Trip to Liepkalnis and Antaviliai CIA site with Valentinas Klimašauskas
The latest edition of Rupert’s Educational Program began when participants took their first field trip of the year to Liepkalnis and Antaviliai to look around the illegal CIA detention centre alternatively known as the Violet centre which incidentally is very near Rupert in the distant suburbs of Vilnius. The itinerary was organised by the Lithuanian curator Valentinas Klimašauskas. He took us to Liepkalnis and Kirtimai sites that are popular places among plane-spotters who were instrumental in revealing extraordinary rendition program and CIA site in Antaviliai stopping by other places in between.
We found out that the alleged Violet centre is marked as Vilnius’ 49th post office on Google Maps but in reality now the building belongs to Lithuania’s Special Investigation Service. In some distance, I car stopped and the driver studied carefully why we were here and what were our intentions. When we looked at him in the eye, he started talking on his mobile phone. It was cold, therefore, after a while we drove off to discuss publicly available data about the CIA center and the extraordinary rendition program from Vilnius Human Rights Monitoring institute. At the end of our trip, we had read and discussed excerpts from Drone Theory and Globalising Torture as part of our research.