Socio-ecological
‘Black Spots’. The High and Low Tide of Consumption.
In the struggle of competition, the potential for cultural
industries is very important. I believe in their meaning in
searching for the ways to resist narrow business interests,
and demonstrate it in the installation "Make Friends with Maumas!"
(2007),
in which ecological problems intersecting with
selfish business and community interests are solved. It
is said that enemy should be hoisted by his own petard
and so the businessmen is challenged in the piece.
Determined to extract peat at the cost of destroying a
unique natural location, the businessmen should be tamed
with the help of an original project that opposes it and
is also dominated by enterprising strategies (the
community's boisterous voice alone is often
ineffective). I propose to create legends about a
mysterious and rare animal found in this location –
Maumas. Making use of the business potential, I
recommend promoting the Maumas legend in society,
starting with mass production of beer mugs with Maumas
symbols, and ending with excursions and a hotel network
in that territory, where the Maumas would become a
character of creative industries – a national symbol of
ecology. A fruitful symbiosis of the creative and
commercial potential would promote the demand of
contextual and original ideas in society, encourage the
variety of features of national identity, attract our
attention to sore ecological problems and more.
However in reality the ideas of creative enterprise are
seldom implemented, while the examples of poor management
are plenty. I take pictures of the once popular places in
the resort town Druskininkai (”Resort“,
photography, graphics, 2007-08). The
burned-down “Voveraitė” cinema theatre”,
the
Karolis Dineika recreation park and the kitchen premises of
the “Nemunas” sanatorium.
These places have become a kind of hell set against the
beautiful background of the resort. This project seeks to
draw attention to the inadequacy of commercial real estate
developers in the face of social architecture. These sites
are like socio-ecological ‘black spots’ in the Druskininkai
environment.
Another example is related to the businessmen‘s zeal for
building new supermarkets. Will the numerous brand new
shopping centers in Lithuania ever recover? The fever of
consumption flooded back very soon. Ironically,
the country's major supermarket chain, "Maxima", has
released a green eco-friendly plastic bag emblazoned with
the slogan "I degrade faster!". The text seems to describe
the socio-financial degradation typical of the times – and
eerily empty shopping centres – inasmuch as it pertains to
bio-degradable petro-chemicals. The series of
drawings The
Centre (2009)
reflects upon lonely and dull shopping centre architecture:
typical of cynical boom-time development (that has receded
as quickly as it arrived). The shopping centres in the
drawings are specific to the city of Šiauliai (Lithuania)
which is marked by retail space oversupply. As time goes by
these new supermarkets turn into lonely museum ghosts.
Consumption is also discussed in the video
”Oil City“ (2007-2008).
Mažeikiai, the city whose identity is being strongly
affected by the neighboring
oil processing company ”Mažeikių
nafta“, in terms of economy is much wealthier than most of
the other regional centers in Lithuania. It contains a
number of supermarkets and shopping is widely understood as
a popular leisure activity. The city however lacks any
other centers of attraction and interesting offers for the
leisure time –
for instance, it doesn’t have a single cinema.
Due to
the crisis, the notion of the quality of life understood in
this very narrow-minded sense may provoke people to revalue
what is really important for them.
How to Negotiate the Crisis – a Few Examples.
The
eponymous video "Survival" (2009)
refers to personal reassessments associated with times
of economic, and spiritual, crisis. Two women – both
named Nijolė – are being interviewed. Both of them were
Sąjūdis (Reform movement) activists, who maintain an
idea of the liberalisation of Lithuania. The video
focuses on the reflections of the two prominent women
about the possible ways for people to overcome the
difficulties that they are facing today. They refer to
different personal, historical and religious precedents
and portray a view of Lithuania as it used to be and as
it is now. Their testimony highlights the importance of
an individual to society. They consider an individual as
an indispensable model for youth and they set their
hopes on the young generation.
The
series of drawings "The Avenue of
Heroes" (2009)
complements the opinions expressed by the two women: and
depicts heroes relevant to the current generation of
youth. The project has been produced in cooperation with
a sizeable team of pupils from the Vilnius Justinas
Vienožinskis Art School. Their choice of heroes has a
great deal to say about the aspirations, hopes and fears
of their generation and the general state of their
worldview.