Stone on the Gate, 2024
found situation
M-15 Scrap metal yard, Minijos g. 162
This artwork-situation is reminiscent of Kafka’s famous parable “Against the Law”, about a man who chose to wait at the gates of heaven for someone to open them, but never dared to open them himself. In the history of cities, which is closely linked to the history of wars, gates have a powerful symbolic meaning. In defence, the gates were rammed from the inside. This situation, with the gates being blocked with a stone from the outside, seems to shift the burden of responsibility and the relationship with the law to the public and to the passers-by, while at the same time emphasising the primacy of physical force and private interest in relation to the power of decision. Stone on the Gate raises important questions about the attitude of private business towards the public interest, the privatisation of the public law and the environment left to rampant exploitation.
Auridas Gajauskas, Paulina Pukytė
Hole in the Fence, 2024
found situation
M-16 Scrap metal yard, Minijos g. 162 / Rusnės g.
This artwork-situation could be described as a “third landscape” (Gilles Clement) – a landscape that combines human activity and natural elements. In this spot, the landscape consists of a mountain of scrap metal behind a cement fence, a hole in the fence covered by an uprooted stump of a huge tree, barbed wire, a piece of concrete lying on the ground with a rebar sticking out, and a variety of shrubs. The framing of the found situation – turning it into a work of art and a metaphor – encourages a critical look both at the aggressive human activities that penetrate other communities and nature in order to appropriate, alter and exploit them, and at the manipulations that attempt to justify such activities.
Auridas Gajauskas
Auridas Gajauskas is a humanities scholar. For three years he was curator of exhibitions and library at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius. In recent years he has worked at the Ukrainian War Refugee Reception Centre in Dresden, where he also conducted ethnographic research on the centre. His current research interests include contemporary art curatorial methodology, philosophy and theory of social sciences, and the possibilities of infrastructural activism in art and resistance to social and cultural exclusion.
Organiser: Klaipėda Culture Communication Centre.
Funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Klaipėda City Municipality.