Upon entering the Cinema Hall of the CAC we hear the murmur of people awaiting for the concert in the National Philharmonics in Vilnius. It is pre-recorded, just like the moon, which is getting brighter as darkness falls on the 6 meter wide screen.
Lost & Found begins; two women in front of the audience introduce each other, the evening and the series of drawings screened behind their back - they are Egyboy's sketches for the flyer of the event. We see a gloved hand, a dog with a bone, a penis a beheaded man at a campfire.
Andrius Rugys aka pb8 begins. Wondering if anything is ever lost, and not only 'found found found', he plays a record of the sounds of his neighbours' construction work layering over the minimal track of electronic music, 'Discreet Journey Digitalis' by Heimir Björgúlfson. While we listen, Andrius is recording again. At the end of the night we will listen to this new recording, the electronic track muddier than before; more acoustic, he proposes.
On one of his travels, Darius Žiūra found 'Iškylos iš Vilniaus į Lietuvą' (Journeys from Vilnius to Lithuania) of 1857. It's a travelogue by Polish poet Władysław Syrokomla, translated in Lithuanian. In the light of a desk lamp he reads excerpts from the book, describing the sceneries and emotions that accompany departures from Vilnius in several different directions. The borders of town are not where they used to be. Syrokomla travelled in horse carriages.
On a journey to Finland, Ieva Kabašinskaitė was obsessed by the short days. She decided to film the sun. Slowly, we see a pulsing white circle enter the screen, until it takes over the whole screen; it fades before reaching the right border. Ieva is in Paris, it's her friends who let us screen the film. She once said: "The sun is the same as in Africa but three times bigger". The film ruined the digital camera, and later also on the beamer of Ville Pippo, who has the film installed at home on a loop.
A fourth generation artist, Julijus Balčikonis, brought two 8mm film rolls from the family archive. They are shot by his grandfather, Juozas Balčikonis. The first is a visual diary from his journey to India in the 60s. We see a camera trying to capture everything that rolls by a tourbus, crowds of people in water and a man in red shorts turning himself up side down on a small carpet. Occasionally, we also see some hair, a nose or the corner of glasses that belong to Juozas' travel companions.
The second film is a surprise film. Julijus doesn't know what's on it. The second roll has never yet been screened; it is a "double 8" format shot on a 16mm film, and the family never had a 16mm projector. It's a Sports Festival in Vilnius, and again it's 60s. Two of the four screens are rolling backwards, and really fast, and in the other two we see a stadium full of ladders slanted and twisted by uniformed participants. It's the grandfather who designed the uniforms.
And then we Skype with Pia Lindman in Helsinki; we find her in another event, a bit similar to ours, and to make the events even more similar we stage the same performance on both sides of the screen. Pia Lindman searched for YouTube movies of drunken Finnish people; she pulled out stills in moments where drunkenness had reached ecstasy, or so she thought, and made drawings of these moments, marking with color the flow of energies. The drawings and Pia's instructions are used by two volunteers who are being persuaded that they will reach ecstasy by re-enacting the poses. Later, one of them admits he's been drinking before the performance, and another one states that he did not volunteer for the experiment.
A break. The musical track creates the atmosphere of entering a boxing ring as the audience returns to the room.
Darius Mikšys presents a talk in the shape of ice-cone. It is a particular ice-cone from Tallinn that was brought to him by his friends. The ice-cone survived several weeks and several failed attempts to cast its physical shape, but as the weather was getting warmer, means had to be taken for it to be preserved - therefore, the talk. Walking up and down under the screen, Darius concocts associations, stories and words. A gigantic image of a fox beams up above his head, as he tells about the Internet changing the way we think. Once in a while he looks up onto the fox and turns back to the audience with a clearer new idea. Everyone is invited to come and see the icicle at the end of the night.
Bradley Pitts introduces his film called 'One Roll of Weightlessness' via Skype; the 16mm film shows him walking in black and white Amsterdam. The view is blank when a special apparatus indicates that the walker is weightless (- in other words, when he is falling. Or when he has weight. Or, when someone who is looking at him is blinking. Nobody is sure, and it takes a while to try to understand.) While the answer is processed silently, Bradley is asked where was the man going and if he has a window in the room. He does; but as Bradley turns his computer and the white light of the window enters the screen, and we get to see the vague contours of Brooklyn, the connection fails.
For his series 'Abendsonne', Misha de Ridder photographed at a flat lake in the Swiss Alps. We see the multiple colour shadows the mountain peeks create on the mirror-like Lake. Then Misha shows us how he found the lake with Google Earth as he tells with a dark voice about a mysterious fenonoma in a small town, where every springs and every autumn, the sun rises and setts twice; the Abbendsonne.
We listen to the recording that Andrius Rugys made earlier during the evening. We hear our own voices and the Cinema Hall's space giving the composition another dimension; he records it once more.
Egyboy and Rasa Juškevičiūtė show us LOVE, their 8mm film. The camera wanders through the woods as it stumbles upon a bare chested boy that's embrasing himself.
Off we go to see the 2 meters high icicle.
Misha de Ridder and Andrius Rugys, leader
Egidijus Praspaliauskas, poster and flyers
Andrius Rugys, recording
Darius Žiūra, Journeys from Vilnius to Lithuania (1857), reading
Ieva Kabašinskaitė, ‘Auriko’, video
Julijus Balčikonis, India film, 8mm and surprise film, 16mm
Pia Lindman, 'Kannihurmos, Techniques of Ecstasy', joint performance with Kunsthalle Helsinki
Darius Mikšys, 'Contemporaneity, temporality and futurism', talk
Bradley Pitts, 'One Roll of Weightlessness', 16mm
Misha de Ridder, ‘Abendsonne’, slides, google earth presentation
Andrius Rugys, recording
Rasa Juškevičiūtė and Egidijus Praspaliauskas, ‘Love’, 8mm
DJ Misha de Ridder
