Thinking and Working Through Land: Practices with Grounds Marked by Politics and War

Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts
E. A. Jonušo g. 3
Neringa LT-9312

Participants: Areej Ashhab, Asia Bazdyrieva, Conny Frischauf, Danute Līva and Darya Akhrameika, Goda Jurevičiūtė, Sienos Grupė (represented by Aušrinė Gogelytė, Mantautas Šulskus, Vaiva Vinskaitė, Vuk Vukotic)

Held at the close of a six-year programme at Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts under the directorship of Egija Inzule, this gathering in Nida brings together practitioners and organisations whose practices have informed and resonated with the programme in recent years, alongside new encounters and distant allies bound by the urgency to address the politics of land. It marks the conclusion of this chapter of VAA NAC while also opening onto future continuations, reflecting on how land has been irreversibly exploited in geopolitical conflicts, past and present, and how cultural practices respond to the traces left by military and economically driven exploitation.

This gathering begins from ecocide: the imprint of power on land – through extraction or enforced growth, pollution or militarisation. It names the alteration of ecologies beyond repair, the deliberate erasure of habitats, the displacement of communities, and the marks that remain in soil, water, and air long after the violence has passed. In parallel, cultural practices have responded to these urgencies – articulating and documenting, holding space for grief and resistance, and insisting on the political weight of ecological collapse. The gathering seeks to dwell on these responses, to bring them into dialogue, and to consider what it means for practitioners to work with and through land under conditions of systemic violence.

Situated in Nida, itself marked by a border regime that divides what was once connected, the discussions turn to the layered inscriptions of conflict, displacement, and extraction, shaped by an urgency underscored by the political present. Practitioners gather here from Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, Palestine, and Latvia  – regions where histories of occupation, militarisation, and ecological collapse are bound together, impossible to think of in isolation from one another. Decisions such as the withdrawal of Lithuania and several Nordic countries from the Ottawa Convention – the international treaty banning the use, stockpiling, and transfer of landmines – and the subsequent reintroduction of landmines into their territories, will leave consequences for communities living in these regions, for migrants, and for ecosystems – traces that will remain embedded in the ground for generations. Within this context, the gathering reflects on the social lives of materials, on how land and its elements bear these histories, and on the ways they carry relations and political weight into the present.

Funded by Lithuanian Council for Culture