Narkus Robertas
Art Critic on…
Approach
In the contemporary mode of living, every situation entails a certain potential, or chance, and so it can be understood as a gif. Instead of being a found static image, a gif is an animated one and is always in flux. In his practice Robertas Narkus zooms-in on the existing, seemingly static situations and throws them into flux.
In May 2013 Robertas Narkus has established a College of Pataphysics in Vilnius, Lithuania. In summer 2013 while performing at the curated event at the Part of the Larger Whole CAKE event he was using chance as a way to engage the community and form a group of performers who later where included in the artwork and – all just using chance encounter as the method of artistic selection.
Chance
The chance occurs when we play the game. And we always do play the game. But Robertas Narkus isolates the game, he takes the chance management as the core of his artistic practice, and the only rule of this game of chance management that there are ‘no rules’. However, the ‘no rules’ rule forms a paradox – while avoiding any rules, an artist sets the limitation on his own actions and also frames how his art practice should be understood. ‘No rules’ rule also echoes the current situation where things are constantly living in flux.
With ‘no rules’ rule Robertas Narkus offers us to surf the paradigm of liquid modernity of uncertainty where one can talk about the processes or objects as sums of the potentialities that might or might not emerge. While any deviation from established norms causes anxiety, leftovers mean debris and transfiguration can be seen as dystopia, Robertas Narkus would act as if nothing had happened. He would just propose to ‘sit back, relax and listen to the music’.
Juste Kostikovaite