15 and 16 July 2022

Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts (NAC)

E. A. Jonušo Str. 3

Nida LT-93127

4444friends with Titilayo Adebayo, Sholto Dobie, and viixii

Friday 15 July

7.30pm Wayward, performance by Titilayo Adebayo

10pm – 3am Night Service by 4444friends

Sound performances by Sholto Dobie and viixii

Saturday 16 July

10am – 1pm Morning Service by 4444friends

On the evening of 15 July and the morning of 16 July, the group of 4444friends (Tatiana Chaikovskaya, Valentin Duduk, Anna Karanevskaya, and Ilya Malafei) will set up a bar as a social space to bring people together and for collective effects to manifest. The programme of events will include contributions by 4444friends together with performers, DJs and musicians. Although straightforward in form, the bar is conceptually inspired by the intimacies of friendship, codependence, creating together, cooperatives, and hospitality. 

Drawing on the history and experience of community organising and research into labour – both commercial and non-commercial – 4444friends will develop a space of co-creation and sharing. The purpose of the bar is not only to serve a prepared selection of drinks and snacks, but to enter into an experiment of learning, drinking, eating, and working together. 4444friends aim to emphasise processes that are tightly intertwined with consumption, and the care that is an integral part of it, with an understanding that care is a dynamic crucial to both times of relaxed happiness and sorrow. 

4444friends is the second project in a programme of performances co-organised by Kaunas Artists’ House (KAH) and Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts to take place in Kaunas, Nida and Vilnius throughout 2022. The programme’s first iteration Service took place on 18 June at KAH.  

4444friends’ programme of hospitality and performances is co-funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Neringa Municipality with the support of the Swiss Embassy to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Participants:

4444friends is exactly what it sounds like. Their shared background and collective memories translate into a mutual language and deep understanding of each other. Coming together is meaningful, inside jokes are thrown around and there is a whole vocabulary of half-phrases, hints, cues and specific references. This ease of working together and resonating, yet diverse, interests drive them to create for and share with others. It also means they are able to create an environment of hospitality and care. The bar as a format is therefore the perfect means of generating this environment, both as a space of interaction and a platform from which to host.

Titilayo Adebayo is an intuitive non-binary movement artist, creator, DJ and performer based in Zurich, Switzerland. As a dancer and performance artist they are part of the Schauspielhaus Zurich ensemble and the Trajal Harrell's dance company. Titilayo also goes by the alias Silver Tears, where performances are based on burlesque, joy, healing and emotive expression. At times Titilayo performs as Silver Tears for performances that are outside institutional contexts. They graduated with a degree in Dance from the University of Roehampton in London 2016 and since then have been performing and crafting.

Sholto Dobie was born in Edinburgh and currently lives in Vilnius. He works with sound, music and performances and organises events and exhibitions. He uses loose structures and an array of sound-sources including home-made organs, the hurdy-gurdy and field recordings. His performances are personal and intuitive, often coming across as delicate, evocative, and even absurd. He has released work with Penultimate Press, Mappa, Thanet Tape Center and TakuRoku. 

Viixii is a subsidiary project that was developed in the first months of war, when the author, Ksenia Scherbakova, was forced to pack her belongings and become a wanderer. Her voice and a recorder became the only available instrument for her work, so she recorded multiple sound samples from her surroundings. She then modified these sounds to create an immersive augmented reality experience – the reality she finds herself in at the moment are the beautiful dunes and forests of Neringa. She seeks to transform images that she sees herself into sound in order to invite the listener to experience these sounds visually.