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Visual Artists’ News Sheet | November – December 2021
Festival
All featured images: Aideen Barry, Klostės, behind the scenes; photography by Martynas Plepys, courtesy the artist and Kaunas 2022, European Capital of Culture.
Joanne Laws: You are currently working on a large-scale commission for Kaunas 2022, European Capital of Culture, taking inspiration from Modernist Architecture around the city1. Perhaps you could discuss this ambitious community collaboration?
Klostės: Modernism for the Future JOANNE LAWS INTERVIEWS AIDEEN BARRY ABOUT HER COMMISSION FOR KAUNAS 2022, EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE.
Aideen Barry: Klostės (meaning ‘pleats’ or ‘folds’) came about because I was giving a talk on a socially engaged public art project, ‘CHANGING TRACKS’, in 2018 in Pécs, Hungary. I was invited by heads of the European Capitals of Culture to give a paper on my work. While I was there, I met two of the lead curators for Kaunas 2022, Viltė Migonytė-Petrulienė and Vaidas Petrulis. Two weeks later, they invited me to give a paper at a conference in Lithuania, ‘Modernism for the Future’. I wouldn’t ordinarily think that my work is in any way influenced by modernism, but it does deal with heritage issues and forgotten or lost histories, so I framed the discussion of my work around these parameters for the conference. From there, I was invited to come back and give a workshop in socially engaged practices in 2019, and they later invited me to make a film, influenced by what they call Interwar Modernism – something Kaunas is built on, but which has fallen out of memory with its citizens. I thought this was a massive responsibility, to tell the story of Interwar Modernism in a city I didn’t really know. Therefore, I felt the only way to do this was to give over creative content to the citizens. So, we issued a series of open calls, firstly to writers. I identified over 20 historical buildings and these writers (led by leading author, Sandra Bernotaitė) created narratives informed by the histories of these locations. Hundreds of short stories were translated into English by my producer, Ugnė Marija Andrijauskaitė, from which I constructed a screenplay. I explored the idea of creating a non-verbal narrative, working with volunteers to create visual fictions from these stories. I heard that Kaunas is famous for contemporary dance, so we approached two very famous dance troupes, AURA Dance
