About
About
2019
Premiere
@Arts Printing House
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Performa
How does it look or sound, what can you feel, how close our imagination is to visible, audible and tangible reality?
An eclectic journey, that simultaneously combines sound and visuals through our unique experiences and distinctive art forms.
Six contemporary pieces for violin and cello combined into one visually ‘intoned’ sonic journey. From near silence to fortissimo, from clean, smooth lines to scratchy noise. Differences act as the binding material in this audiovisual project that freely oscillates between hypnotic sounds and frenzy, between lyricism and often-surfacing anti-ensemble tendencies.
That, in a nutshell, is what might sum up the intertwined trajectories of sound and visual art in the Performa project, which was premiered on February 26, 2019, at the Arts Printing House in Vilnius where live performance was combined with visuals created by Lauryna Narkeviciute.
Contemporary music for a string duo consisting of violin and cello is still rather scarce not only in Lithuania but in the rest of the world too. Six composers who have contributed their works to Performa – Julius Aglinskas, Arturas Bumsteinas, Dominykas Digimas, Andrius Maslekovas, Mykolas Natalevicius, and Ruta Vitkauskaite – are all active in performative art forms, predominantly dealing with various states and moods in their work. Their new pieces allow for multiple ways to explore authentic interactions with sound and experience extreme situations.
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Put in the hands of two adventurous musicians and one musically sensitive visual artist, these collaborative artworks offer a very personal, multifaceted, sincere, and what’s more, gently ironic foray into the visual experience of sound.
The first part of ‘Performa’ project - contemporary music concert where compositions, written by young Lithuanian composers known around the world, have been combined by string duo ‘Twenty Fingers Duo’. It was lead by a musical performance while artworks and visual installations complemented the sound.
Second part - an art exhibition. The emphasis will be put on the visual artwork while music is played in the background enhancing the experience.
Performa Visual Art
A game of discovery, constructing and deconstructing the primary form/content, the concepts of composer’s creations. Without hearing the sounds, a new narrative emerges, the creations acquire their own history, and new interpretations. Constant dialogue – between me, composers, performers and video projection artist. Materials that speak, new forms and connections... eclectic, but a unified journey of sounds and visuals.
Lauryna Narkeviciute
Artwork ‘Pulse’
Canvas, pulsing expressively, or perhaps circulating within a person? Motion and sound, heart responding to tempo, frequencies, inclined to follow the rhythm. Only impulses and breathing.
Composer Andrius Maslekovas
’Shadows of the night canvas', Dedicated to Mikalojus’ brush
Reflection of several nightscapes from the paintings of Ciurlionis... I try to give sound to these pictures and to filter the imag- ery, Ciurlionis’ physical brush strokes and often unstable emotional aspects through a subjective soundtrack.
Lauryna Narkeviciute
Artwork ‘Process’
In between movement and stagnation, in between time and ever changing material. Resin of conifers on the night forest floor and its imperceptible transformation into amber.
Composer Julius Aglinskas
'In the midst of silence'
Musical material lands in between beats 'of silence' every time. In a certain time segment where it seems nothing is happen- ing. Just like the occurence 'here and now', that has unavoidably fallen back to the past tense and became silence - similar to the one existing in the forest.. In the past moments, for the forest and its silence.
Lauryna Narkeviciute
Artwork ‘Iteration’
Dominykas’s composition is based on snippets of audio record- ings made during his walks in Vilnius, a patchwork of his everyday trajectories. I have drawn a virtual route on the map by accurately following his strolls and trajectories. An outline and its slightly shifting parameters. Sounds that naturally change according to the environment and movements of other individu- als that are being involuntarily mirrored merge to form a new choreography and unique expression.
Composer Dominykas Digimas
‘Walking Through The Three Points ‘
This piece is a walking audio tour of the streets of Vilnius. I chose three starting points for my route – three places of worship where you can often hear ringing bells. We perceive bells as musical sound, while what’s left in the background when the bells stop ringing is usually attributed to silence. This urban silence, however, is filled most of the time with the noise of traffic. Ubiquitous and ever-changing, yielding a multitude of unidentified, unheard-of sonorities, to which we’ve grown so accustomed we no longer discern them consciously. Traffic makes up a part of the fabric of our daily soundscape.
Lauryna Narkeviciute
Artwork ‘Above Sea Level'
It is not easy to listen to the high register instrument sounds in the composition. Different acoustic conditions and sources give similar result. Such as low pressure and high pitches. The uncomfortable feeling and noise in your ears. The mountain tops somewhere high above the sea.
Composer Ruta Vitkauskaite
‘Hightet‘
‘Hightet‘ based on two old ideas I had for years. One is a direct association with the string instruments for me, as the violin player. I often joke, you can recognize violinist by his exhausted from the high frequencies look. Second idea I got when hearing composers Johannes Schöllhorn’s violin concerto, written inspired by the imaginative changing view which he sees when turning around his axis. The long continuous glissando in violin part was describing view of the sea and it created amazing effect on me - feeling of changing space and static time, and association with something continuous but monu- mental.
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Lauryna Narkeviciute
Artwork ‘ -272°C ’
One degree higher than the absolute tranquility and the absolute zero, when the development starts.
The life is being created.
Composer Mykolas Natalevicius
‘dew.mist.’
‘The feeling of clear and refreshing August morning. In this silence you can hear the dew and mist appearing. The most important role in this process is taken by the meditative change of timbre.
Lauryna Narkeviciute
Artwork ‘Hydrargyrum'
Hydrargyrum (latin) - mercury, the origin of every metal, considerably the most toxic heavy metal. Material which can be vital and deadly, depending on its use. That is 'Lyrica’.
Composer Arturas Bumsteinas
‘Lyrica’
My sound recordings from the archives, titles of various latin medicaments, voices growing into improvisations of those titles. Consumption like panacea, consumption here, in Lithuania, in the world.
What happens when you first see the artwork and only then hear corresponding sound? In comparison to being surrounded by live music and seeing interrelated visual projections. Does perception of the artwork change depending on the location (gallery or concert stage) or situation (exhibition or a live concert)? How do visuals affect the sound and vice versa?
The project explores how to establish new artistic solutions, expand creative thinking and its limitations and the effect it has on the creative interpretations - all by abandoning stereotypical thinking. Performa project plays with our senses, analyzes objectivity of our creative process and the impact external influences have on the piece of art.