URBAN STORIES: ‘Black Swans, True Tales and Private Truths’
September 26 – November 22, 2009
Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius
CAC, Vokieciu g. 2,
LT-01130 Vilnius, Lithuania
T: +370-5-260 8960
F: +370-5-262 3954
info [at] cac.lt
“Urban Stories: ‘Black Swans, True Tales and Private Truths’”
The tenth edition of the Baltic Triennial of International Art
26 September – 22 November 2009
Opening Friday 25 September, 6 pm
Participating artists:
Akvile Anglickaite (LT) Kevin van Braak (NL) Pavel Braila (MD) CHIM↑POM (JP) COMFORTABLE project (CN) Cora Roorda van Eijsinga (NL) Laura Garbstiene (LT) Beatrice Gibson (UK) Arunas Gudaitis (LT) HA ZA VU ZU (TR) Alison Jackson (UK) Colter Jacobsen (US) Evaldas Jansas (LT) Edmunds Jansons (LV) Paul Ramirez Jonas (US) Frank Koolen (NL) Irina Korina (RU) Algimantas Kuncius (LT) Zilvinas Landzbergas (LT/NL) The Second Royal Palace Club (LT) Aurelija Maknyte (LT) Thomas Manneke (NL) Darius Miksys (LT) MY BARBARIAN (US) Deimantas Narkevicius (LT) Mindaugas Navakas (LT) Kristina Norman (EE) Nikolay Oleynikov (RU) Ariel Orozco (MX) Gail Pickering (UK) Ibrahim Quraishi (PK/NL) Quirine Racke & Helena Muskens (NL) Kestutis Sapoka (LT) Emily Wardill (UK) and Vita Zaman (LT)
At the invitation of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) Vilnius in Lithuania, Ann Demeester (director, de Appel arts centre) and Kestutis Kuizinas (director, CAC) are curating the tenth edition of the Baltic Triennial of International Art. Titled “Urban Stories” and consisting of the main exhibition “Black Swans, True Tales and Private Truths” and the project “Vilnius COOP” it is the pinnacle contemporary art event of the national programme of “Vilnius – European Capital of Culture 2009″.
Vilnius in its present-day form ‘suffers’ from a mild form of schizophrenia which characterizes almost every medieval city, in the (former) East and in the (former) West, that functions as a tourist destination. It knows the almost generic contrast between the enchanting-fiction of the historical centre, an excessively restored predominantly-baroque ‘Old Town’, and the banal reality of the dormitory suburbs where the majority of the population lives. Vilnius, in that sense, is Everywheresville.
Anyone who wishes to encounter the unreal Vilnius, its Nowheresville counterpart, should refer to total fiction. In his critically acclaimed bestseller, “The Corrections”(2001), American author Jonathan Franzen – who is remarkably adept at armchair travelling and has never set foot in any of the Baltic States – has treated Lithuania as a blank canvas on which prejudices about former-USSR states can be projected without restriction. Despite Franzen’s distorted image of post-independence Lithuania there is a scary type of prophesying that underpins his absurd depiction of the country, since one of the narrative strands in his novel is the collapse of Lithuania’s economy, a liquidation of its assets and the closure of its national airline. Ironically, this reads as an eerie prediction. Vilnius, and Lithuania, and their Baltic neighbors have in the past decade enjoyed a reputation as economic ‘tigers’, but the credit crunch has put pay to this. Consumption has withered amid high inflation and tighter domestic credit rules, and the global economic crisis has dented exports, hitting businesses hard and sparking mass lay-offs. Fiction has caught-up with reality, as the cliché puts it.
These notions were taken as a starting point for the main exhibition, titled “Black Swans, True Tales and Private Truths”, that reflects upon the Triennial’s staging during a time of crisis – the term ‘Black Swan’(coined by Nassim Taleb) refers to events that appear by complete surprise and have a major impact. Equally, it examines the idea that every image, reconstruction, or evocation of a city contains a high degree of the ‘consciously false’.
Much has been made of Jonathan Franzen’s attempts to avoid cliché by writing blind and this is what the curators have asked artists to do: produce – blindfolded – a response to Vilnius. This request has generated a range of works based upon versions of armchair travelling or idiosyncratic local research, that offer parallel (hi)stories, based on a mixture of half-truths, tales, private truths and hard facts. The resulting films, sculptures, performances and installations offer a phantasmagorical portrait of an existing city or examine a real place which seems as ‘illusionary’ as Disneyland’s “Celebration” or New York’s ‘Roosevelt Island’. Therein, the exhibition will position Vilnius as both Everywheresville and Nowheresville, and will scrutinize the fictional character of real places and the reality of imaginary spaces.
The X Baltic Triennial has received support from:
Centre for Contemporary Arts, Estonia, EU Japan Fest, Fonds BKVB, Netherlands Foundation for visual arts, design and architecture, IFA Institut fuer Auslandsbeziehungen e.V., The Polish Institute, Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council, Stroom Den Haag
For media information about the X Baltic Triennial:
Browse: www.urbanstories.lt / www.deappel.nl
Contact: Simon Rees (CAC) E: simon@cac.lt T: +370-5-212 1954
or Hiske Zomer (de Appel) E: hzomer@deappel.nl T: +31-20-6255651
