What do the residents of November 2013 do in Nida Art Colony?

Published on Tuesday, 19 November 2013 14:26

November wind blew some changes to Nida Art Colony – in the beginning of this month three previous residents left and their studios were occupied by three newcomers – Taavi Suisalu (EE), Theun Karelse (NL) and Petr Zhukov (RU).

Besides newcomers, the Colony still hosts three previously presented artists who will leave Nida in the end of November. Sculptor Tomas Martišauskis (LT) who is doing Techno-ecologies residency has developed his primary idea that deals with the sea level, changing coast, migrating landscape and the site/time specific situation into four separate works: “Above the level” (about the sea level), “Save as” (nature vs. digit), “Sextant” (site-specific work) and “Solid skin” (digital object).

Hannes Gruber (AT, DE) who has arrived for an individual residency through the Artist Exchange programme “Vorarlberg goes Nida” spends his time drawing different models of hospital beds from around the world, the technique is aquarelle and the purpose… According to Hannes, it cannot be said, he simply likes it. Hospital beds somehow refer to sadness and threat, but watercolor makes them more cute. The artist is also taking photos of removed signs and people looking away – all this content conjoins into the imaginary “cult of absence”. In this way Hannes promotes the need to ignore and to forget: “Don’t look! Don’t listen!”. Unfortunatelly the artist is leaving in few days. No doubt, there will be less laughing and impressive smells in the kitchen as Hannes is gifted with a great sense of humor and enjoys connecting people through delicious food.

Individual resident Yann Vanderme (FR) is rarely seen around - most of the time he spends in his studio working hard. Yann is preparing two exhibition projects: making a 3D video as a part of the intallation for French Culture Institute in Vilnius and another work for MAC/VAL, a museum near Paris.

A newcomer Theun Karelse (NL) is currently based in Amsterdam and belongs to FoAM, a cultural laboratory that re-imagines possible futures at the interstices of art, science, nature and everyday life. As well as T. Martišauskis, Theun arrived to NMK for a Techno-ecologies residency. From the very beginning of his residency Theun expressed his interest in Curonian landscape, especially forests and species of local lichens.  According to him, ecological restoration seems to be an edge where the interaction and dependencies between culture and nature are particularly pronounced. Neringa has an amazing history of interaction with the landscape. Thus this artist is looking forward to learn more about the reforestation as a design process and how open the process is now. He has already talked to Jurgita Mikšytė, the Head of Forestry Division of Curonian Spit National Park, and rifled through surrounding forests looking for a right place to insert a specific lichen that he has brought from Portugal.

Taavi Suisalu (EE) is an artist who works with a variety of media including sound, new media and performance. He arrived to Nida Art Colony for a Critical Tourism residency with the intention to explore tourism as a performative action with its specific formats and rituals by staging interventions and/or creating artefacts in public space. Taavi is especially interested in the sonic aspects of tourism as it is something which is usually restrained with the visual and therefore suffers the most. Having been here for a couple of weeks, he is finding himself more and more interested in the restrictions placed on human actions in Curonian Spit National Park which is actually designed by human.

Artist Petr Zhukov (RU) comes from Moscow and is a member of Upward! Community which consists of young artists working with the ideas of Russian cosmism. During a Critical tourism residency in Nida Art Colony Petr is going to do a research on Nida’s cultural history and status which would result in a video film. As a central narration point of his project Petr is planning to hold a spirituality session with artists in residency (quite a big tradition starting from Roerich and earlier to Takovsky and others). During such sessions artists meet and interact with artists/cultural actors of the past (Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, German expressionists, Thomas Mann, Teutonic Knight, etc.). Petr is also willing to take some interviews with locals and artists in residency on this theme. Last week he spent a lot of time shooting and filming outside by night and also invited other colonists to take part in his project. Besides the artistic work, Petr is regularly baking bread and has already organised a workshop for NAC’s inhabitants.

Although autumn in Nida is getting deeper and darker, daily routine of the Colony is still vivid and diverse: residents are often cycling around, sometimes collecting amber on the beach, playing ping-pong, browsing the mediatheque and gathering almost every evening around the table for a collective meal and talks.

P.S. To see some pictures from a cycling trip to Preila and Vecekrugas hill press here.