From 16 July 2021, Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts is showing Sensible Grounds: Tuning into the Rhythms of the Chronic – an international group exhibition and program of open air screening of 9 works by five artists and collectives, working moving image practices
The collection of works at display includes sculptural installations, archival material, and films that employ fiction, as well as ones that do away with images entirely. The invited artists re-visit pasts which have been prematurely turned into history: moments of collective desire, struggle and entrapments, the past films of their own, or others. As it seems our political struggles are uncannily repeated, they examine how trans-historical bonds or intergenerational time and memory turn into holding grounds.
This program is part of the multi-chaptered program, Sensible Grounds curated by Azar Mahmoudian, with previous iterations at MAAT and Rua das Gaivotas, Lisbon; Tensta Konsthal, Stockholm; and upcoming iterations at SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin; Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; and RCA London, among others (2018-2021). It is part of the 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, a European Cooperation Project, co-funded by the Creative Europe Program.
Sensible Grounds: Tuning into the Rhythms of the Chronic contemplates moments of interaction between affective politics and cinema, where radical formation of collective bodies is at the centre stage of the practice, and at times, the subject of the works. The collection of moving image practices experiment with historical capacities of cinematic space as a medium of testament, as well as being a physical and mental environment: a refuge, a holding place split across sites, with an unsettling gravity to enact, unblock, and care for forms of sociality. This is performed through situations of shared contemplation among a group of strangers in the darkroom, or through tensions of split-authorship of a film; it is where the continuous trail and various repetitions of the experience of becoming one translate into aesthetic choices and structural negotiations.
The invited artists re-visit pasts, which have been prematurely turned into history: moments of collective desire, struggle and entrapments, the past films of their own, or others. While it seems our political struggles are uncannily repeated, they re-articulate what it means to bear witness and re-vision worlds: a blind version of a film proposing deep listening, a score for an eye dance “through the diffused borders of the approximate”, a camera turning bright, or a request to “watch over” a film-world as an act of care.
But what is this desire for re-visiting? Is it the return of the soul to the scene of its scarring over and over, in order to heal? Is it a ritual for remembrance? Or is it acknowledgment of inheritance and indebtedness, where trans-historical bonds or intergenerational time and memory turn into holding grounds for (con)current struggles?
This perhaps comes with re-learnings of the temporalities through which perceptions of political agency are shaped. Could we do away with the time of the crisis and emergency, tuning into temporal rhythms of the chronic, from the eventual to the ongoing and everyday? How to understand the repetitions of history, or the conditions of chronic struggle, not as loops (and loopholes), but as dilated presents and presences? Instead of again and again and again, can we think of now and now, and now. and now?
This program is the final chapter of the project 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, at NAC, as a European Cooperation Project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
The exhibition is open until 12 September 2021 from Tuesdays to Sundays at Nida Art Colony, free of charge. NAC is employing the appropriate measures against the spread of Covid-19 – please note that wearing masks is mandatory for both indoor and outdoor events. Be cautious and pay attention to keeping a distance of at least 1m from the other guests when attending the event. Please stay home if you are showing Covid-19 symptoms or suspect you have been in contact with an infected person.
Exhibition opening: 16 July, 6 pm
16 July – 12 September 2021
Opening hours: Tue–Sun, 10–17.00
Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts
A. Jonušo g. 3, 93127, Nida, Lithuania
With: Clarissa Thieme, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, NSRD (The Workshop of Restoration of Unfelt Feelings), Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
Curated by Azar Mahmoudian