Shelter of Thoughts, 2024
video installation and object
M-5 Klaipėda train station, Priestočio g. 1
A blocked tunnel entrance, a shelter turret, a locked door or a window in a building that cannot be accessed – such “unexplained” urban materialities are the intersection points of rational and irrational knowledge, a cultural text of the city that can be read in different ways. This video is inspired by the air-raid shelters in Klaipėda that have survived from the Second World War (two of them right next to the train station) and the urban legends about the labyrinth of tunnels that connect them. The facts of historical memory are intertwined with images of anxiety, born of today’s topical issues: the pollution of the Baltic Sea, the climate crisis, the threat of war. The narrative of the dream logic images is a reflection of the collective imagination not only symbolically, but also technically – ideas, keywords and photographs of the remains of the underground shelters are recreated and mediated by various tools of generative artificial intelligence from an immense amount of visual data.
The video is inserted into the waiting room of the Klaipėda train station, where the seating resembles an auditorium and the fragmented TV screen resembles the images of surveillance cameras. To a casual viewer waiting for a train, it may seem that the image of a parallel reality that flickered on the screen was just a dream while nodding off, or a figment of their own imagination. However, an object in the corner that seems to have materialised from the screen becomes a hint that there is no strict boundary between reality and imagination.
Image: Agnė Gintalaitė.
The train station is a particularly important landmark in every city, already charged with the natural anxiety of travel, the sense of adventure and the abundance of cultural imagery. It is a liminal space that captures the state of transition from stability to mobility. In this in-between state, one retreats from everyday worries, and the anticipation of the journey, alternating with boredom, can manifest itself in free wanderings of the mind. The train station is also associated with the subway tunnels, which often become a refuge for city dwellers during wartime. On a sensory level, the train station is a zone of safety, a space of hope and a space of disconnection – there is always the chance of catching a train, but there is always something left behind.
Agnė Gintalaitė
Agnė Gintalaitė is an artist working with pre- and post-photographic processes, generative artificial intelligence, ready-made objects, moving image and sound. Agnė graduated from Vilnius Academy of Arts, studied psychology at Vilnius University, defended her Master’s degree in Cultural Studies at Vytautas Magnus University, is currently a PhD student in the field of ethnology / cultural anthropology at the Academy of Fine Arts of Latvia, a cultural columnist, and a columnist of public affairs at lrt.lt. Her interdisciplinary creative strategy is characterised by a reflexive research approach, a hybrid combination of scientific and artistic research methods. Areas of research: conflicts between forms of knowledge and discourses, social norms and transgressions, mobility and migration, phenomenology of human and non-human errors, generative artificial intelligence as an artistic medium.
Organiser: Klaipėda Culture Communication Centre.
Funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Klaipėda City Municipality.