[spectre] 24/7 project in vilnius

[raimundas m]

24/7: Wilno - Nueva York 2


Project dates: September 12 ­ November 2, 2003
Venue: Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius www.cac.lt


A journey through shortcuts and detours of translocal living via
creative resistance : individual survival techniques : sustainable
communities : transcultural drifts : intergalactic links :
synchronicities : street: unreal time : speed of light : remote
collaborations : floating places : self-publishing : identities in flux
:


LIST OF PARTICIPANTS (as for 25 08 03):

Live: situations, performances, transmissions, seminars by

16 Beaver Street Group, Kate Armstrong, Otto Berchem, Bik Van der Pol,
Daniel Bozhkov, Bureau of Inverse Technology, Phil Collins, Jose Cruz,
Rainer Ganahl, Hope Ginsburg, Natalie Jeremijenko, Kristina Inciuraite,
Matthew Keegan, Jouke Kleerebezem, Will Kwan, Matthieu Laurette, Pia
Lindman, M&M Proyectos, Darius Miksys, Jesus Cruz Negron, Parlour
Projects, Arturas Raila, Martha Rosler, Beatriz Santiago, Trebor Scholz,
Tino Sehgal, Chemi Rosado Seijo, Hanno Soans, Temporary Services, Valie
Export Society

Screens and projections by

Sonia Abian, Derrick Adams, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Sven
Augustijnen, Anita Di Bianco, Pierre Bismuth, Michael Blum, Francois
Bucher, Karin Campbell, Forcefield with Happy Banana, Johan Grimonprez,
Leon Grodski, Arunas Gudaitis, Tehching Hsieh, Emily Jacir, Paul Ramirez
Jonas, Isaac Julien, Jesal Kapadia, M&M Proyectos, Gintaras
Makarevicius, Dave McKenzie, Jonas Mekas, John Menick, Aleksandra Mir,
Muntadas, Laurel Nakadate, Hayley Newman, Jeanine Oleson, Laura Parnes,
Jenny Perlin, Cesare Pietroiusti, Adrian Piper, Radical Software Group,
Radioshow, Reverend Billy, Emily Roysdon, Eran Schaerf & Eva Meyer, Wael
Shawky, Sean Snyder, Javier Tellez, Tepeyac, Valerie Tevere, Alex
Villar, Andy Warhol

Documents, installations, databases by

Rich Aldrich, Brian Bellot, Melissa Brown, Yane Calovski, Mariana
Deball, Stephanie Diamond, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Patrick Killoran,
Jeroen Kooijmans,  Dainius Liskevicius, Jonathan Monk, Nomads &
Residents, Michael Rakowitz, Lisi Raskin, Karin Sander, Igor Savchenko,
Alma Skersyte, Sandra Straukaite, Mario Garcia Torres, Oscar Tuazon,
Roger Welch, Judi Werthein, Inga Zimprich, Carey Young

Curators: Kestutis Kuizinas and Raimundas Malasauskas


SOME NOTES FOR THE DRIFTING CONCEPT:

The program (or vision) of the project is under a constant upgrade which
is open. There is a hope that it will remain as such after the actual
24/7 exhibition at the CAC Vilnius is technically over. The following
bits and pieces from the flow ideas are just multiple arrival/departure
points to start or keep the conversation going. The project is conceived
as an interface for different orders, rules and frameworks to interact
together, drifting across the subjects with no central theme or
principle attached. Yet all the concerns involved in the project are
life-minded. There is never enough of diversity.

Your comments or remixes of the concept are more than welcome.

24 / 7

Twenty hours seven days a week: this is the way the grocery store or the
surveillance camera on the corner of the street works, this is how life
sustaining (-ed) art practice functions in order to keep the survival.
This is how the 24/7 project is intended to develop: to interact with
myriads of flows and actions happening simultaneously, a continuous
inventions of new ways of living and difference-friendly environments,
rapid merge of identities and constant struggle which introduces new
mutations in the urban evolution (­ things that happen all the time, but
are noticed occasionally.)
24/7: Vilnius is intended to immerse into reality and leave traces which
could perhaps be identified only later. Or to put it into other words
this is where the linking effort focused:

Individual and collective techniques and strategies of living / survival
/ resistance to the power structures;

Art as a tool of: learning, communicating, experiencing, living;

Communal activities and ways of living / creating together via hi-tech
technologies as well as low-key actions;

Chance and programmed encounters / confrontations;

Artist as a self-media outside of academic and institutional
legitimations;

Mapping the invisible flows of exchanges and objects;

Simultaneities, synchronicities and complexities;

Customised strategies and devices to inhabit public space;


25th HOUR

The notion of hours and days in a loop implies the 25th hour: as an
escape, fold, TAZ and break up from the loop
www.nqpaofu.com/2003/nqpaofu71.html.

AMSTERDAM

³The tourist industry is changing the real and imagined city and forms
of urban life to fit it needs. Even if you go to real places, there are
people who are reproducing packaged experiences for the visitor. Do the
real Amsterdam experience! All in one place! And it doesn¹t even have to
be in Amsterdam!² (Edward Soja)

Exactly, these slips have taken place even in books already: the title
of the new book by Adam Phillips is Prague, yet its plot develops in
Budapest.

24/7: Vilnius takes place in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. "Wilno"
is the way of referring to the city in Polish and Jiddish language, as
well as "Nueva York" is New York for Spanish speaking community. Thus
the loop of 24/7 is broken again, mixing up asynchronic temporalities
together with the perspectives of ethnic minorities.

NEW YORK CITY

This was the starting point of the project ­ to show the contemporary
art scene of New York City in Vilnius. However following Edvar Soja¹s
example of Amsterdam with a global migration in mind makes us to think
that one can be a part of NYC art scene even without ever encountering
USA immigration office. On the other hand being a part of New York art
scene does not mean that one is a part of the local art market. But
let¹s consider these are nuances.

Besides 200 languages being spoken here and the extremes of life NYC is
still the main meeting point, media capital and the most loaded
networking tool in the world. That¹s how we decided to approach it.
Drifting across NYC, traveling via customized channels of communication,
entering various networks and communities here, and exiting hem
somewhere else, maybe another part of the world. It is as if you take E
train which runs on the D track and takes a route of F train in NYC
underground. There are many points of transfer and entering another
story or a zone. To put it in other words this is where the linking
effort is focused:

Street life;

Remote collaborations; connecting as an artistic practice;

³Communicative and informational drift² (Jouke Klereebezem); hijacking
the media, alternative and parallel ways of communication;

Self-publishing: weblog culture;

Transcultural slips and rides;

Fluid identities and transpersonal realities,

Recycling and remixing culture;


VILNIUS

City on the slip or city in sleep? Vilnius is going to accommodate the
24/7 project in September ­ November 2003. The name of the city in
Lithuanian language refers to notion of the wave, yet Neris river didn¹t
reach the scale of Pearl River, so it could feed the mega urban zones.
The capital of one of the former Soviet Union republics Vilnius is an
open field for the liberal democracy to interact with the heritage of
Communist planning. Yet before the major investments of global capital
has reached the city, a bronze monument for anarchomposer Frank Zappa
stood up in one of the squares as a homage for anarchy which never
sleeps.

24/7 is intended to intensify and densify the diversity of information
in Vilnius, however it is not about Vilnius ­ New York exchange: the two
cities are just two points of transfer.

The project as a linking and networking field

24/7: Vilnius is inspired by a field logic of sharing and
self-regulating: some of artists groups and initiatives are invited to
develop their own program in the project thus creating interzones where
transparent neighborhoods coexist without borders.

KEYWORDS that could have been above (to be continued):

WAR, excess of information, open source, creative life, drifting
concept, counterculture, nomadism, stock exchange, night shift,
subculture, illegal aliens, terrorism, hip-hop, transexuals,
surveillance systems, utopia, homeless, unemployed, etc.