July Buzz in NAC Residencies
- Published on Friday, 11 July 2014 14:02
In July Nida Art Colony is providing all present with an immersive experience of insect buzz on hot summer days, cold Baltic sea bathing sessions, sweat-breaking exercise of climbing up and down the hill to reach the only shopping spot in the perimeter of a few dozen kilometers, as well as a wonderful panoramic of the construction site of NAC house no.2, fabulously changing day by day. The rhythm is about to slow down in the main building (never in the hammering battlefield of the construction site though!) - most of the student practices will be over by mid-july, while the artist studios are buzzing with much more than just insect songs. Just reminding us that there is no summer holidays for the artistic process - it happens whenever it needs to.
In a couple of days (or is it just one? or a week? - time is very subjective in the Curonian spit) Thomas Mann festival will start in Nida, thus we're hesitant to open the doors into the insides of Philipp Hamann studio - he's here since the start of June, and we know he's about to burst as he's the Goethe Institute resident, preparing work to present at the T.M. Festival. For the sake of art, we're leaving him undisturbed this time and we promise to keep everyone interested updated as soon as Phillip presents his work.
http://www.philipphamann.com/
Meanwhile Daniel Spangler is working on, according to his own description, an experimental work of "linguistic science-fiction", made up of essays and dialogues that examine the rules and limitations of a complex language, its significance (or lack of significance) during a state of exile and perpetual wandering, and the communications infrastructure by which it is mediated and altered. This work will eventually take the form of a film and a novel and we are hoping to be able to screen the film in NAC as well as to include the novel into NAC library.
www.lostlift.com
This month three new residents have joined us: Austrian artist Katharina Swoboda and Lithuanian artists Rokas Dovydėnas and Dainius Liškevičius.
Katharina is working on a project under a working title "Zoe" (greek Ζωη, meaning "life"). According to the artist, "defined as an inhuman substance itself, it is life force that sustains human and non-human animals". Katharina is following Rosi Braidotti's attempts to understand "zoe" as a generative life force that flows through all living matter. Using the video camera as her work instrument, she intends to seek moments of connection and transition through relating to other beings, like animals or plants, and to question how zoe-centered images could look like.
Rokas Dovydėnas is trying to finalize the works made through 2011 up until summer 2014. During this period he was taking photographs of Vilnius and its suburbs and now he's taking time to evaluate the works and find the right form to present them.
http://www.letmekoo.lt/en/artists/rokas-dovydenas/
Last out of the five, but definitely not the least, Lithuanian artist Dainius Liškevičius is working on two big-scale projects. On one hand, he's preparing for Venice Biennial 2015, on the other hand, he's working on his new project "Labyrinth" to be presented on the 15th of November in CAC Vilnius.
http://www.letmekoo.lt/en/artists/dainius-liskevicius/
So that's how it goes. We work, we're always on the line, sometimes on the rope, working on the upcoming PhD Summer School, Res Artis regional meeting, Curated residency program and many more great things, reading new exciting books in NAC library, as f.ex. "Lucid Dreams & the Art of Dreaming Creatively", and - rarely - just watching the sea.
Pictures: above by Rokas Dovydėnas, beneath by Katharina Swoboda