Violet

2016-05-27

02–11 June 2016
IV – VI 4–8 pm
Opening 1 June 2016, 6 pm, first reading 8 pm

Sometimes things are what they seem.

Not unlike a manifold organism, this exhibition relates seemingly unrelated parameters such as uneven distribution of time, unmediated reality leakages, plankton and colour theories—you name it.

For example, a word ‘violet’ —a petal colour of a pansy [Viola Melanium] —refers not only to a certain man’s sweater colour from one of the unsolved criminal cases of the last decade, but also to a codename of a former secret CIA prison near Vilnius. Only one letter separates ‘violet’ from ‘violent.’ Perhaps, this forcefully summoned and thus contingent letter n describes this exhibition best.

Also, let us not forget the location of the exhibition space. It is in the midst of an odorous and garrulous quarter. Its faces and facades are telling rather eloquent stories about how we understand our democracy, capitalism, streets, and ourselves. How we are taken over by accelerationism—a contemporary political heresy according to which the only radical political decision is not to protest, critique, or enforce a turnover, but to accelerate capitalism’s malign tendencies such as alienation and the loss or abstraction of roots.

Let us listen in to these streets. Indeed, the Sodų Street neighbourhood is also a lab for the processes such as commodification (cheap labour force, prostitution), class struggle (contemporary art space also becomes a participant in the game of the class struggle), urban gentrification (newly established hipster pubs, steak take-aways, etc.), and many other processes currently happening not only in the city, but in the whole country as well.

Sometimes things are what they seem.

Artworks

A THEORY OF THE PLANKTON, video, 8 min. 59 sec., 2016
Do you know what the paradox of the plankton is? In aquatic biology, the paradox of the plankton describes the situation in which a limited range of resources supports an unexpectedly wide range of plankton species. This theory apparently disregards the competitive exclusion principle. It holds that when two species compete for the same resource, one will be driven to extinction. Similarly, this exhibition is driven not by a single concept but by various interests, beliefs, fields, vectors, and more.

This video has been made in collaboration with Gailė Pranckūnaitė (design, editing) and Yorgia Karidi (voice, soundtrack) with contributions by Nick Bastis, Dorota Gaweda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Kaspars Groshevs, Pakui Hardware, Georges Jacotey, Mikko Kuorinki, Karl Larsson, Fritz Laszlo Weber, Nicholas Matranga, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Michael Portnoy, Iza Tarasewicz, Saemundur Thor Helgason, and, possibly, you.

BLINDNESS, Majd Kara, (b. 1986 Homs, Syria, currently living and working in Rukla, Lithuania), oil on canvas, 2016.

TORNADO WITH SMALL RECESSES, Nicholas Matranga (b. 1983 San Diego, USA, living and working in Vilnius, Lithuania), wall drawing, 2016.

Reading programme

Texts: Dorota Gaweda and Eglė Kulbokaitė „for a future X: essential killing“, Eileen Myles, extracts from „Inferno“, Jaakko Pallasvuo, extracts from „Scorched Earth“, Žemaitė „Kaip Petriukas raides pažino“ (“How Peter Got To Know The Letters”) and others.
Location: Halė market stairs.
Dates: 1, 3, 10 June 2016, 8 pm.

Curator: Valentinas Klimašauskas
Graphic design: Gailė Pranckūnaitė

This exhibition is organised by Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association, with kind support from Lithuanian Council for Culture and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania. Opening sponsors: Bar “Dėvėti” and “Dundulis” beer.

Project Space „Sodų 4“
Sodų Str. 4, Vilnius

Exhibition photos