Contemporary Past

“Time is necessary to man, so that, made flesh, he may be able to realize himself as a personality”.

A. Tarkovsky

Time is individual. Each of us experiences it different. I put myself in situation that changes measure of time. In the same time I try my body limits and strength of stamina. Suffering transforms time for investigator. The main question of this performance – how time transforms for the viewer?

The video installation called “Transfer” relates to the general theme of the workshop, “Contemporary past: Moving Images as a Fluid Memory”.

The work includes a performative act and is linked to the idea of transformation in the collective memory. During the performance, the viewer can observe how personal memories constitute a collective memory when related to an event. However, deeper meanings of this transfer could be taken in consideration, depending on the viewer’s experience with memories and history.

The project consists of 2 parts - A4 lists with written by hand stories of Nida residents and 10 min video. The stories were written in Lithuanian and translated into English.

I asked people of different ages to write me a fairy tail, legend or a myth without using any sources. The video is an attempt to make a logically intuitive narration of a fairy tail using 'meta scheme' and a composition - exposition, plot, plot development, climax, denouement.

"I am a child of Soviet political prisoners.

My mother Janina Jalinskaitė was born and raised in Ukmerge district. She was 19 years old when the WWII was over. Without wanting to put up with the Soviet occupiers she chose resistance. In 1946, as a young teacher, she has formed an underground organization "Free Falcons”. At the same time she was lookout between partisan squads. October 1947 she was arrested, interrogated and sentenced. Imprisoned in a hard labour camp in Mordovia (Russia) for 10 years.

My father Vytautas Kluonius was born and raised in Šakiai district. He was 18 when the WWII ended. Together with classmates they formed underground organization "Free Falcons”! In 1947, because of anti-Soviet activities he was arrested, interrogated, convicted. He spent 8 years in Vladimir prison near Moscow. Vladimir prison had rich library and he could use it. In a jail he learned Russian and English languages, had studied physics, chemistry, astronomy in particular.

My parents met after incarceration during political prisoners meeting in Kaunas. They got married in 1962. Now they are 85 years old.

They travel back to the post-war period in their memories more and more often.

What do you remember about post-war time?"

"Since the past is constituted not after the present that it was but at the same time, time has to split itself in two at each moment as present and past. ... Time consists of this split"

G. Deleuze

Nida is a small place situated at the Baltic's coast of Lithuania, a former resort for soviet nomenklatura with peaceful sceneries and beautiful sand beaches. Despite the fact that nomenklatura has disappeared with the break of Soviet Union, idyll images of leisure still could be captured there.

Post-soviet conditions, with it's visually obvious overlapping of past and present, create a temporal paradox of constant deja vu. Probably this makes the local 'actual' to become a glimmering instantiation of the most fundamental operation of time: a persistence of past which makes each present pass on.

Images of past (modernist architecture of the rest house) and images of present (shots from the city center area) are juxtaposed to each other like virtuality and actuality, documenting and staging, acting for a camera and mundane activity. The 70's architecture of anticipation of the future meets present in a figure of a video camera.

By accident at Nida Information center found a woman playing a piano in a dark corner of a hall. From all the songs she played i left Kate Winslets „What if“.

After first meeting of workshops participants I found a plastic cup half full of water under on of a chair. Kept this cup for all period of workshop and placed it back under one of the chair at the final presentation of works. Before presenting this action played a song “The Windmills of Your Mind“ by Noel Harison.

It's a short movie made from various footages that shape a storyline combined with a monolog. It's a true statement, a new memory behind all the workshop from Nida; and the statement is made almost by all participants.

“Notes on memory” is an installation completed in the summer of 2011. Ultimately, it is a work that raises the question of the existence and validity of a collective memory, due to several implications of the environment: subjectivity of the participants and the imperfection of informational transfer. It seeks to trigger the viewer’s interest regarding the process of remembering and retelling: from conception of memories to their transfer into other audio – visual mediums.