In the sports hall the competition will take place between dawn and the past, history and fakeness, observation and memory, action and illusion, promise and choice, optimism and inaction, freedom and feeling, inertia and inability, word and sound, propaganda and bullshit, manipulation and complicity.
Employing the specificity of Atletika gallery interior – a gymnasium of a former school – Paulina Pukytė continues her investigation of “manipulated participation” and social stereotypes, with interactive installations from “found” objects and videotexts from “found” words. She began this artistic research two decades ago with site specific works such as Trolley Bus No.3 Named Desire (part of “Identification”, 1999), Suspicion in the Bathroom Cabinet (part of “Apartment’99”), etc. While in her earlier works she took on social behaviour by making the private public, in this exhibition Pukytė explores the collision of personal action and collective responsibility, collective action and personal responsibility, history and the everyday, inertia and choice, activity and passivity. What is an alternative and does it exist? What is the difference between the freedom of choice and the illusion of freedom? What does it mean to be stuck – in a place, time, identity, status, history, set of rules? How are we still post-, and how are we already others, new?
You will come in and come out, cross the halfway line, witness the simulation of the promise of the new tomorrow, hear an influencer, wittingly or unwittingly play another note of the anthem.
Paulina Pukytė, artist, writer, curator and cultural commentator was born in Vilnius. She studied at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and the Royal College of Art in London. She lives and works in London and Vilnius. She makes site-specific interventions and installations, still and moving image, and conceptual projects. She writes experimental literature, poetry and plays. In her interdisciplinary practice Paulina Pukytė uses various strategies of appropriation and up-cycling, her work is characterized by inter- and meta-textuality.
Opening night: 9 September from 6 pm, the exhibition will be open until 9 pm (part of Vilnius Gallery Weekend programme).
Exhibition opening hours:
10 September, 4–8 pm
11 September, 1–6 pm
15 September – 9 October, Wednesdays to Fridays 4–7 pm., Saturdays 1–5 pm.
Exhibition tour with Paulina Pukytė – 11 September, 3 pm, 8 October 6:30 pm. Duration – 30 min. Registration form
Address:
Atletika, Vitebsko Str. 21, Vilnius
Proof of full vaccination required for entrance to all events.
With thanks to Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art and Riga Psychiatry and Narcology Center.
Organised by Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association. Information partner – 15min.
Activities of Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association are supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius City Municipality.
https://www.atletikaprojects.lt/
https://vilniausgalerijusavaitgalis.lt
Documentation
Photos by Laurynas Skeisgiela