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Or Thinking of B and Breaking the Spell
The IX Baltic Triennial is the result of nine months of research and discussion by the curators Sof?a Hern?ndez Chong Cuy, Raimundas Malaðauskas and Alexis Vaillant. The exhibition and related events detail some of the curator’s interests from international economic systems and the occult to naturism and geocaching. The exhibition may be viewed as a portrait of Vilnius, an old city in new Europe. Vilnius is embracing new ways and following EU directives, yet maintains its pre-Soviet pagan ways in places like the Kalvarijø market and in shadow activities of the city. The offsite projects were developed as a result of a visit by the curators to a renowned medium working in Vilnius, Madame Juodintigyvate, and is one of a number of non-traditional approaches to exhibition-making for the project BMW. Shadow walls have been constructed in the CAC following the lines of earth energy detected by bioenergetic analysts that will become permanent display fixtures for the exhibition at the CAC.
Positioned at the entrance of the exhibition is a portrait capturing an enigmatic moment in a young woman’s life. Her relationship with the sitter is undisclosed, but a glint is captured in the warm brown eyes indicating that there is something deeper than the surface model-artist relationship is present, or at least desired. The half-smile confirms this but does not provide an explanation.
The dimensions of the infamous KKK pointed hood follows a three dimensional Fibonacci sequence (where each number is the sum of the preceding two). The deeply symbolic use of number patterns courses through other groups, such as the breadth of lapel used by the Bavarian Illuminati, and Masonic epaulettes are based on the moon Io’s orbit.
This work’s precursor was the seminal series TINTO, 1999. The TINTO photographs were taken as a result of the annual Halloween orienteering event in the Czech Republic. During the event, Koester’s head torch broke leaving him alone near a burnt-out stately home with no light. The house and its history as the alleged site of psychotropic experiments in the early 20th century inspired Koester to document his experience.
Both London and Vilnius have a legend surrounding their origin involving an iron wolf. After hunting, the Grand Duke Gediminas had a dream of a howling wolf that, according to the pagan priest Lizdeika, was foretelling the new capital of Lithuania. Both cities were built up according to lay lines and earth power routes; Raila maps these for Vilnius and presents them for BMW in the upper atrium adjacent to Ignacio Gonzalez Lang and Joachim Koester’s works.
This 12 round boxing-match takes place on September 24, 2005 in the right upper gallery behind the shadow wall. In the rules of boxing, the referee must pick up any mouth guards that are lost by the fighters during the bout.
In 1964 she invented an alter ego with the name Joe Scanlan. She used her uncle James to sit for photographs that were sold as self-portraits and used her non-writing hand to craft his signature. For this ongoing project entitled Joe, a life 1964–2005, she sacrificed a career under her own name to concentrate on him. BMW sees the first ‘outing’ of a project by Levule under her own name.
Bath Cut
Drama Release
Wig Immersion
Re-creation High-
Iteration Escape
Christelle Lheureux & Apichatpong Weerasethakul
The artists discovered the lead player, acting out the children’s instructions in the film, after his appearance in the Thai prison drama Bangkok Nights. Lheureux and Weerasethakul are avid fans of the programme, and other works inspired by the programme include Let Me In To Let Me Out, 2002–2003 in which they spliced footage of characters entering the prison with that of their triumphant or arduous exit.
The money paintings on display at the CAC are constructed from money. They depict money. They produce money. They are paintings of bank notes and they are sold for a profit by Reena Spauling’s gallery. The work depicts currency used by displaced Lithuanians in camps during World War II; these UNRRA notes only had value within the camps.
It is just after 08:00 EEST and the sun is coming in through my window. I must go over to the printing house today to check on one of the books and also I want to pick up some butter and sugar from the market to make an apple crumble tonight. Hopefully I’ll have time to go for a run by the river later if I finish before sunset, or I could take an hour out and work tonight.
Atop a pristine plinth is a glass case. Its contents change and progress day by day. The operative who enacts this work wears protective gloves to perform the task. Each stage takes mere moments to occur but its effects last a full day. The contents of the case will be dusted intermittently.
I think Pablo International Vilnius Magazine would have been enjoyed by my first ever boyfriend. He was a bit of a mistake, but a good learning curve I suppose. Pablo established his gallery near an amazing café-restaurant in Heddon Street, just off Regent Street in London; they have an incredible selection of teas and a delightful Bedouin ambiance.
There is an Ernest Hemingway-themed restaurant in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Casa del Papa, Celovska 54a.
The fictional artist Joe Scanlan built a coffin from parts ordered from the IKEA catalogue and buried it somewhere in the Lithuanian countryside. Five of us helped bury it in the glare of car headlights with a red crescent moon hanging low in the sky as the mist rose. I am still finding dirt in my shoes.
Tiny stories are weaved through this series of slides. The frozen glowing images combined with the whirring slide projector create a nostalgia and feel of a collective memory. Amongst other stories, the tale of an Argentinean sailor’s lost love is juxtaposed with the seemingly unrelated pictures of Austrian children playing on the banks of the Danube in the late 1970s.
Roberto Cuoghi & Ion Grigorescu
Four words and a ligature.
Since June, Ultimiere cards have been spreading throughout the world, from Venice to New York, from Dunchurch to Varëna. They have appeared in bicycle spokes, post offices, slipped into handbags, hidden in napkins. His word, invented for BMW, will lead you to the website of The IX Baltic Triennial.
This space is blank for you to fill in your thoughts about this piece…
In Vilnius, the statue of the Angel in Uþupis is where the monument to the egg was positioned before it moved to its current location in Pylimo Street.
Maaike Gottschal & Natascha Hagenbeek
Derived from Dante’s Inferno crossed with Don Giovanni’s decent into hell from the opera of the same name, Shades of Black depicts a nightmare scenario. Everyday items are spliced and mutated in accordance with the different ranks of hell: a shirt-sleeve is fused with a tank top indicating the torture sequences played out by the devil’s henchmen while the sock/wristband/petticoat piece is analogous for the absolute depths of dismemberment and pain at the whim of the Devil.
Loris Gréaud taps the private lives of people in different ways. His interest in this began from his time in prison for unpaid traffic fines, when he shared a cell with the infamous counterfeiter Frank Abagnale. Hidden identities and masked interaction are a reoccurring theme in Greaud’s work.
The usually soft white CAC is a landmark modernist building in Vilnius transformed by Jeppe Hein for The IX Baltic Triennial. He has painted it black for the duration of the exhibition. At night the building disappears into the night sky, during the day, it blends in with its shadow cast on Vokieèiø Street.
I first met her at an event at the 291 Gallery but I didn’t really have a chance to speak to her as I had been attacked the day before and I was still in shock and so I didn’t stay at the event long. I also answered the phone to her once and took a message when I was at IBID Projects. I don’t think she knows that.
I ON A LION IN ZION deals cut-up information as well as codes and ciphers. His work contains information not always immediately obvious to the viewer. For BMW his pieces contain the coordinates for the location of Joe Scanlan’s coffin that is buried in a forest in Lithuania.
Visitors across the globe can visit a virtual CAC and ICA through the mass multi-player online game Second Life. When I first entered Second Life, it reminded me of when I won a prize at High School for designing a script to draw a purple flower in a plant-pot using the BBC computer programme Logo. The mouse was called the turtle and I thought it was the most amazing computer concept. I had yet to discover the Internet.
The narrative of her film begins with three pirates having lunch on a desert island. One is eating a coconut, one a mango and one is roasting a wild pig on a spit. After finishing, they open their map, and begin hunting for treasure. When they find the ‘X’ waiting for them is not their booty, but a band of ninjas.
If I could be telephoned by someone of the caliber on the website I would like it to be Chris Packham who used to present The Really Wild Show on BBC1 in the UK. I thought he was amazing, but the callers have to stick to the script I think and I would rather have a lovely chat with him.
Drum EcstasyThis innovative group of drummers formed in France in the early 1990s. As members of the second generation Baltic Community of France, they used drumming to express the folk legends from their parents native region. Their work was once censored because they were suspected of passing on classified information through an elaboration of Morse code; this allegation was later dropped.
In 2002, he underwent extensive hormone therapy to change his gender from female to male. After beginning his life as ‘Maria’ he now has a deep voice and full facial hair. The letters presented in BMW question the identity of the authors and challenge the readers’ preconceptions.
If I type in my sister’s name I get a picture of a horse. She isn’t a horse. Why don’t you try typing your name into Google image search and recording here what comes up…
Constructed from iodised steel, this piece stands 60 feet tall. The figure is that of a man with arms outstretched but in place of his arms are what appear to be somewhere between airplane wings and the welded hull of a ship. Standing both majestically and mournfully, the piece remembers the history of the extinct shipbuilding industries of the North East.
It gives me the shivers: knives that were used to murder, and the water is from the morgue. I have friends of the opinion that everything is just matter ultimately and all ends without memory. I enjoy the romance and drama of attributing a sense of history to inanimate objects.
Towards the back of the right-hand gallery sits Pear Magazine. A sophisticated code detailing the life and loves of dr. Wladyslaw Kozaczuk lies within the texts presented here.
When I walk through the corner of the shadow walls in the large gallery space I find another enclosure of works including relief constructed from found objects by Donelle Woolford.
Former table tennis champion, Küenzi followed media mogul Rupert Murdoch to make these haunting photographs. His photos reveal the tender and vulnerable side of Murdoch during the negotiations involved in Murdoch’s takeover of The Times newspaper in the UK.
It’s sunny outside today but the weather has turned very cold. I’ve opened my window to let in the beautifully fresh air and I’m snuggled under my duvet with my notebook. Someone is drilling in the yard across the road and sporadically a car alarm chirrups.
Katie King the 19th century spirit was first seen during a séance in 1852 and she broke my camera. My mother used to work in the Harry Price Library and visitors used to comment on the unnatural cold and feeling of a presence when actually it had three exterior walls and a ceiling unlike the preceding insulated rooms.
The slideshow follows the take of three pirates when trapped on an island. Upon discovery of ninjas instead of treasure at the ‘X’ they fight for their lives. The pirates draw their swords, the ninjas are unarmed and soon the pirates are able to walk freely from the scene. They inspect their map and decide it must have been a trap so return to their boat.
Jean-Francois Moriceau & Petra Mrzyk
In a one-minute drawing by the artists depicts Alexis Vaillant wearing a sock for a tie. This is based on a true event.
The challenges he took on for BMW were to eat 23 tins of sweet corn with a tooth pick, swim around the castle at Trakai, learn the phrase “Black Market Worlds” in 18 different languages, and record a duet with Lithuanian singer Geltona. He succeeded in all except failing to charm a black snake.
The last time I saw a work by Snyder was in Berlin. That day I ended up at a Russian disco with colleagues. In my broken German I managed to blag us into the club half price and the rest of the evening was spend gossiping till dawn.
The work made before the one shown in BMW followed the slow removal of a monumental statue of Lenin from one of the squares in the city. If the film is watched carefully for long enough, it becomes apparent that the statue is actually being re-installed, its legs re-attached to its ankles and then removed again in an endless cycle.
This Super8 projection depicts three pirates who have been given a fake treasure map to lead them into a trap. After this realisation they journey through the tropical forest to their boat only to discover the plot against them ended with the hijacking of their vessel. A team of black-clad sailors steered the boat towards the horizon. The film ends with the pirates despairing.
Tolmie’s work is inspired by the pieces Der Rechte Weg by Fischli & Weiss and Bunnyphant by Flora Whitely. The large sinuous form she has made dominates the courtyard of the CAC. Children are welcome to make drawings of the piece.
Now I have come to sit at the café Neringa on Gedimino Avenue, which the Cambrian spy Kim Philby used as a drinking haunt. Schinwald’s work references mis-information and the covert exchange of facts. I can’t think of any secrets at the moment that I could exchange. Maybe one will come to me later, when my ice cream with fruit compote arrives. His work is in the front corridor with Teresa Margolles’ work visible through the glass to the roof yard.
The acronym PB8 stands for Pietus Bulve 8, Knitting Circle 8 if translated to English. The group use traditional Lithuanian handicrafts and all eight members participate in the fabrication of the objects presented. It is an exercise in celebrating the traditions of the Baltic region.
After establishing the Cullman Middle School in Alabama, USA, she used the small plastic chair as a leit motif. In BMW the chair disguises itself as a number of other classroom items in a bid for anonymity resulting in macabre and amusing sculptures.