CCA video screenings #1: Monika Lipšic

Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia invites you to a screening Timelines. They’re Multiplying which presents recent works by contemporary artists from the past decade. The programme is curated by Monika Lipšic and features artists: Laura Garbštienė and Arturas Bumšteinas, Antanas Gerlikas, Max Grau, Gerda Paliušytė, Tanel Rander.
The event is free of charge.

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The connecting line between the works in the screening runs through the liquid role of film and pop culture in shaping history. Multiple cultural times and different timelines of cultural imagination coexist in the videos both reflecting the historical context of their making and the ahistorical condition of images and atmospheres inspired by pop narratives - be it hip hop songs or institutional language, sci-fi logic or American teen romantic drama. The aim of this particular composition of artists' work is to picture the constantly multiplying variety of historical timelines. Some pasts are more recent than others; in a way this screening brings forth how certain artworks managed to stay the course.

The screening will start from a line of young and mid-career Lithuanian artists' works, those by Antanas Gerlikas, Laura Garbštienė and Arturas Bumšteinas and Gerda Paliušytė, which use the poetic form of image communication. In Paliušytė's film Road Movie (2015) two band members from legendary hip hop band Onyx are driving around the city of Vilnius, connecting the seemingly alien trajectories. Also featured is German artist's Max Grau film Craving for Narrative (2015) where a 23 second loop from the American teenage drama creates an almost sculptural quality video and the reflection of history is being created through artists' comments.

The curator of the screening Monika Lipšic will introduce the videos. Her recent curatorial interests lie in the historical meanings and the writing of history, metaphor as a tool for thinking and acting as well as questions about national identity. She is a curator of online video art project The Deep Splash and also co-curator of Jauna Muzika Festival of performative sound art in Vilnius. In 2017 she curated a solo show by Slavs and Tatars in Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius and a group show ‘The Future Is Certain; It’s the Past Which Is Unpredictable’ at Calvert22 Foundation, London, that later expanded and travelled to Blaffer Art Museum Houston in 2018. Recently she was nominated for the CEC Artslink award and was in a residency at CCA Wattis, San Francisco.

In total CCAE will organise three screening events this spring in Tallinn at Artis cinema, bringing international video art to Estonia and making CCAE’s archive public to a wider audience. Next events will be on the 20th of March, curated by Vanina Saracino (Berlin) and 3rd of April, curated by Sepake Angiama (London/Chicago).

Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia (CCAE), founded in 1992, is a non-profit expert institution in international cooperation projects with a role to activate and develop Estonian contemporary art scene. Since 1999 CCAE is the commissioner of the Estonian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and since 2016 co-commissioner of Baltic Triennial. CCAE works on collaborative projects both with local and international partners.

The event is supported by Estonian Cultural Endowment.