Agnė Narušytė - Architecture and Boredom
Place. Anthropology of space
Boredom is gradually becoming a handy notion when describing not only the photographic phenomenon of 1990s, but also the life in the soviet society, as recently shown in the research by dr. Tomas Vaiseta. Experiences of monotony, banality, emptiness, standardization, stagnation and slowed-down time stemmed from the senselessness hovering above the public space subjected to ideological control. Next to ideology it was the soviet city itself that conditioned the state of mind of urban dwellers, with its new neighbourhoods and the modern soviet architecture meant to convey ideological values. Its grim, monotone, de-aesthetized, dehumanised and robbed space penetrated into human consciousness (or soul), inciting detachment from the surrounds and various practices of evading the public space.
The talk will take place on Novermber 8, 20:00 at the National Art Gallery (NDG), Konstitucijos av. 22, Vilnius. The talk will be in Lithuanian.
Agnė Narušytė, PhD, is an art critic and curator, with a particular interest in contemporary photography and art as well as ideas linking photography, philosophy and psychology. She studied art history at Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania), Central European University (Prague) and Vilnius Academy of Arts (Lithuania). Narušytė curated the photographic collection of the Lithuanian Art Museum, also lectured at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and Edinburgh Napier University (UK), edited the foreign culture page of the Lithuanian cultural weekly 7 meno dienos and created programmes on culture for the Lithuanian National Television. In 2008, she published the Lithuanian version of this book, Nuobodulio estetika Lietuvos fotografijoje, based on her PhD thesis, in 2011 – a history of contemporary Lithuanian photography (Lietuvos fotografija: 1990 – 2010). Currently she is Head of the Art History and Theory Department, Vilnius Academy of Arts.
The book presents a theory of boredom aesthetics that is used as a basis for interpretation of soviet architecture.