Contemporary Art Centre:Holiday in | Everybody Wants to Rule the World | Gerard Byrne | FLUXUS EAST |TRANSVERSE | FROM TIME - 9 Nov 2007 to 13 Jan 2008
Holiday in is a project that began in March 2007 when six artists (two from Lithuania, France, United Kingdom) left their home countries to become professional travellers. The international art organisations triangle france (Marseille), Gasworks (London) and CAC (Vilnius) acted as travel agents for the artists to take two-three month holidays. Oliver Bragg (UK) and Juozas Laivys (LT) travelled in France; Nicolas Simarik (FR) and Darius Mikšys (LT) in Great Britain; Quentin Armand (FR) and Flávia Müller Medeiros (UK) in Lithuania.
Their times were spent in very different ways, each responding to holidaying through work that is on show at the three venues in exhibitions from September–October in Marseille and London, and in Vilnius from November. Visiting Lithuania was Quentin Armand found it easy to fail to fulfil holiday wishes by being on vacation during off-peak in the depths of the Lithuanian countryside and finding everything to be closed. Flávia Müller Medeiros spent time in the capital cities of the Baltic region, and focussed her interest in the borders of Belarus, making a book based on her interaction with a student at the EHU International University that relocated to Vilnius after its forced closure by the government in Minsk.
Darius Mikšys decided to take a holiday from being an artist and enrolled in cricket lessons to find a new vocation, and Juozas Laivys travelled through France doing deeds and making woodcarvings capturing the moments. Oliver Bragg spent his time in Paris trying to absorb the bohemian kudos, and Nicolas Simarik went on other people’s holidays in Britain. Simarik ended up visiting the Islands of the British Isles – Wight, Mann, Hebridies.
Each exhibition has different work by each artist musing on their experiences and the notions of holidays, using media ranging from participatory performance, video, sculpture, woodblock prints and more. For Vilnius Darius Mikšys invites people for a game of cricket in the main hall, Flávia Müller Medeiros presents a group portrait of the EHU students along with her book Irka, Juozas Laivys’ prints join Oliver Bragg’s collection of drawings and painted sketches, Nicolas Simarik casts his shadow wherever he goes and Quentin Armand reflects on the national sport of Lithuania.
Opening Friday 09 November 2007, 18:00
A workshop and public discussion will take place on Saturday 10 November 2007, 14:00 at CAC moderated by curator Catherine Hemelryk
A full colour catalogue accompanies the exhibition that will be available from CAC for the duration of the exhibition.
Everybody Wants to Rule the World 09 11 2007 - 13 01 2008
The documentary style video Everybody Wants to Rule the World is related to the book Harald Szeemann. Individual Methodology, which was edited by seven participants of the 16th session of the Ecole du Magasin, Grenoble. Ten years ago, in 1997, Harald Szeemann was invited to curate the 4th Lyon Biennial and chose to develop the resulting project L’Autre (The Other) as a solo curator. In 2007, the 9th Lyon Biennial was guided by Stephanie Moisdon and Hans-Ulrich Obrist who invited 50 curators to write the history of the first decade of the millennium, before it has ended, in a playful form. On the occasion of the Biennial‘s professional preview from 17-18 September 2007, participants of the 16th Magasin Class organised the filming of a story within a story.
The organisers of this story invited the contributing curators of the Biennial to answer one particular question: Over the last 10 months our class group has been researching the methodology of Harald Szeemann and the tools he created to develop his autonomous practice. What are the specificities that make your own curatorial practice unique?
There was no specific selection among the Lyon Biennial curators. Those who responded to the invitation participated in this project. Their answers, recorded on video, needed to be less than 10 minutes; and form a collection of opinions about curatorial practices pertinent to our times. The result is a heterogeneous, non-exhaustive, non-scientific set of testimonies
The program was first presented publicly on October 6, 2007 at Magasin, National Contemporary Art Center of Grenoble. After showing the video at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, it will travel further and be presented in new contexts.
Participating curators:
Jacob Fabricius Mathieu Copeland Marina Fokidis Alain Diogo Stuart Comer Matthieu Laurette Xavier Douroux Francis Mc Kee Philippe Pirotte Jens Hoffmann Adriano Pedrosa Mathieu Mercier Pierre Bal-Blanc Andrea Viliani Julien Fronsacq Nicolas Trembley Raimundas Malašauskas Giovanni Carmine Sylvie Boulanger Beatrix Ruf Nicolas Bourriaud John M Armleder Emmanuel Lambion Stefan Kalmar Claire Le Restif Stephane Carrayrou
Producers of the video: François Aubart, Julija Cistiakova, Haeju Kim, Lucia Pesapane, Fabien Pinaroli, Yuka Tokuyama, Sadie Woods.
Note: Everybody Wants to Rule the World is a song recorded in 1985 by the British musical duo Tears for Fears – who are white middle class male representatives of the 1980s and the decade‘s rising consumerism. The guitar theme was sampled in 2001 by Nas – a black American who represents this decade‘s cultural and economic evolution of the music industry.
An Exhibition in Five Chapters VIII.28.2007 - I.13.2008
Clodagh Emoe Niall DeBuitlear Fiona Hallinan Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith Gerard Byrne
Curator: Catherine Hemelryk
Recently, Ireland has become prominent in Lithuanian life; as one of the most popular destinations for Lithuanians wishing to work abroad, talk of entire families, or villages even, upping and moving to Ireland are commonplace. Ireland has become almost legendary; a land of plenty, like the America of the 19th and early 20th centuries for the Irish.
Ireland’s cultural life, particularly its literary heritage, is internationally renowned. An Exhibition in Five Chapters brings five elements of the Irish contemporary art world to Vilnius in a series of diverse events taking place throughout 2007. Participants will range from established international artists to those in their mid career and young emerging practitioners. Weaving throughout the programme are ideas of narrative and aspects of fiction, storytelling, and a sense of place or time – presenting a snippet of the concerns of artists in Ireland that so many Lithuanians are now experiencing.
/Chapter 5/ 16.11.2007–13.01.2008 Cinema Hall
Gerard Byrne is one of the most prominent artists currently working in Ireland and represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2007. Byrne’s work often uses source material with layer upon layer of mediation and re-enactment. In 1984 and Beyond (2005–06) Byrne presents film and photographs that deal with discussion of the future from the past, a futro. A discussion between prominent science fiction writers that was printed as an article in Playboy magazine in 1963 provides the script for the piece. Filmed in Utrecht at Rietveldt’s Sonsbeek sculpture pavilion and the Kroller Muller museum, Dutch actors bring to life the discussion between the eminent authors that include Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov and Algis Budrys.
The writers’ speculations range in topic from the melancholic to the comic, from humanity and sexuality, to technology its hand in the everyday life in the future. The performances are considered, they do not pose to act as a documentary, but engage the viewer with a questioning sensibility. The photographs appear to be taken contemporaneous with the discussion, yet do not neatly establish an exact date. Time slipstreams throughout the piece presented in CAC’s former cinema hall – an embodiment of a bygone architectural modernism, fitting for the material.
An Exhibition in Five Chapters is supported by Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland, Lithuania.
FLUXUS EAST: FLUXUS NETWORKS IN CENTRAL EASTERN EUROPE
30 11 2007 – 13 01 2008
Artists: Gábor Altorjay, Eric Andersen, Azorro, Robert Filliou, György Galántai, Tibor Hajas, Geoffrey Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Tadeusz Kantor, Danius Kesminas, Milan Knizák, Alison Knowles, Július Koller, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Vytautas Landsbergis, George Maciunas, Jonas Mekas, Larry Miller, Ben Patterson, Mieko Shiomi, Slave Pianos, Tamás St. Auby, Endre Tót, Gábor Tóth, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Jiri Valoch, Ben Vautier, Branko Vucicevic, Emmett Williams among many others
Curator: Petra Stegmann Exhibition architecture by: Andrea Pichl
Opening: Friday 30 November, 6 pm
During the opening: performance OPUS 01130 – A Conversation by Eric Andersen and perfomance 4'33" Generation Gap (Variation 3 - Pravda) by Tamás St. Auby Lecture by prof. Vytautas Landsbergis: Friday 7 December, 4.30 pm
Fluxus is well-known as an (anti-)artistic, international network with centres in the USA, Western Europe and Japan. But what about this "intermedia" art -- art encompassing music, actions, poetry, objects and events -- beyond the "Iron Curtain"? What echo did Fluxus find in the states of the former Eastern Bloc, and what parallel developments existed there?
As a "programme of action", Fluxus -- according to its self-styled "chairman", the exiled Lithuanian George Maciunas in a letter supposedly to Nikita Chruscev -- was predestined to bring about unity between the "concretist" artists of the world and the “concretist” society of the USSR. Maciunas planned Fluxus as a collective based on the model of the Russian LEF (Leftist Arts Front). But these plans -- e. g. for a performance tour by the artists on the Trans-Siberian Railway --, developed with polished communist rhetoric in manifestos and letters, were to remain no more than a utopia.
After 1962, a different FLUXUS EAST developed through creative exchange between Fluxus artists and artists/musicians of the former Eastern Bloc, leading to events including Fluxus festivals in Vilnius (1966), Prague (1966), Budapest (1969), and Poznan (1977).
FLUXUS EAST represents a first stocktaking of the diverse Fluxus activities in the former Eastern Bloc; the exhibition shows parallel developments and artistic practices inspired by Fluxus, which are still adopted by some young artists today. Besides the "classic" Fluxus objects, the display will include photographs, films, correspondence, secret police files, interviews and recordings of music that document the presence of Fluxus in the former Eastern Bloc. As an interactive exhibition, FLUXUS EAST aims to facilitate a profound encounter with ideas, works and texts -- some presented as facsimiles to permit intense study; it is also possible to play at FLUX PING PONG.
Further exhibition venues: Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków (February 7 - March 30, 2008), Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest (April 17 - June 1, 2008), Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn (September 4 - November 23, 2008).
TRANSVERSE Valdas Ozarinskas Hansabank Art Award
Valdas Ozarinskas presents a site-specific installation in each Baltic capital city – Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius – where according to the rules of creation of an ‘open artwork’ audio, video, urbanism, design, architecture, texts and other forms merge together. The name of the project is a term that describes waves such as sound, and their movement. The process and indetermination of artificial acts are equally important for the final result of the installation, which will not be finite and will fluctuate in the different cities of travelling exhibition.
Valdas Ozarinskas was born in 1961, Ignalina, Lithuania. He graduated from the Department of Architecture, State Art Institute (now Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts), is currently a member of Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Art Creators’ Association and Lithuanian artists group Private Ideology know for its innovative ideas. The group has won several awards including for the Lithuanian Pavilion at the World Exhibition EXPO 2000 and in 2005 LT Identity, award for representation of Lithuania in the world. At present he is working as deputy director at Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius.
Hansabank Group has been giving out the art award since 2000. Initially the award was for artists from Estonia, but in 2003 the area was widened to include artists from Latvia and Lithuania. In 2003 the award winner was the Lithuanian artist Arturas Raila. In 2004 the award given to the Latvian artist Gints Gabrans and in 2005 to the Estonian artist Mark Raidpere. In addition to the award the laureate has the chance for a solo exhibition in all three Baltic countries.
Organisers: Contemporary Art Information Centre of the Lithuanian Art Museum, Vilnius; Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn; Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga
Gintaras Didziapetris: FROM TIME TO TIME
07 12 2007 – 13 01 2008 Curator: Simon Rees
Artist’s Talk: Wednesday 12 December, 6.30pm Curator’s Talk: On Conceptualism & After Friday 11 January, 5.00pm
FROM TIME TO TIME is the first solo exhibition, of new work, by Vilnius artist Gintaras Didziapetris (b. 1985). The title of the exhibition is inspired by a work by conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner from the mid-1970s that suggests concepts within artworks can be revisited at a date in the future. Ranging from slide projections to postcards, photography, and objects, and Minus One a work that makes a nice conceptualist twist: it is a certificate that guarantees the owner of the work (a private collector) that the work that they purchased will never be made.
Gintaras Didziapetris has recently had his works included in several projects in Lithuania and internationally, including the first Biennale of Young Artists, Tallinn and Vilnius is Burning, Turin.
The Yellow Line young Lithuanian artist series is principally sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania
