Dear Friends,
The shortest month of the year has almost passed and the river streams have been fed by the melting ice… I can already feel the end of winter and it’s put me in a metamorphic mood. Last week Lithuania celebrated its Restoration of the State day. That day, 101 years ago, the document claiming the Restoration was signed by 20 men who gathered for a few hours and then had lunch together. As usually happens in how history is written, or should I say re-written, some of the important narratives eventually are pushed into the background. And so it is a relatively unknown fact that the day after the signing ceremony, a group of intellectuals in Kaunas stood up to protest against the exclusion of women from the most important political events of the newly established Lithuanian state. The petition presented by the group of activists (most of them female) was signed by more than 20 000 people. Less than 2 years after the original petition, Lithuania became one the first countries in Europe to acknowledge women voting rights.

I am pleased to let you know that among this amorphous month’s celebrations is Rupert’s 5th Anniversary Publication launch! After a year-long pilot programme, Rupert established itself as a centre for art and education in a new building in 2013 and now we are celebrating all those artists, theorists, curators and many more who have since help build this incredible international and local community. I would like to thank all these friends of Rupert for their contributions:
Aapo Nikkanen; Abri de Swardt; Audrius Pocius; Augustas Serapinas, Jonas Mekas and Justė Jonutytė; Adomas Narkevičius; Alex Turgeon; Anastasia Sosunova; Anders Kreuger; Andrej Polukord; Anna Gritz and Lynn Hershman Leeson; CAConrad; core.pan; Danai Giannoglou; David Ruebain and Maria Sarycheva; Dora García; Eli Cortiñas; Elvia Wilk; Erik Martinson; Jude Crilly and Floris Schönfeld; Jaakko Pallasvuo; Garrett Nelson; Gerda Paliušytė; GIRLISONFIRE; Giulia Civardi; Holly Childs; Indrė Šerpytytė; Jacob Dwyer; Jasmine Picôt Chapman; Jacquelyn Davis; Johanna Kotlaris; Jonas Vaitiekūnas; Joshua Simon; Julie Béna; Julijonas Urbonas; Justinas Dūdėnas and Šarūnas Šlektavičius; Kaspars Groševs; Kotryna Markevičiūtė; Laure Prouvost; Laurie Kang; Leah Clements; Lina Lapelytė; Luca Vanello; Marije Gertenbach; Marjolein Van Der Loo; Martin Kohout; Maurin Dietrich; Milda Januševičiūtė; Mirosław Bałka; Monika Kalinauskaitė; Monika Lipšic; Nicolaus Schafhausen; Niklas Tafra and Sanna Marander; Nina Fránková; Nina Kuttler; Naglis Kristijonas Zakaras Ft. Random Heroes; Ona Juciūtė; Ona Lozuraitytė and Petras Išora; Rebecca Ackroyd; Renée Mboya; Rick Dolphijn; Romuald Demidenko; Robertas Narkus; Pakui Hardware (Ugnius Gelguda and Neringa Černiauskaitė); Rytis Urbanskas; Santiago Taccetti; Sebastian Rozenberg; Suhail Malik; Valentinas Klimašauskas; Vytenis Burokas; Žygimantas Kudirka.

With this bag-shaped publication filled with dearest memories, I say farewell to my first skin in eager anticipation of new patterns to appear!

All my best,
Rupert
Image: Anastasija Sosunova, ‘Medicago lupulina’, installation view, 2017 Andrej Vasilenko

In residence

Paige K. Bradley

Paige K. Bradley (USA) is a writer and artist born and raised in Los Angeles. Her Project at Rupert will investigate the to and fro between visual form and written articulation. Interested in depicting transitions between legibility and illegibility, or how ideas and expressions might formally announce themselves in a work before evacuating, her project will bring together her own writing and self-authored or borrowed imagery into compositions that are made using discrete layers and multiple embellishments

In residence

Marta Trektere

Marta Trektere is a performance artist, independent curator and writer based in Riga, Latvia. She’s also co-running artist-run space Four to Seven gallery in Riga. Marta’s works address simplicity of complexity in everyday life as well as psychological difficulties in life, art and text working with various media like performance, text, video, sound. In Rupert she will make an Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) video along with her original text performance. It will speculate about the physical, mental and social arousal elements and requirements for human brain and how it works on dreams and stimuli of a human being. The residency is supported by Nordic Culture Point.