Return Kaunas

How I ended up in Lithuania and how it went on

In 2008, nine years ago, we rented a house and studio in Berlin: a great way to have two months of concentrated work in the summer. I worked in the studio of Almyra, an artist from Lithuania who lives in Berlin. Among the books in her bookcase, I discovered a catalog of the Kaunas Textile Biennial. I was curious and sent the organization an email with a link to my website. Soon there came a reply. There was interest but - unfortunately - almost no money, and because I didn't feel like having to arrange transportation myself, I left it at that.
There was still an occasional invitation email, but otherwise I heard nothing more. A few years later (2014) I received an email asking if I would be interested in signing up for Art-Cart, a website where you can buy and sell art, and after a while it turned out that I had been chosen as the winner of the Art-Cart prize by the visitors of the site. Yay! I had won a solo exhibition in a room of the Kaunas Picture gallery in Kaunas. That was fun until I saw the photos of the exhibition space: not a museum room, but more like a corridor or hallway without walls where anything can hang. I decided against the exhibition. Yet this too had a tail end.

Ana Čižauskienė, the administrator of Art Cart invited me to the Kaunas Biennale 2015, of which Nicolas Bourriaud was the curator. There was a central exhibition in Paštas, a vacant post office, and I was allowed to fill a 150 m2 space in the former vacant Drobė textile factory. During the three weeks I was in Kaunas, I made a large installation made of fabrics from Kaunas, inspired by the building's past, and a few days before the opening I got the idea to invite actors or dancers to make a short virtually, improvised performance in and with the installation.

pictures of the rehearsal Orinta Znojevai

That's how I came into contact with Birutė Letukaitė, artistic director of AURA dance theatre, a young ambitious and international dance company. She invited me to their studio, where ten dancers "auditioned" for me and I was able to pick five dancers at random. After taking their measurements, I went straight to work, as there was not much time left to sew five costumes. In the meantime, the dancers worked on the performance in my installation. The presentation took place on a perfectly normal Tuesday evening at 6 pm. In the Netherlands you wouldn't expect anyone to be there at that time, but it got busy, too busy in fact, and part of the installation more or less disappeared among the audience. It was exciting and good, I had never done anything like it before, and in a different context I might never have done it.

Six months after that, Ana invited me for a solo presentation at the art fair in Vilnius (June 2016). An important fair, not so much because of sales, but mainly because it is a meeting place for all art initiatives in the Baltic States. My photographs were on display and every day my performance was overheard at the art fair performed twice: three living, stationary, sculptures carry on a conversation about what it is like to be a work of art and part of an art fair. The performance was performed again six months later at Janina Monkute-Marks Museum and a year later at a sponsor dinner for Art Vilnius 2017. Meanwhile, I had become friends on Facebook with Birutė, the artistic director of AURA and she invited me to collaborate in a dance performance. I would become responsible for the concept and costumes, she for the choreography. Money was applied for at the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture. It was exciting and scary at the same time. My work had never moved before, until then it was still sculptures and photographs.

Nevertheless, I said yes and a few months later I sent my proposal. In a Skype conversation Birutė turned out not to be very enthusiastic: she had seen something like this before. I didn't like that, but maybe I had taken the dancers into account too much and it was smarter to go my own way. The figures in my work are often half man and half object, there is never a face to be seen. How can you dance if you can't move and can't see anything, but maybe such handicaps are also a challenge.

In June 2017, I received word that the ministry would fund the project. There was money for the concept, my work, materials, airfare, and a daily stipend for food and drinks. I could work and stay overnight in the residency of AURA. Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, I was adapting the concept to fit more with my visual work. I wanted it to look graphic and clean. The costumes had to be sculptural, but there also had to be opportunities for the dancers to move. Initially I was asked to design six costumes, but it ended up being ten. After several trials that I was not enthusiastic about, everything fell into place. The dancers were to be half sculpture with only the arms and upper body remaining visible and all the costumes and patterns were to be in black and white. I bought fabrics in Amsterdam. I was able to borrow a sewing machine from the director of the Kaunas Biennale, my locker - if I didn't take too much with me - could go in my suitcase.

I could work and live in AURA's residency: a living room with kitchen and bed, an extra bedroom where I could sew, a hallway where I could iron and a toilet and bathroom. On October 9, 2017, I left for Kaunas, in the evening Birutė came by and I showed her my two proposals. It became a difficult and demotivating conversation. She was not enthusiastic (again), and even suggested making a choreography with the work I had made for the biennial a year earlier. Had I worked for a few months for nothing? I thought to myself that I was on the right track. After a sleepless night, I took the two costumes to the dance studio. Two dancers put it on and began to move and I had not anticipated that the costumes held so much potential. Birutė also became enthusiastic and she apologized for having been too quick with her judgment. The concept was adjusted a bit more in consultation.

photos of the rehearsal Orinta Znojevaitė

The dancers begin as sculpture, legs under a kind of long skirt, head covered, upper body in a T-shirt and gradually the costume is peeled off and
is left with shorts, each in a different color, the men a bare upper body and the women an elegant black bra.

I was happy to move on, but it was going to be quite a job to finish the ten costumes in time, because the remaining eight costumes still had to be made and designed. A costume has different requirements than a sculpture. All the seams must be strong, so that the dancers don't tear out of their pants at the first move. Buttons shouldn't pinch, everything should be true to size. The days were long, but during the weeks I was there it rained almost continuously. Good weather to work and on the second to last day the costumes, headgear, T-shirts and shorts were ready. Everything was fitted and it was nice to see how the costumes force the dancers to make only small subtle movements. As soon as they do too much, they stumble, but I'm amazed at all the possibilities they get out of the costumes nonetheless. I am sorry that I could not be present at the rehearsals: an injury to a dancer threw a spanner in the works and the premiere that was supposed to take place on November 25 was postponed.

I have to go back to Amsterdam and every now and then I see a picture of the rehearsals. On Facebook I follow AURA. My performance is just one of their many projects and meanwhile they have performances in Cologne, Münster, Tokyo and Turin. But on January 27, 2018, my premiere is scheduled and I will go to Kaunas again. It would be great if this performance could also be performed in the Netherlands.

It's funny how a catalog in Almyra's bookshelf triggered so much and ultimately led to this dance performance.

www.gudakoster.nl
www.aura.lt
https://vimeo.com/256564138