Rupert announces this year’s Alternative Education Programme participants and new curator
Eight Lithuanian and international artists – Samuel Barbier-Ficat, Donna Marcus Duke, Gabrielė Černiavskaja, Ieva Rižė, Ieva Gražytė, Marketa Slana, Martyna Ratnik and Greta Štiormer – are participating in the Alternative Education programme, which has been running for 12 years. Goda Palekaitė joins the Rupert team as the new curator of the Alternative Education Programme. In November, for the first time, participants will have a residency in Marseille in collaboration with Triangle-Astérides.
Participants in the Alternative Education Programme – professionals from different fields
Rupert’s Alternative Education Programme (AEP) is a para-academic study programme embracing decentralised knowledge exchange, intersectionality and process-oriented research and development (R&D). It seeks to expand the academic field by promoting self-study practices, peer learning and close relationships between participants and tutors.
Each year, up to 9 participants are selected to take part in the programme, which provides them with the opportunity to develop their projects through a series of workshops, lectures, seminars, research trips and studio visits. The current theme is Traversability and Transgressions (envisioned by previous AEP curator Tautvydas Urbelis). In 2024 the AEP is being developed in partnership with Triangle-Astérides (FR), Aikas Žado Laboratory at Žeimiai Manor (LT), Akee (LT) and Medūza (LT).
Samuel Barbier-Ficat (France), trained as a conservatory musician, is developing interdisciplinary, performative collaborations. Architect Gabrielė Černiavskaja (Lithuania) proposes experimental and speculative spatial politics, and is an experienced curator and educator. Writer, activist, and critic Donna Marcus Duke (United Kingdom) is focused on queer and trans histories, now researching alternative interpretations of evolutionary science. Ieva Gražytė (Lithuania) is a shapeshifting writer and academic bringing diverse international experience from technology, diplomacy, philosophy, and economics. Martyna Ratnik (Lithuania) is a multifunctional cultural worker in writing, filmmaking, and curation, examining boredom aesthetics and archival politics. Visual artist Ieva Rižė (Lithuania) creates documentary fiction in film, sound, costume design, and performance dissecting identity, polarism, and approaches to mental health. Markéta Slaná (Czechia) is composing post-linguistic hybrid realities in installation, video, and sculpture. Theatre director Greta Štiormer (Lithuania) trained in classical music and sculpture, questioning social norms through research on queer culture and feminism.
Participants of the AEP will explore the themes of Traversability and Transgressions with an international team of mentors in Lithuania and Marseille
AEP. Žeimių dvaras / Dominyka Gurskaitė
The first meeting of the participants took place in mid-July at Žeimiai Manor, where the artists presented their personal practices and joined the Aikas Žado restoration laboratory. Participants will also have sessions with local and international mentors: Ama Josephine Budge Johnstone, Billy Bultheel, Ceci Moss, Hannah Rose Stewart, Laura Marija Balčiūnaitė, Lithic Alliance, Nabila Tavolieri, PRICE, Ren Loren Britton & Goda Klumbytė, Sara Sassanelli, Sarah Friend, Tom Clark, Vaida Stepanovaitė.
This autumn, the participants will spend two weeks in residency in Marseille in collaboration with Triangle-Astérides, where they will get to know the local art scene and further develop their projects. The programme will run until 29 November, culminating in a final event in Vilnius.
New curator – Goda Palekaitė
Goda Palekaitė
This summer, Rupert welcomes a new AEP curator – interdisciplinary artist and researcher Goda Palekaitė. She is curating this year’s Alternative Education programme together with JL Murtaugh, curator of the Residency and Public Programmes.
‘I feel enthusiastic about the Alternative Education Programme Curator position, excited and challenged to participate in shaping the artistic vision and strategy of Rupert, which I consider an exceptional institution within the Lithuanian art context, internationally respected and functioning as a crossroad for a diversity of cultural practitioners to meet, experiment and exchange. I believe that at the heart of alternative artistic education lies collectivity, performativity and criticality. As an educator, I am interested in dispersed, non-linear, non-centralised knowledge, in ambiguity, raising questions, in immersion in contexts through tangible methods, and always acknowledging the diversity of perceptions and strategies of life and art making. As the AEP curator at Rupert, I wish to construct a discourse navigating between micro and macro perspectives, oscillating between personal approaches and more distant analyses, consistently situating issues within theoretical discourses with special emphasis to feminist, decolonial, autotheoretical, and critical history approaches. A space for safe sharing and conceptual decomposition of the residents’ research, through performative engagement, tools from ethnography and experimenting with sustainable practices.’
Rupert is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.
Partners: Vilnius City Municipality, Lithuanian Culture Institute, French Institute, Tech Zity.