Monument dismantling – architectural and sculptural tools for re-staging a scene change

Architecture fund and National Gallery of Art invite to a workshop series, during which artists, architects and media practitioners will work collaboratively or individually in the production of design proposals for possible structures to be installed in the city. The first workshop meetings will take place on Fridays, September 14th and 21st, in the National Gallery of Art (Konstitucijos pr. 22). The workshop series is a part of ongoing 23rd series of Architecture talks, titled A City’ Joints and Muscles: About the Links Between Architecture and Art. More information about the talk series: http://www.archfondas.lt/en/discussion.

September 14th workshop will be led by a sound artist, curator, and architectural theorist Paul Devens. He will present his practice of site-specific sound installations in which issues of architecture and social processes interact during an Architecture talk a day before, September 13th at 8 pm in the auditorium of National Gallery of Art (Konstitucijos pr. 22).

September 21st workshop will be led by curator, art critic, and reseacher of cultural and media studies Ryszard Kluszczyński. He will speak about his writing on the artistic strategy of the “anti-memorial”, “anti-monument”, based on looking at artist interventions in public space, sculpting with light by means of its projection on architectural building façades in an Architecture talk a day before, September 20th at 8 pm in the auditorium of National Gallery of Art. Both the talks and the workshops will be moderated by a philosopher, artist, curator based in Ireland Niamh McDonnell, who uses Deleuzian theory of the diagram and diagrammatic approach to material production in directing curatorial projects and creating artworks.

After these two workshops Niamh McDonnell will lead three more workshops, which will take place in October, November and December. Resulting projects will be part of an exhibition in Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists' Association (LTMKS) project space Sodų 4 in December.

The media archives on the 2015 dismantling of a Vilnius Green bridge sculptures will be explored in terms of how they can offer a series of scripts that provide directions for experiments in testing the materials that can be used to build the installation structures. The archives documenting the dismantling of the Green Bridge monument provide an image of the enactment of a scene change, a re-arrangement of props in a city-as-stage-set that prompts the performance of a mobile embodied agent, engaging with its surfaces and navigating space. The workshops explore different stagecraft tools for the workshop participants to use in the process of reconstructing the archival representations of the monument in relation to its site, focusing on the event of dismantling in terms of how it alters this relation, thereby re-organizing the surfaces of the built environment.

The project presents a proposition for artists, architects and media practitioners to engage in collaborative material production of design proposals for possible installations in the city. The proposition is based on the idea of re-staging the design competition that invites proposals for a new piece of architecture/sculpture to replace a dismantled monument.

If you are interested in participating, please do not hesitate to register by writing to eglej@ndg.lt. Number of places is limited. Workshops will be held in English. Planned duration of the workshops is from 10 am to 5 pm.