A cosmic tour with and old trolleybus through COSMIC KAROLINIŠKĖS with a cosmic guide Laima Kreivytė!

The tour starts at 15 PM, this Saturday (26^th October)

Join us in the Cosmic Odyssey, and find the trophies for Karoliniškės‘ snowglobe! This architectural tour is a part of a seminar Showcasing Modernisms: Between Nostalgia And Criticism (Contemporary Visualisation And Storytelling). The tour will start at Vingrių bus station in the center of Vilnius, where the participants could start their journey. During the trip we would melt in the fusion of nostalgia and prosiness, reality and utopija, real and non-existing objects, fantasies and visions of Karoliniškės. The tour will end at a whirly TV towers‘ Milky Way...

Karoliniškės once had a factory called „Dovana“ („The Present“). The factory was producing thousands of souvenirs – beginning with dolls dressed in national costumes, as well as snowglobes with Gediminas‘ Castle inside. Today, if one would like to extend the set of Vilnius‘ souvenirs, the icons of the soviet times – the legendary modernist buildings – should be  included as well. But would it be possible to put a modernist residential district in a snowglobe? Which districts would merit to become a nostalgic prototipe for a souvenir? How to decompose these strange modernist structures, so each part could be an image in the globe? Lazdynai, Žirmūnai, Saulėtekis student camp – acclaimed moderist pearls, the nostalgia for them is possible at least for one fact – this is a possibility to live in a prize-winning urban/architectural structure. Meanwhile Karoliniškės is the one built after all these legendary districts. By that time, one could also call a ‚breaking point‘, the critics of modernist residential districts began. Maybe then the new ‚terms‘, such as ‚sleeping districts‘, ‚typical boxes‘  would sprang up. On the other hand, for Karoliniškės‘ residents, this is the place where they grew up and have been living for 40 years, and for which they, naturally, feel unconcious nostalgia. If we would try to explore Karoliniškės through out the position of the residents, we would encouter the possibility that namely nostalgia is helping to discover the impercetible objects of the district. These objects, on their own, creates a new value, which enforce to reflect the boundaries of criticism.

While touring through Karoliniškės we will be able to see four faces of nostalgia, each of them could be an icon in a snow globe. The first one – nostalgia for prie-history of Karoliniškės: fields of kolkhoz, the outworn Karolinka‘s inn, closed and disused Karolina‘s Road. Further – nostalgia for slowly vanishing signs of ‚constructed identity‘. They might be physical, like the destroyed playground of kindergarten Čiauškutis, like crumbling pixels. They might be intangible as well – like cosmic theme in the names of the streets, bus stops, shopping senters, which is gradually replaced by the names of the victims of fights for freedom or commercial brands. The third face of nostalgia – ‚ do it yourself‘ initiatives established by the local residents, inspired by nostalgia for the past times. Is nostalgia the cause why locals are ameliorating their reality longing for their former lifestyle or trying to compensate defects of ‚constructed reality‘, so is to say – growing gardens in front of residential blocks, creating little utopias – from  greenhouses to sculptures, or even stuffed animals, opening pet cemetery in the forest ? We will also ask – if it is possible to be nostalgic about unfullfilled future. If knowing that mega-shopping mall with cinema and sport gyms was not built, as well as viaduct between slopes of Karoliniškės and Viršuliškės and little swimming pools, change the perception of presence and make us miss something that has not happen.

The map of excursion here.

Tour language: English

Participation only available if registered at  k-lab@k-lab.lt.

The number of participants is limited!