The 10th Kaunas Biennial opens its doors

KAUNAS - The Kaunas Biennial, the biggest contemporary art festival in the Baltic States, opened its 10th season in September with the Biennial’s principal exhibition Threads: A Fantasmagoria About Distance, curated by the well-known art theorist and curator Nicolas Bourriaud.

For their celebratory season the Biennial’s organisers chose to focus on the topic of contemporary communication and direct the programme towards provoking live encounters and networking. This year the festival will present over 80 contemporary artists from the world round and will focus on collaborations between visual and sound artists. The programme of the festival has spread out to the main galleries as well as public and industrial spaces.

Following the main concept of the Biennial and emphasizing the topic of new forms of communication, Nicolas Bourriaud and artists have questioned the relative notion of distance. According to the curator, Threads strives both to approach the form of Fantasmagoria and address the way today’s artists include the notion of distance in their works. In a globalized and digitalized world, how does art deal with transportation, real time communication? What is the current shape of the presence/absence dialectics? How do artists present absent realities? Occupying five floors of the famous modernistic Kaunas Central Post Office building, the exhibition will present works by such artists as Liam Gillick, Walead Beshty, Saadane Afif, Roberto Cabot, Pakui Hardware (Neringa Cerniauskaite and Ugniaus Gelguda), Lothar Hempel, Julijonas Urbonas, Katja Novitskova, Arnas Anskaitis, Carsten Holler, Brone Sofija Gideikaite, Amalia Ulman , Katie Paterson, Attila Csorgo, Kelley Walker, and Darius Ziura.

10th Kaunas Biennial Networked began a two year long partnership and collaboration with arts organizations across Europe, Arte&Arte from Como, Italy, the Crafts Council, from London, and the Croatian, Zagreb-based LAB 852.

Biennial partners’ programme NETWORKED ENCOUNTERS started this year in Kaunas and will travel to London, Como and Zagreb in 2016.

Karen Gaskill, from the Crafts Council, stated of  exhibition Sonic Pattern And The Textility Of Code for the Kaunas Biennial, which explores the relationship between code, pattern, textiles, sound, mathematics, notation and performance,  ‘’we have invited a number of artists whose work exists across textiles and sound, drawing on the histories and contexts of both disciplines. Each pairing of artists explores a different context; the haptic, the performative and the notational. These are suggested starting points for discussion within each panel, providing space for exploration around the theme in relation to the artists’ work and wider contexts.’’

According to Artistic Director Virginija Vitkiene, “we have been creating a network for two decades now; we are connecting artists, curators, ideas, spaces, places, and communities. Networking and communication, interaction and cooperation are the main dimensions of the Kaunas Biennial, where everyone is very welcome.”
Beside the main exhibition Threads: A Fantasmagoria About Distance, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, the Kaunas Biennial presents several autonomous projects, related to its history, long term aims, and local versus global context.

These include:
Personal exhibitions by laureates of 9th Kaunas Biennial UNITEXT:
Audrius Janusonis FOR THE POETS OF KAUNAS. Silvia Giambrone A TERRIBLE LOVE OF WAR
Community based project by long-lasting Kaunas Biennial board and team members Vita Geluniene and Ed Carroll, FRIENDLY ZONE #6: CABBAGE FIELD

New productions related to a specific topic or venue: Arturas Morozovas. THE BIRTH OF KIKIMORA
Research based artistic interventions into [post]industrial textile venues TEXT[ILE] ROUTES: Psilicone Theatre(LT) and CHUI (HR) performance HAIRY HAIRY MOUTH at Dirbtinas Pluostas factory. Installation DIVISION. ADDITION by Konsortium (D): Lars Breuer, Sebastian Freytag, Guido Munch at Drobe factory. MADE IN KAUNAS by Guda Koster (NL) at Drobe Factory. WORK’N’FUN by Ignas Maldziunas (LT) at Dirbtinis pluostas factory. Monika Zaltauskaite-Grasiene at Dirbtinis pluostas factory
Analytical text book CONTEMPORAY ART BIENNIAL AS A SITE SPECIFIC EVENT: LOCAL VERSUS GLOBAL
Artist Residency Programme, led by Sandra Kazlauskaite, is the co-production of all partner orgisations (LAB852, Arte & Arte, Crafts Council, Kaunas Biennial) running the project NETWORKED ENCOUNTERS.