What do residents of December 2013 do in Nida Art Colony?

Published on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 12:47

The morning of December the 9th could be announced as an official beginning of winter in Curonian Spit – nature and surroundings were robed in white, paths covered with ice, regular walkers slowed down the step… Together with winter snow four new residents arrived to Nida Art Colony – Erin Tjin A Ton from the Netherlands and even three Shouth American artists – Luisa Nobrega (Brasil), Maricel Delgado and Fernando Prieto (Peru). 

At the moment the Colony is hosting seven artists-in-residency who work in rather different fields but share a common interest in rich nature, historical and cultural resources of Nida.

Petr Zhukov (RU) who is residing in Nida Art Colony in the context of Critical tourism program is working day and night. He has almost finished outdoor shootings of apparent spirits in Neringa landscape (as Petr says, genius and general ones) and now concentrates on indoor shootings of medium practices and interviews on experiences related to spirits. Petr is also willing to work with some archival footage of Neringa in the 20th century as well as to record a Lithuanian translation of one Russian poem as a song . On December the 3rd Petr in a collaboration with another resident Taavi Suisalu (EE) and with great help of NAC’s producer Linas organized “Cosmos gaze” event in Nida’s airport – a live broadcast of launching a space craft has been projected straight on the forest.

Taavi Suisalu (EE), another resident of Critical tourism program, has been organising diy nightseeing tours which are series of events that explore the dark side of off-season Nida guided only by the exposing gaze of the lighthouse. The lack of sight allows tourists to adjust the proportion of (their) visual sensations in overall experience to a minimum, giving more breadth to other instruments inherent in human bodies and (more) space for unguided narratives. In addition to continuing these tours, Taavi is also working on a sound installation which considers quite constant background hum of Nida as a noise/sound pollution.

The documentations of diy nightseeing tour Vol.1 and Vol.2 are posted in NAC’s Facebook page.

Theun Karelse (NL), a resident of Techno-ecologies program, is constantly spotted leaving NAC’s building whether if it is a storm or bright sunshine outside. At the moment he is working on assisted migration of lichens, vegetation forecasting and landscape restoration of damage by tourists. Moreover, Theun is thinking about designs for a plant-specimen collection backpack. Pity that he is leaving in a week – a recent commune of Nida Art Colony will lose its naturalist/ecologist.

A newcomer Luisa Nobrega (BR) could be called a nomad – in recent years she has been traveling from one residency to another. Luisa arrived to Nida directly from Armenia and after two and a half months would head for Iceland. Through performance art, video and literature, she searches for ways of exploring friction zones that arise in the relationship between emission and reception, desire and language, voice and word. During her residence in Nida Art Colony Luisa is researching (and trying to recreate) the soviet scientific experiments concerning hypnosis, telepathy and psychokinesis. 

Erin Tjin A Ton (NL) is a visual artist who works with a variety of media such as textile, ceramics and photography. Through her work she questions various relationships between people and objects. While staying in Nida Erin would like to challenge herself to work in a more experimental way than she did until now. She would like to focus more upon visual research in the form of drawings, pictures, movies and material try-outs. 

Last week one of five residency studios in NAC was occupied by two Peruvian artists who arrived to Nida in the middle of the night! Maricel Delgado (PE) is mainly working with photography based projects and is interested in the idea of distance. She investigates how physical, mental, metaphoric space between a place/state and other is experienced, thought and represented. During her residence in NAC Maricel is going to work on the confrontation between cartographic and photographic representation of the place as well as a series of photographs trying to discover the visual common ground and avoiding otherness.

Fernando Prieto (PE) mainly works with objects and drawing. According to Fernando, each work in relation to its materiality, weight, equilibrium, fragility or stability tries to open a new possible configuration to rethink our way to observe and do things in general. While being in Nida this artist is going to focus on observing closer relations between human constructions and nature, subtle aspects of light, weather and housing.

The arrival of winter certainly affects the life of colonists – extra things/activities are needed: extra pair of socks, extra cup of tea or excercising in the morning to get really warm, extra time to walk (or even slide) to “Maxima”, extra energy to wade through the snow, extra batteries for a camera while waiting for a moose to photograph it and so on. However, regardless of all these extras, residents continue dealing with the inspiration and the process of creating.