Tuesday, September 10

5:30 PM.

Exhibition opening
Ieva Maslinskaitė (Netherlands/Lithuania). As Wild as Witnessed
Thomas Mann Museum stairway, Skruzdynės St. 

As part of an ongoing project about the inclusion of other types of organisms in photographic processes, In Nida during my residency program, I was researching entanglements between materials as resources regarding photography, developing visual work through a local context and its materials and investigating light-sensitive emulsion, ink and paper making from locally sourced plants, waste, water, energy. What can our listening to materials and their sources tell us about resourcefulness within the photographic medium? What is an image grown from a local context? What is an image that sustains itself?

Ieva Maslinskaitė (1999) is an interdisciplinary artist from Lithuania, currently working between Vilnius and the Netherlands. Driven by the belief that moving towards being ecological requires destabilising our binary thinking towards the environment, her interest lies in co-creating with other species, such as microorganisms or fungi, as well as organic and artificial processes to make temporary and mutating installations, sculptures, and other image-based works. Coming from a photography background, her practice is centred around dismantling the medium from an anthropocentric perspective and putting it back together through an ecocentric perspective, which often requires counteracting contemporary image culture's aims of being fixed, reproducible and permanent. In 2023, Maslinskaitė graduated in Photography (BA) at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and her work has been exhibited at the Riga Photography Biennale - NEXT 2023, where she was nominated as a NEXT and ISSP gallery prize "Seeking the Latest in Photography!" finalist.

6:00 PM.
Exhibition opening
Gintautas Trimakas. A reminder to myself and beyond
Curonian Spit History Museum, Pamario St. 53

Portraits. I discovered portraits from the 1980s Nida seminars that have not been published anywhere. This is a series of portraits created for Aleksandaras Šiešktelė on the occasion of his birthday. Friends, who came to congratulate Aleksandras are immortalized in these portraits. Photography is for memory.

Exits. 2012-2013. I dedicate this series of photographs to those who will never be by the sea again.

Greetings. I raised my eyes to the sky and wondered: is it possible to capture that ever-changing sky? I tried to capture this moment.

Gintautas Trimakas (b. 1958). 1980-1986 studied at the Vilnius Engineering Institute of Construction, Faculty of Urban Construction, where he obtained the education of a construction engineer. Since 1986 participates in exhibitions, in 1989 became a member of the Lithuanian Photographers’ Association. Since 2000 participated in the activities of the TTL (Trimakas, Treigys, Lukys) group. in 2013 graduated with a master's degree in sculpture. In 2017 awarded the Lithuanian national culture prize. In 2023 awarded the Neringa mayor's prize.

7:00 PM.
Exhibition opening
Zenonas Bulgakovas. The Story of One Seminar
Mizgiriai Artist Residency, Pamario St. 20

Photographers have been gathering in the Nida space for almost five decades, sharing their experiences, knowledge and coexistence here. Fragments of the symposium have survived in many photographs, and countless works have also been created reflecting the very space, specificity, and natural identity of Neringa. And in 1982, the photographer Zenonas Bulgakovas, who went to the event in Nida, chose a slightly different path, he created a visual diary of that year's seminar. A consistent story, starting with a trip on the ship "Raketa" from Kaunas and ending with the waiting of the departing photo artists. The chronological sequence of the trip, entertainment in Nida, conversations and meetings tells the story of one seminar in a non-binding but suggestive and plastic way. And there is nothing very important in these photographs, but the dramaturgy of waiting, taking place and participating makes it impossible to overlook the special nature of this event.

8:00 PM.  
Exhibition opening
Sergej Vutuc (Bosnia and Herzegovina / Croatia / Germany). TRANSITION, momentum soar through the air to carve, us
Lighthouse keeper's house, Švyturio St. 1

The term « transition » refers to the evolution between two established states and thus implies a definition of said states within the boundaries of natural fluctuation; only once precise context is provided can it be scrutinized but otherwise is just universally factual. To transition as a person consists in first recognizing, then embracing existence through the mind of a different gender as the culmination of the sensibilities within one individual; in skateboarding, the term tends to designate space that would bind together two distinct points on different planes; most commonly, strict approximations anywhere between the horizontal and the vertical that, eventually, dictate one perceptible singularity. 

The skateboarding application of the term is interesting in its intrinsic historical emergence as it usually refers to wave-shaped objects, the justification of which partly is inspired by the popular interpretation of natural elements that is the practice of surfing, but also resonates with certain timeless criteria of sensuality, form and grace at least from a purely mathematical standpoint. As such, it is a testament to human adaptation and, also, a representation of projected phantasy turned concrete matter. The concept is rooted in the spectacle the situationists lived to expose. 

The skateboard is but a bold excuse for exploring up and around distinct walls in sequence, knocking on doors in passing between inclinations, accumulating and/or leaving marks, and then landing back as yourself into a new situation. Space suddenly admits to its weight in solutions and, thereby, to a possible psychogeography of transition that would be the sensible traces of a cognitive yearning for distinct planes, apparent passageways and successive surfaces in order to progress past timely landmarks as a unity defining, then defying boundaries for each partaking in what appears to be a repetitive pattern. 

Even more so than their angle, the context of the images highlights possible dimensions of the struggle against the sharp physicality of the edges of an established reality that sometimes is the status quo. Bound into its inherent longevity, tied to perceptible stagnation, the human mind only is allocated as much space as to maneuver through the obstacles, but carving its way around their stream. The utility of glass pyramids is exposed in spite of their promise of imperial excess, when merely traversed through one’s pursuit of flowing current. Skateboarders push against the nonsense in normality with factuality as though to dislodge it into the open field, be it by defending their own right to exist as a community or by finding more literal paths through the bricks, crawling their way towards plenitude. Faster than normal walking, the so-branded ‘useless wooden toy’ turns out to be a natural, progressive tool. The global scale of the parallels draws attention to the complexity of the singular stories all the while revealing the fiber of universally human patterns, as it chips away from the bone of urgency.