Installation view for XVII a. curated by Robertas Narkus & Lauka Kaminskaitė
Text translated by Monika Kalinauskaitė
THE EPOCH OF WATER HAS COME NOW
AND EVERYTHING IS CHANGING.
THUS, PEOPLE HAVE ALREADY STARTED
WAKING, OUR PLANET
WENT FROM THE
AGE OF PISCES (SCIENCE AND CULTURE)
TO THAT OF AQUARIUS (SPIRITUALITY
AND MAGIC). NOW OVER SOME
72 YEARS ALL OF OUR
PLANET AND ALL
WITHIN IT WILL CHANGE.
LOTS OF CURIOSITIES
WE ARE YET
TO SEE.
ALSO,
AN INTERESTING THING
THAT IT IS REPEATING
THAT DREAMERS
SHARE
EXPERIENCES SIMILAR
TO THEIR OWN OR
OTHER DREAMERS'
SOMETHING MORE
LIES BEYOND EVERY
EXPERIENCED
(RECALLED)
DREAM.
INTERFERING WITH
THE RUNNING
OF DESIRED
ERRANDS.
MOST LIKELY
ON THE MASCULINE
SIDE.
I DREAMT I WAS FLYING
TO OTHER PLANETS
TALKING TO ALIENS.
WHAT COULD IT MEAN
DREAMS ARE NOT OF THE PLEASANT KIND.
I CROSS THE SEA IN A SHIP
I WATCH IT,
IT IS WA
VING NICELY, BEFORE ME
STANDS A WOMAN.
SHE IS RECOUNTING
SOMETH
ING BORING,
TALKING
ME TO DEATH. AND I
WANT SO BADLY
TO GLIMPSE AT LEAST A
WHALE'S
FIN.
I DOVE INTO THE SCRE
EN OF A TABLET
AND STEPPED
OUT RIGHT THROUGH
ON THE OTHER
SIDE
WHAT COULD IT MEAN
IN A DREAM
TO TOUCH
A GAP
BETWEEN
TEETH?
MANY MANY CHAMOMILES
THE MEADOW WAS FULL
BUT I
DID NOT PLUCK THEM
JUST SAW.
In the summer I spent a few months in Liverpool, such a strange city, searching for hope, having once seen its own golden age and been the richest harbour in the United Kingdom, and, by the way – the first and last registration point for the Titanic. Today, in Liverpool, the spirit of co-working and start-ups is strongly stimulated, however, most of these spaces are empty and the promise of a better future keeps getting delayed. I stayed in a skyscraper, twenty-first floor, the apartment of an American composer and his wife, an author, from which you could see a wonderful view, cruise ships passing by once in a while, and the city’s plans for the future.
I enjoyed walking around the district of former docks, but most of all I liked hanging around the parking lot of an abandoned shopping centre. On my first time there I was welcomed by savage street kids from the nearby trailer park community. After realizing that I am a foreigner, they prompted me to say in Liverpoolian – «I am a sausage» – pulling out a phone with the intention to film it. I felt alien and naive, and remembered my childhood in Justiniškės. We did not bond at all. Screw them. They don’t know yet that after I leave, bulldozers will not take long to come, destroy their sheds, and this will be a hub of creative industries.
The lot was cosy, surrounded by overgrown and jungle-like hedges, which protected it from the noise of a street stretching nearby. Scattered around were shopping trolleys, various appliances, a toilet bowl, a one-meter wide replica of a compass, sneakers. But the longest shadow was cast on the lot by an outdoor billboard growing out from the fence. For years, constantly changing advertising campaigns were layered on it, but sometimes those layers had to be peeled off and everything began anew. And the old banners, torn up like ill-meaning photographs, could be abandoned in the bushes, which is exactly where I found them. I piled them up in one of the trolleys, pushed it back home, called up a courier discovered through adverts, however, a bus with tinted windows rolled up, which, alongside with things, was taking home my exhausted countrymen.
In Vilnius, I spread these shreds on the floor of my study and took a paper knife to them, cutting out figures possibly resembling drawings of Egyptian pyramids which I have not seen, since when I was in Egypt many years ago we were filming an advertisement and I spent almost all of my time in the hotel.
