Dear reader,

First of all, sorry for keeping you wait, I have been meaning to write you this letter a few weeks ago, but you know, how things can get busy here, the letter had to wait for the right moment. 

I’m doing well. After a week spent in Kintai at The Curonian Lagoon, with the Alternative Education programme curators and participants I feel recovered, sharper and healthier. The iodine my skin has absorbed over these seven days clearly did its job. I guess we all need a retreat out of the city to not only take care of our tired bodies (get them tanned, well-nurtured and healthy), but also reset the embodied patterns of our everyday activities such as listening, speaking, remembering and reading. The latter has become the core of our week-long residence: what do we actually read when we read, do we read ourselves when we read someone else’s text? How is our memory constructed and how can we notice and read its signs through the vernacular language of the everyday? So much to think about and carefully practice! The results of our discussions will be presented at the final programme event late next month, so stay tuned. 

Speaking about language, the marathon of Mekas’ events are nearing its end, and I dedicate the final exhibition event to the words, written, spoken and intersecting with sounds and images. The event on the 18th July will be another and the final occasion to speak and reflect on Jonas Mekas and his poetry at Rupert. This time, I will do it with a company of fellow poets, writers, artists and translators who have different connections to Jonas Mekas: Vyt Bakaitis, Vaiva Grainytė, Valentinas Klimašauskas, Monika Kalinauskaitė, Aušra Kaziliūnaitė, Sara Poisson, Eglė Paulina Pukytė, Laima Kreivytė, Anastasia Sosunova, Rokas Pralgauskas, Jolanta Zabarskaitė, Brenda Ijima and Stephanie Grey. Many have worked closely with the artist, and all have been informed or inspired by him and his work on different occasions; people who crossed paths with him once, missed him once or never managed to meet him. Soon, their contributions will be available for everyone to read on my website. 

So if you have a free moment in-between your summer plans, come visit me at this lovely sandy river beach. And your visit can easily turn into one-day out-of-the-city retreat. 

Image: Detail from the architecture of Jonas Mekas ‘Let me dream utopias’ at Rupert. Photo by Andrej Vasilenko

In residence

Emilie Pitoiset

Emilie Pitoiset (France) is an artist, choreographer and writer based in Paris. With a background in gymnastics and dance she questions the absence of the body through inherited behaviours, rituals, sexuality, and money. Group exhibitions include Witte de With, Pompidou Center, Palais de Tokyo, Shirn Museum Frankfurt am Main, Tai Kwun Contemporary Hong-Kong, and her work is part of several collections including Mnam – Centre Pompidou and  FNAC. During her residency, she will work on a lecture and edition called Where Did Our Love Go? focussing on dance, subcultural movements and how society has a direct effect on behaviours, shapeshifting and how clubs and their music impact people when bodies meet.

In residence

Rachael Finney

Rachael Finney (United Kingdom) is an artist working across sound, video, installation and performance. Her work investigates the material qualities of the voice, often dissecting it and dividing it from language in order to interrogate it as a new acoustic object. At Rupert she will consider ideas related to invisibility,  erasure and sonic agency in relation to backing vocal groups performing in during the 1960s. Considering a new mode of listening that attends to the ‘lower frequencies’ of which these voices are often situated and to develop a video/performance essay that engages with sound, image and the artists body.