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| Dunes, pines and contemporary art Triin Tulgiste, Art Critic | |
| The Nida Art Colony which opened in March 2011 will soon be celebrating its second birthday. Now is a good time to take a closer look at their doings. The institutionalisation of residency programmes in Eastern Europe is still a relatively new phenomenon and until recent times it has been pretty much one-way traffic for artists from the Baltic states. During the last years, things have started to change. For example, the emergence of residency programmes in Estonia has influenced the local art scene, encouraging it to become more diverse and open to different contemporary art practices. Still, the lack of international professionals is evident in the Baltic states and residencies are one way to alleviate this problem. The Nida Art Colony was opened in March 2011 as a subdivision of the Vilnius Academy of Art and it is one attempt to redress the so-called “geographical imbalances”(1). Rasa Antanavičiūtė, executive director of Nida Art Colony (NAC), has stressed(2) that orientation towards the West is changing, and more and more artists are interested in “exotic” places. Unfortunately East Europe isn’t the “exotic” one anymore, so it’s a kind of “semi-other”: not strange enough, but not as successful or similar enough either. In this context the location of Nida is double “other”, in the context of the West and also in the context of Vilnius as the art centre in Lithuania. But this is not a bad thing. Its remoteness can be a virtue, how-ever, it needs to be presented in the right way. Nida’s traditions as an art colony date back to the 19th century, when writers and painters went there to find inspiration and enjoy its unique nature. Today’s art colony is specialized in contemporary art, but it has nevertheless preserved something very romantic about it and I think this is one of the reasons that it attracts artists today. Remoteness has become a luxury. Hence the colony´s (still forming) identity is a mix of preserving the traditions of an art colony in Nida, the unique nature and also international contemporary art practices. NAC’s identity as a residency is still open and doesn’t have its own fixed identity. This can be seen as a bonus, according to Johan Pousette, who has stated that residencies should be more flexible and change in relation to the changing artistic practices(3). NAC has been open in many ways: they regularly invite critics and curators to give feedback to artists (as regards both their finished and unfinished projects) and also to the colony itself. | |
 Marika Troili. The Four Legs of the Postal Service. Object. In the background: Marika Troili. The Price of Brass in Nida. Object 2012 Publicity photo Courtesy of the Nida Art Colony | |
| The main point in the discussions held at the colony in December was that right now there are not enough process-centred residencies, and maybe that’s something that Nida should consider focusing on. To use Pousette’s words: “As art institutions increasingly become part of the entertainment industry, there are few free zones left for trial and error, development and research. As Groys predicted, artistic research within universities is one such area in which projects can be developed outside of the commercial market and wider neoliberal logic.“(4) Process-centred residencies should give artists all the means to do creative work but there is no obligation to produce an artwork at the end of a residency or take part in an exhibition. I think this is a great idea, but there are also some problems. Right now, residents in Nida stay there on average 1.5 months. As Nida is a really beautiful and unique place, artists tend to get stuck with their first overwhelming ideas about the place. And this could also be seen in the exhibition I will discuss later on. The answer would be to lengthen the residency period. Nida’s management have mentioned that they are more interested in long-term residents, but they still would like to keep it under six months. I’m sure that will make a difference and communicate better Antanavičiūtė’s vision about NAC as “slow motion therapy”(5). The building complex that is a former run-down storage facility today has been partly renovated and can host over 60 persons. Vytautas Michelkevičius, artistic director and curator of NAC, sees the colony as a place to undertake experiments and innovation in art education. As NAC is still part of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, this is a very reasonable idea. But one thing I felt that was missing was art education aimed towards the local people of Nida. It is well known that residencies should be something that everybody can draw on – institutions, artists and also the community of which the residency programme is a part. There have been several art projects that have encroached on local places like the mall and beach area, but maybe it would also help to start with some very simple courses or lectures that would attract members of the local community, and would also provide a discussion base for contemporary art related issues. Giving back to the community can also be seen in a broader perspective. As NAC residents are also curators, they could make more contact with Lithuanian local artists. It is common practice in Italy that curators in residence visit local artists and during their stay are obliged to organize an exhibition with some of the artists they have met. I understand that it takes extra resources, but in this way NAC could really make a difference to the local art scene. So far, the colony has been an active partner of Vilnius art life by organizing various exhibitions. NAC has a tradition of organizing an exhibition for the artists in residence. The last one of these was Taking Time at the Art Academy Museum in Vilnius from 11 till 15 December, 2012. Taking Time was a remarkable exhibition in the sense that artists showed their unfinished projects and opened them up for discussion and criticism. This put the critic into an unusual position – one does not just have to criticise the final artwork, but also gets a chance to discuss in what direction it should develop. Most of the artworks dealt with their immediate surroundings in Nida – all kinds of found objects and the sea were amongst the most popular subjects. As the exhibition consisted of very different projects – both finished artworks and also just ideas, or unfinished projects – the overall quality of the works was also very different. Nevertheless, among artworks that used local ready-mades there were some really strong examples, like Plants by Myroslav Vayda (Ukraine). Vayda created a link between two different desires – the ones that live in the forest and need an antenna to keep in touch with the outer world, and the ones that live in cities and need plants in order to keep in touch with nature. It dealt with remoteness and yearning, themes that will speak to people who live in remote places like Nida, but at the same time they are universal enough to tell something to everybody. One of the themes present in this exhibition was personal narrative. It was best seen in the works by Natalia Zintsova (Russia) and Marta Bogdanska (Poland). Zintsova’s My Own Small Private Collection of Amber was various yellow objects collected from the beach that looked like amber while they were still covered in sand. Bogdanska’s Blue Tape Notes was a series of notes taken in Nida, and also the paintings of tape that she had used to attach her notes to the wall. Both these works dealt with serial reproduction of some personal story, for Zintsova it was childhood memories and for Bogdanska it was creating a narrative of her being in a residency. It could be said that they both deal with some kind of disjunction: instead of amber there is rubbish, and also the series of notes are cut short by the fact that the notebook just didn’t have any more paper. (She only wanted to use a special kind of paper and when it was all gone, the series ended). If we look back to Vayda’s work, this is also a sign of disjunction. His installation is made of old antennas that he found on the streets of Nida. It is a sign of changing times. Technology has changed and with it our city landscapes, too. So there’s something very nostalgic about it, as in the works of Zintsova and Bogdanska. The same nostalgic mood can be discerned in Sigbjorn Bratlie’s (Norway) video Vacuum, a ship that is sailing in waters that used to be covered in ice. After the exhibition, the question remains whether showing unfinished projects is a good idea. As an art critic I found it very interesting to see in which direction artists were moving and to think together with them. If artists have professional feedback in the colony, then maybe it is not so necessary to bring these works to Vilnius, but to concentrate instead on some more elaborate projects. And one thing that would interest me, personally, is how these artworks look in the context of Lithuanian contemporary art, and what kind of dialogues or clashes would arise from this kind of confrontation etc. Anyway, it is clear that the real value of these works will be seen in some years’ time, when they could be the starting point for more comprehensive and wide-ranging art projects and exhibitions. (1) “The basic goals of residency programmes used to be individual artistic development and the pursuit of experimentation. Nowadays, residencies are often incorporated into the core of artistic practice, which allows geographical imbalances to be redressed, signalling an end to artistic discourses based on one-way traffic.” Anna Ptak. Re-tooling Residencies. 2011 www.re-tooling-residencies.org/media/upload/img/ReToolingResidencies_INT.pdf (2) ibid www.re-tooling-residencies.org/media/upload/img/ReToolingResidencies_INT.pdf. p 160 (3) Ibid p. 41 (4) Ibid p. 44 (5) Ibid p. 164 | |
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