A city can be. A city can be invisible (as Calvino proved) and can be only visible, like a fata morgana in the desert. A city can itself be a desert (as Antonioni showed). A city can be simply a longing (as Kanovičius told). A city abandoned by people (like Famagusta) is still a city. A destroyed city (like Mariupol) is still a city. A city is a text, and there is no other way but to read it. A city is a myth, and there is no other way but to believe in it. A city can deceive. A city can protect. A city can imprison. A city can betray. A city is a labyrinth that constantly demands a choice. Our choices become our history.
Phenomenon M is an exhibition in the city of site- and context-specific contemporary artworks created especially for Klaipėda. The project sets out to look more closely at Klaipėda first of all as a city — at its history and its everyday life, its society and its symbols, its architecture and structure, its nature and ecology, its geography and psychogeography, its soul and its distinctiveness. It also seeks to encourage Klaipėda residents to engage in observing, studying and shaping their city — to discover its unseen, unnoticed, forgotten and “unimportant” places and qualities, and to look at it from a different angle and with different eyes. A city is not only physical density, height and speed, but also an “invisible”, multi-layered, multidirectional urban culture. A city is a system — boundaries, walls, plans, symbols, monuments, place-markers, names, institutions, instructions, rules, details, errors, fantasies. M stands not only for the city (miestas), but also for art (menas), science (mokslas), myth (mitas), love (meilė) and, ultimately, metaphor.
This city already has a K-shaped building (Klaipėda); our project also created an M building (Memel) — and, as we know, K + M = KM (a hot love, “karšta meilė”, between different cultural traditions).
Twelve Lithuanian artists (one we invented together) explored the city of Klaipėda as a text, as a myth, as (dis)information, as representation, as a field of visual “battles”. These artistic investigations are presented to Klaipėda residents and city visitors in the form of conceptual and visual artworks in public urban spaces.
Participating artists: Sofija Baldauskaitė, Kostas Bogdanas, Marija Drėmaitė, Auridas Gajauskas, Agnė Gintalaitė, Tata Frenkel, Laima Kreivytė, Juozas Laivys, Tomas Martišauskis, Liucija Teodora Mikučionytė, Paulina Pukytė, Jurga Šarapova, Viktorija Juzefa Venckutė.
About the artists and their works:
Concept author and curator: Paulina Pukytė
Project initiator: Liudas Andrikis
Project manager: Žana Jegorova
Project coordinator: Viktorija Norvilienė
Booklet compiled by: Paulina Pukytė
Graphic designer: Austėja Andrulaitytė
Language editor: Violeta Kundrotienė
Communication: Ramunė Šliuožaitė
Technical solutions: Robertas Laugalys, Rimantas Zaleckas, Vytautas Kūra, Robertas Navickas
Organiser: Klaipėda Culture Communication Center.
The project is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Klaipėda City Municipality.