Urbonai studio split nik

For City (Re)Searches in Kaunas, Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonai have donated ‘Split Nik’ - a wooden structure and devise for talking and listening to the local Sanciai High School. It was inspired by Alexander Kukarkin’s book ‘Beyond Welfare: Bourgeois Society, Culture and Ideology’. The construction is resonant of the book’s zig-zag cover design of the Russian edition. This book was one of very few sources of information and gave access to names and concepts otherwise impossible for ordinary people to access. The first Russian edition was published in 1974, printed in only 75,000 copies, and therefore sold out at once. The artists, as teenagers in the Eighties, recall the curious formative effect of reading Kukarkin’s work. A family member spent a half day queuing to purchase it! Being permanently installed in Šančiai High school, the process of the work‘s research and realistion has come full circle as a permanent pedagogical devise for young Lithuanians in their own development.

---The work was commissioned through funding from the Office of Contemporary Art, Norway and the City (Re)Searches is supported by the EU Culture Programme .