ve taken place at night. I light a cigarette, playing into the conceit.

Feels like the red-light district.

It’s erotic but not in a delicious, playful way. If you’re going this route, why not go even dirtier? Somehow, it’s not enough of either. They also feel so self-serious; there is humour in the work and I don’t always feel they’re in on the joke, which at times makes for a confusing viewing experience.

One of them dribbles black liquid from their mouth into the mouth of another, some spills from the side of their lips and the third one licks it. So edgy. Sensing my cynicism, I think this performance makes me feel a bit like a boomer. What’s behind that coolness? What is this really all about?

It’s about a lot. It’s a bit Freudian, exploring this family complex. Then, maybe looking at the economy of the nuclear family. Also, the human becoming a mechanism, or a mechanism becoming a body.

Gathered atop the car, they start speaking with an affected and robotic delivery full of glitching intonations and repetitions.

Chemicals from my mother’s bloodstream… toxic amniotic fluids… I experience the first high of my life…

Their atmosphere and aesthetics are strong, well-crafted and encompassing. It’s one of the few performances that has a clear narrative structure and arc. My main gripe is with the audience arrangement; I can’t get fully absorbed in the intimacy of their action from this distance. I want to get closer.

It is staged for a theatre audience.

Leaving the car, they start frantically performing in between the chairs. One of the performers tokes on the hose and forces the vapour into the mouth of an ‘audience member’, who I assume (and hope) was planted.

I’m weirded out they didn’t ask for consent from people. Even driving a toy car up someone’s leg, near their crotch. If that was me, I wouldn’t have liked that.

From atop the car, the performers start lip-syncing to an older, male voice. This text is the coherent version of the fragments scattered throughout the performance. Something about cars. Maybe something about capitalism. If they were making a point about these things, I can’t say I got it.

I don’t think they are saying anything specific. More like drawing our attention to this weird relation they’ve come up with. Like, extractivism, our relationships with cars—isn’t it weird that we do that?

Triumphant, hopeful music marks the end and they all get back in the car, rev the engine a few times and drive away. One of them lights a cigarette and sticks their head out the passenger seat window.

What Are the Dreams of Concrete? / Eye Gymnastics (Viktorija Damerell and Gailė Griciūtė)

At the entrance of what looks like a mausoleum, we are given instructions and context, informing us we are co-creators of this piece and should be mindful of how we move through the space as the echo is very important. There will be six ‘callers’ giving us cues to follow. We’re encouraged to be present and respectful, active listeners.

Up the stairs and past a large metallic door waits an enveloping circular space made from concrete. Columns splinter the space into a centre and a periphery. Throughout the performance, the lights shift between these two areas, creating a duality through contrast.

The callers have now gathered at the centre in a circle facing outwards towards us. They are looking up and swaying, directing our gaze to the blank projection on the ceiling. The caller in front of me begins instructing us to breathe in a particular voiced way through demonstration; like a parent encouraging their child to eat.

I move around the different callers—some are clicking their tongues, others traverse elongated voiced and unvoiced consonants. It feels like a vocal warm-up that doubles up as an emerging soundscape of howling wind and streaming water. At times like a bird song. Reminds me of the instrumentation on Björk’s ‘Utopia’. There are moments when it swells and holds us, but this is dependent on the eagerness of participants.

Not everyone is into it so you sometimes feel excluded. Except for the letter ‘i’! Everyone does the letter ‘i’ because you can still be a bit hidden while singing it under your breath.

I decide to move around the space, lingering in the darkness of the periphery to see how the quality of sound changes. It feels like a sci-fi church. It’s nicer to listen than to participate. When participating, you can’t hear the fullness of the sound, like eating čipsai while watching a film.

Two people separate from the mostly static clump of audience in the centre and begin singing an unfamiliar song. I notice a woman holding a huge, partially blooming white flower upside down, could be a lily… is she a performer? I can’t stop looking at her. She has such a vulnerable and soft expression on her face.

There is a sense this tightly facilitated experience is becoming undone at the seams, as we drink the sound and get intoxicated in the gradual breakaway from centre to periphery (a loss of subjecthood?).

The agents in the audience are a subtle starter to encourage people and show that herd mentality still works on us. We wanted to give people the chance to experience—if you don’t want to participate, that’s fine, the piece works anyway.

Text has now appeared on the ceiling. It questions what life, as an entity, could want if everything is alive. It encourages us to emerge from fear, be tender and not run away from falling (or failing, my notes are unclear). How does this relate to concrete?

Concrete as a material is about being stuck. Feeling heavy.

Lyrics appear on the ceiling and the callers begin teaching us the melody.

At least we are together, the way from pain is through the pain…

Whose pain? What pain? This work is hypnotic and entrancing but not painful. We continue repeating this stanza for a while, a collective chorus forming. People are swaying with their eyes shut. I don’t feel a sense of community, maybe because I’m having a great day so I don’t have much pain to bond over at the moment. Still, there is a lot of beauty in a group of strangers affirming each other, even if superficially.

I felt it. Maybe because of singing in chorus. There are a lot of echoes, so everything sounds beautiful and spiritual.

Having all dispersed into the periphery, we are instructed to stamp the concrete, voicing it through our bodies. Clicking tongues that sound like water draining out of a sink punctuate the experience, leaving us in charged silence.

Pause. Clap. Clapping for a while. I think everyone is enjoying the echo.

Lust Fest / Kris Lemsalu

Entering the gallery of Lazdynai swimming pool, it’s hot, humid and slightly suffocating. How are we going to last three hours here? We take our seats above the sides of the pool and waiting for us on the seats are printed lyrics to the chorus of Lykke Li’s ‘I Follow Rivers’.

These looks are ridiculous, that person is wearing tights at the pool!

The pool is lit green, with the lights turning yellow when mixing with the water. A boat floats on the surface with two people inside dressed head-to-toe white with two large tongue sculptures in a faded flesh colour at the front.

There are nine swimmers dressed in black bathing suits, tights, top hats and shades, wandering the outside of the pool’s perimeter. The speakers play a distant pulsating beat with loud breathing over the top and some melodic synth elements in the background. The deep breathing makes the pool look even more inviting.

The swimmers get into the water and continue walking the perimeter while the song becomes increasingly recognisable as (you guessed it) Lykke Li’s ‘I Follow Rivers’.

Walking towards the boat, the swimmers find an attached rope and use it to pull the boat around the pool in no particular direction. A spotlight follows their movements. This whole sight is very surreal and absurd. I see one of the people on the boat has a microphone. Gradually, the breathing turns into singing the chorus of the song.

Again,

and again,

and again,

and again.

The thing is, I actually like this song and this is making me hate it. I’m going crazy, I need to go…

Meanwhile, the swimmers do synchronised movements, like lying on their backs and connecting their outstretched legs, encircling the boat in symmetrical shapes. After exiting the pool, they return with inflatable red lips. There are no recognisable shapes or patterns in their movement. It feels more like an aesthetic choice than a semantic one. What’s this all about?

It seems like the performers don’t know what they are doing. It makes me think I’m watching a rehearsal.

The song has been stuck on the chorus for a while now. What if this will carry on for the whole three hours? Why were the printouts necessary when the repetition burns the lyrics into our minds anyway? This feels like an endless introduction to something that will never begin.

I think the singer is lamenting…

Who is she singing this to?

All the swimmers have left and the two people in the boat light flares and hold them up, as if calling for rescue. But no one comes and the flares go out.

They have been wallowing in a pool of their emotions and understanding no one will come to save them, take off their black sunglasses and begin rowing to the edge of the pool. They come ashore and leave. The song fades out.

Wait, is this the end? But it’s only been, like what, 30 minutes…

Thinking the performance would be three hours, I found it so tedious but now, I think I adore it. It’s concise and transfers the emotion of the performer to the viewer through the suffocating environment and endlessly repetitive sentiment. When you get bored, irritated and reach your limit, you need to change something, so you leave.

It’s not a performance meant for viewers. It was too hot, I thought I was going to faint. These things need to be considered. I want to feel like I’ve been thought of as a viewer.