May 1–31, 2022
e-flux Video & Film is very pleased to feature Emilija Škarnulytė’s Aldona (2013, 13 minutes) as the May 2022 edition of our monthly online series Staff Picks.
Škarnulytė’s body of work is known for its preoccupation with the future, with many of her films and videos addressing the present environmental crisis in which human activity continues to generate inevitable, albeit certainly avoidable problems whose consequences may not be directly perceptible yet impact generations to come. Aldona, however, deals with the past as experienced in the present. One of the Škarnulytė’s early works, this haptic film-reconciliation juxtaposes the fragility of the monument with the strength of the witness, recalling a past not to be forgotten even when it is unseen.
The film will stream on e-flux Video & Film from May 1–31, 2022.
Watch it here.
Emilija Škarnulytė, Aldona
2013, 13 minutes
In the spring of 1986, Aldona lost her vision and became permanently blind. The nerves in her eyes were poisoned. Doctors claimed that it was probably due to the Chernobyl power plant explosion. The film follows her through a daily sojourn to Grutas Park, touching both the past and the present.
About the artist
Emilija Škarnulytė is a nomadic visual artist and filmmaker. Blending fiction with documentary, she explores topics from the cosmic and geological to the ecological and political. Winner of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, Škarnulytė represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and was included in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. With solo exhibitions at Tate Modern (2021), Kunsthaus Pasquart (2021), Den Frie (2021), National Gallery of Art in Vilnius (2021), CAC (2015), and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (2017), she has participated in group shows at Ballroom Marfa, Seoul Museum of Art, Kadist Foundation, and the First Riga Biennial. Her numerous prizes include the Kino der Kunst Project Award, Munich (2017); Spare Bank Foundation DNB Artist Award (2017), and the National Lithuanian Art Prize for Young Artists (2016). She received an undergraduate degree from the Brera Academy of Art in Milan and holds a masters from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art. Her films are in the IFA, Kadist Foundation, and Centre Pompidou collections and have been screened at the Serpentine Gallery, UK, the Centre Pompidou, France, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York and in numerous film festivals including in Rotterdam, Busan, and Oberhausen. She is a founder and currently co-directs Polar Film Lab, a collective for analogue film practice located in Tromsø, Norway and is a member of the artist duo New Mineral Collective.
About the series
e-flux Video & Film: Staff Picks is a monthly streaming series of staff picks and recommended videos designed to disrupt the monotony of an algorithm. Before the end times of big data, we used to discover suggested content along dusty shelves in video rental stores, where Post-it notes scribbled by shift workers implored us to experience the same movies that made them guffaw, scream, or weep. Sometimes the content bored us, sometimes it overwhelmed us, and sometimes, as if by magic, it was just right. e-flux invites you to relive this rental store mode of perusal, with personalized picks curated through judgment that does not take into consideration your viewing history.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.
