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The Lithuanian Pavilion Without Walls is co-organized by Performa, the Lithuanian Culture Institute, and Consulate General of the Republic of Lithuania in New York, with generous support from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, among others. It is also generously supported by Lithuania Foundation. Together, the partners will commission and present new works by contemporary Lithuanian artists Lina Lapelytė and Pakui Hardware, as well as Performa Projects by Raimundas Malašauskas, Robert Narkus, and Augustas Serapinas.
Initiated in 2013, the Pavilion Without Walls program reflects Performa’s commitment to presenting the social, political, and artistic landscapes of different countries through live performance. Over the last decade, this curatorial platform has brought voices from Australia, Estonia, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Sweden, Finland, and Taiwan to New York audiences. Each Pavilion is developed over a two-year research period in close collaboration with cultural institutions, curators, artists, and educators from the featured country to create a dynamic and deeply contextual program.
Armen is a performance based on a personal collection of diasporic Armenian cassettes, vinyls, and VHS tapes of pop and disco records from the 1970s to the 1990s. Echoes of these tracks, sampled from the spots where the physical medium showed marks of wear and indentations (scratches, cuts, etc.) are woven throughout the 42-minute long recomposition. The performance version of the piece takes place in a taxi ride which taps into Arutiunian’s childhood memories of Armenia and of the music blasted out from aged Mercedes-Benz taxi speakers that greeted arrivals at Zvartnots Airport in Yerevan. In the performance version of “Armen”, the work is played through a taxi’s sound system and a cassette player, with the passengers being driven along a predetermined route. This act of listening to the record in a moving vehicle evokes a passage of a psychogeographic journey, a hypnotic speculation into diasporic memories, historic omissions, and sonic cuts.
Co-produced by Performa and Extra Extra. Curated by Defne Ayas, Senior Curator-at-Large, Performa, and Director, Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and Samira Benlaloua, Artistic Director, Extra Extra.
A Performa and Extra Extra Project. Produced by Performa and Extra Extra.
Supported by Creative Industries Fund, Consulate General of the Netherlands, Lithuanian Cultural Institute, Mondriaan Fund, the Municipality of Rotterdam, and the Netherland-America Foundation.
