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| It’s the ideas that remain Krišs Salmanis, Artist Conversation with artist Gintaras Didžiapetris | |
| Krišs Salmanis: So, a brief introduction to Gintaras Didžiapetris. Gintaras Didžiapetris: Well, I lead a simple life in Vilnius, where I was born and raised. I like the city, and I have good friends here that I can have a good chat to. Not a chat that lasts for an hour or so, but an extended conversation. Maybe one that lasts over a year, the same conversation taking different forms. One that you don’t have to finish, or worry about breaking off because you only have a limited period of time. It’s a luxury. Vilnius is the city that is best to come back to. That of course also implies that Vilnius is not the city to stay too long in. A kind of love-hate relationship, like with parents... It is also a good place to think and to concentrate. Vilnius is my education, too. K.S.: How did this show come about(¹)? G.D.: Most of my friends and I met at art school. Some of them also took part in this exhibition, and it is the first joint show for this particular group. We were asked by kim? if we would like to do a show in Riga. Maybe they had something particular in mind, but we thought it would be much more interesting to do it as a brief note or an introduction to a much broader subject, that is, the Vilnius contemporary art scene. We didn’t want to represent it, though, we wanted to have the show as one whole piece made up of different situations. K.S.: The school that you mentioned... G.D.: I’d rather not speak about school. It’s not too relevant to my development as an artist. I don’t think about it and now I would prefer to spend my time somewhere else. It wasn’t so bad because of some brilliant people I met there, and I finished it after four years. Because it is better to complete what you’ve started. K.S.: So what are your main influences? G.D.: The first thing, of course, is the city. Later I was influenced by too many things. My friends and I, we shared a lot of diverse material, be it literature, theory, philosophy or art. Everything leaves an impression. It is interesting to observe certain shapes evolving out of conversations about these things. And the fact that you start off with something you know or want to talk about doesn’t mean the discussion has to carry on in the paradigm of your initial question. In the end you find yourself talking about something you don’t know, and that is learning. And I am interested in that. I am interested in the way knowledge is being produced and shared, and how you can learn to learn. K.S.: Would that be the ‘red thread’ that runs through your work? G.D.: It’s not a thread, it’s a problem. So it is a knot maybe, containing several threads. Problems that you can pursue. You may start with a red thread, reach the knot and see it turn into a blue one. Knowledge is always knowing and not knowing simultaneously, and it’s interesting what this positively produces. K.S.: Where in this analogy is your exhibition to be found? G.D.: I think of exhibitions as little systems, paradigms or constructions that are built as examples. It is not an illustration to a problem but a structure in itself. It may contain more knots than one. Not just something that exists, but a structure that actually works as an organism. I believe that certain objects have the capability of thinking for themselves. It is no longer the case that you produce something and then put it on show, [rather] they are little thought organisms that you bring into the world without even knowing what kind of an adventure or effect they will have. K.S.: Is that why you are so cautious about creating works? G.D.: Building a house, for example, is never an isolated event, it is always part of a much bigger process. It involves, first of all, basic things like the climate. The Renaissance could never have been born here. And when it all starts to take shape it is always a form, never an abstraction in the sense of purely not-knowing. Knowing creates shapes. I am interested, for example, in your National Library. How it is taking shape, what it represents and what it actually means. When it finally will be realized in concrete material, it will be interesting to think about the idea of the architect and your notion of it. And here knowing and not-knowing comes together. It can be interpreted in unintended ways, which can turn out to be much more interesting and creative. | |
 Ģintars Didžapetris. Parodos. Exhibition view. 2009. Courtesy: Gintaras Didžapetris, Tulips & Roses, Brussels | |
| K.S.: How is your work interpreted? G.D.: Usually people say very interesting things that I can later use for future works. I don’t have the illusion of making something beyond art. It is just a matter of timing. Like telling a joke. Documenting my work is also basically recognising that photography is one of the systems, a very complex system of the economy of space and translations. I see it as production of new pieces. Usually there is not enough time for it. I’m fine with that, but I don’t want my work to be extended in such a primitive way. Photography is a separate organism, it can start an interesting discussion. There are sculptures that I prefer to see in photographs. They make them into a completely different works of art, shapes that I enjoy. Seeing both the sculpture and its representation would be even more interesting. The combination of the Eiffel Tower and pictures of it makes the best image, for example. I really like the Eiffel Tower, by the way. It describes itself very well. It is well-proportioned, a beautiful building that characterises its age and acts as a promise for many rational structures that came later. It’s a piece of writing for me, maybe that’s why I like to see it both in real life and in pictures. Did you know that there was this guy who convinced someone else that he owned the tower, and then sold it to him? It was a famous scam. K.S.: You did a piece based on this idiosyncrasy of photography by documenting someone else’s work.(²) Ģ.D.: Oh, yes, Gerard Byrne. He is a good artist. I didn’t want to do what he did with his New York photographs, instead I wanted to build a further stage for his show. The initiatives that he is undertaking already have their place in the world. That created the possibility for this show to take place at another time in the future as a much better informed event. I’ve been thinking about this exhibition going in both directions from the moment when it happens. Being an archive and at the same time producing the future. K.S.: And the current exhibition? It seems that the viewer needs to know the story behind it. G.D.: No. You don’t need a story. When we visited kim? in January we chose this room, even though it hadn’t been used for shows before. We thought we could build a show that, instead of being the standard display of things, would use a room that already contains all the necessary equipment. We kind of entered the show from the back door. Not showing the exhibition, but playing it back in this space. The room is full of knowledge, lectures and discussions. And that is interesting, because each of our works has a very precise textual ingredient and a much deeper content, when you think in terms of language and thought. Instead of formal problems there are intellectual ones. Thoughts that have been brought back to Riga and are being played back here as archival footage. A conversation is taking place in different parts of the room. We knew that Antanas [Gerlikas – K.S.] was working on a video, so Elena [Narbutaitė – K.S.] was planning to have her exhibition in his video, in the form of an insert. But in the end, the video was so precisely edited that it did not really need it, so Elena did her show in his work as a sound piece. It is somewhere else, but it fills the entire space of the exhibition she describes, and she does it very well. All these suggestions became the leitmotif of the show, the plinth on which we put out our things. Nicolas’ [Matranga – K.S.] work consists of the notes he made while reading a book, which later were worked into a poster design. Like a book that is being published before the author even knows that it is going to be a book. Nicolas wrote his notes on a computer, which immediately translated into text. An abstract, dadaist text, a collage of thoughts. The immateriality of words becomes an amazing possibility for anything. We asked Liudvikas [Buklys – K.S.] if he would create the architecture for this show. We didn’t want to use walls, as we had imagined the show as a ship with all the works on board. You climb on deck, see the contents and then the ship sails away. Liudvikas agreed, but wanted his architecture to be separate from the room. I found this to be a fantastic idea, and he constructed this little model, without which the exhibition cannot be viewed in the same light any more. All these little things were gradually built into a castle called A Thing Spins a Leaf by the Wind. K.S.: Would you say that this exhibition is site-specific? Ģ.D.: Site-specific is what people do on the spot. If you have to redo a piece when you want to transport it, they call it site-specific. So to my mind this show can be described as site-specific. We made these works with this particular space in mind and were a bit surprised about the changed colour of the walls. But that’s fine, we liked the fact that we cannot make any decisions regarding the room itself. It reflects kim?’s idea about cosiness and contemporary art. We wished to speak directly, without metaphors. It would have been difficult in a white cube, because there every gesture becomes metaphorical. So you get a very complicated relationship between what is being said to you and what is being presented. Every piece in this show is also an introduction to a larger work. Elena will be presenting the same piece in a different form later, in Austria. Liudvikas is planning a solo show in Brussels, where this object is to become a space that takes everything else into consideration. Nicolas will continue reading his book and maybe even write one himself. Antanas’ work is the most complete, but it acts as a base for every other work here in the exhibition. K.S.: For your white star on the balcony door, too? Ģ.D.: Yes, it is about one ninth of the actual work that I want to do. It is like a missing part, an archaeological find that doesn’t tell you anything other than hint about its time. I’m trying to find my time. It is something I will do in the future, but I already know what it will look like. It will be an exhibition next year. I feel the responsibility to do something that makes sense first of all to myself. Not to pretend to be able to make something extra relevant to the context. But in the end it always turns out to be super relevant. Maybe because it is somewhat abstract, maybe because the things I am concerned with concern many people. My work is transparently personal. I am more interested in what you know than in showing you what I know. K.S.: How will you find out what I know? Ģ.D.: The moment you put something into the world it becomes part of the world. If you accept it as a viewer, even if you don’t know anything about it, you still see it. It does not disappear, it will always be there. This basic guarantee allows me to be very relaxed. There are things out there that are meant to be thought about, looked at, listened to. That is the only condition we have to fulfil. Think, look, listen, walk around it. That’s how art exists in this world. K.S.: So you are thinking about art? Ģ.D.: Art is part of the world. When you say, “So, you are thinking only about art”, are you thinking about something else? Maybe in some distant corner of your mind you are thinking about fishing, and this leap across is fantastic. Art cannot be only about art if it has a viewer that is thinking about fishing. But I see it very pragmatically. An artist is a worker. My responsibility, the same as that of a fisherman or a sports-man, is to do my best. But we all walk around and talk. And that’s nice. | |
 Gintaras Didžiapetris. Gerard Byrne's 1984 and Beyond. Color photograph. 2008. Courtesy: Gintaras Didžapetris, Tulips & Roses, Brussels | |
| K.S.: What’s happening in Lithuania? Ģ.D.: A number of interesting shows are coming up, or did you mean it more generally? It’s all going slowly and steadily, everyone is doing their own thing. Except that people, sometimes, are unable to distance themselves from the processes surrounding them. This distance would allow them to see a clearer picture of what’s going on, its direction and the people behind it. Maybe this show connected me with things I don’t want to be connected with, but it did not seem too demanding, so we did it. The result we will see later. Those who work a lot are starting to achieve what they have earned. Opportunities to join in exciting things and do even more of what they like. K.S.: What makes it possible? G.D.: I have always believed that it is their work, motivation and curiosity. K.S.: Your works often deal with the past or its remnants. G.D.: What else is available? K.S.: Good point, but how much of it do you yourself remember? The Sputnik (2007) (a Soviet-era slide projector of the same name, placed on a on a plinth, projecting a satellite image of the Earth onto the wall) could not have been a personal experience, most likely. Ģ.D.: Well, it is personal, because it touches everyone. It deals with the past as something that is physically still here with us, so we can use it. It’s not over. It cannot be over. It is an important issue with these kinds of works – I wanted to talk about the way stories are being made, and the way they can be re-made and read. Our expectations from the past and our idea of it are important. Now think of something from your National Museum of Art, anything. Is it exactly the same thing that is hanging on the wall? Or is it something very different in shape, material and meaning? If you follow the line of thought from this point you may find it somewhere in the waves of the Daugava river. I want to work with a past that is not over yet and is not on the wall of a museum. The past that has transformed itself and become a skyscraper. And it is our responsibility to analyse, to create a context for it, to ask questions and be aware that everything we do or do not produce becomes part of the same archive. It should be a way of playing a game while it is being invented. K.S.: You once made a work that you didn’t make. Ģ.D.: Yes, it was a deal that was part of an exhibition at the CAC dealing with the legacy of conceptual art. A collector I know had heard I was about to do a show, so he asked me what I was making and if he could buy something from the exhibition. So I replied, “If you are ready to buy something straight away, then I don’t really have to make anything.” I suggested that he buys a work that I wouldn’t make. He agreed. So we made an agreement, but it was not a contract. People often make that mistake. I didn’t do anything, he just transferred the money. I have one work that I will never do in my life. But the collector owns it. I was impressed by his motivation, it was really beautiful. K.S.: How important is the market, curators, institutions? Ģ.D.: I think that you have to be very smart to be able to comment on it and to make money from it. I didn’t want to be critical, because I couldn’t be critical in that situation. I just did something that was possible in the circumstances. I am very lucky to have met the curator that I am still working with already during my studies. Just recently I began to understand what people usually mean by ‘curator’ or ‘institution’. In Vilnius, all the artists, curators etc. hang out in the same bar. I believe that the less we care about the formal differences between the professions the better. The time I have spent working with the curator has been much more productive than the hours spent with some artists complaining about things. It is again a matter of rhetoric used in the conversation between you and an institution. Sometimes the relationship between local or global economies within artist-run spaces, for example, is much more problematic than being in a museum and putting up a show. But before we go into a vocabulary that is not valid yet, we have basic problems to solve in Lithuania and Latvia. When we have real institutions, we will be able to reflect on the quality of their work, but right now there is no real politics. We cannot speak of a relationship between artist and curator because they are just neighbours, they grew up together. The same as one cannot distinguish between an institutional curator and a freelancer, or a commercial and non-commercial gallery in Lithuania. K.S.: How does working with Adam Carr and other Western curators compare with collaborations at home? Ģ.D.: It’s the same neighbourly relations, except that the network is bigger. You are neighbours not because you want to, but because you work for the same thing. I like to think of it as an opportunity to switch to a different speed of thought. Institutions enable you to do things that otherwise would not be possible. The decision to do something here was made quickly. K.S.: What are you reading? Ģ.D.: I’ve just read two small Italian volumes from a parallel-text series by Penguin. The original text is on one page, and the exact same text translated word for word into English on the opposite page. It helps learn the language. What I usually get from a book is either an impression or a set of ideas, instead of a literary effect. I am never able to say which writer is good with adjectives or who writes in what style. In the end it’s the ideas that remain. (¹) Gintaras Didžiapetris (1985) was taking part in an exhibition of Lithuanian contemporary art A Thing Spins a Leaf by the Wind, at the gallery kim?, August 7–29. (²) Gerard Byrne’s 1984 and Beyond (2008) is a colour photograph of the Irish artist’s exhibition held at the CAC, Vilnius in 2007. Didžiapetris received Byrne’s permission to remove all contemporary elements from it (equipment etc.) in order to document the show as if it had taken place in the past. The work can also be seen at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, in the exhibition Lithuanian Art 2000–2010: Ten Years, on show until 14 November. | |
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