Mar 5, 2009

Lina ZIGELYTE: Demolition as a space for (re)action


'Lietuva' cinema house. Photo: www.vilma.cc


Cities establish themselves upon layers of time and space. However, temporality and spatiality become fluid entities within cities - they are being perpetually redefined.

The concept of a post-industrial European city poses at least a few questions. Firstly, what is post-industrial? Secondly, where do we draw the demarcation lines of Europe in 2009? And finally, what becomes of a city in the light of the other two inquiries?

This presentation focuses on a Pro-Test Lab set up around a cinema house called 'Lietuva' ('Lithuania') in the heart of Vilnius' historical centre. The project, initiated by new media artists duo Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, is probing into the intersection of public and space. While the project questions the legitimacy of cinema's privatisation (which should result in building's demolition followed by erection of residential apartments), artists turned cinema space into a generator of meaning. Pro-Test Lab, set up four years ago upon the closure of 'Lietuva' in the squated ticket office located in the lobby of the cinema house, became a kernel of a movement questioning the demolition of public spaces in the capital of Lithuania. Moreover, Pro-Test Lab addresses inadequate reaction of the public towards these processes.

Furthermore, the project has generated a somewhat symbolic meaning in the country due to the title of the cinema house and the fact that the building was sold to one of the most influential companies in Eastern Europe, with their interests stretching from retail business to nuclear energy. Thus Pro-Test Lab explores the discourse on capital shaping cities.

My presentation poses the question on how such performative demolitions (of places and senses) reshape modern city by generating spaces as realms of (re)action.

Philosopher Brian Massumi argues that we have always lived in the process of simulation and the question lies not in the attempt of tracing the copy or the model, but in addressing how to deal with this simulation. Art, he maintains, neither resembles nor replicates, but 'multiplies potentials' (Massumi, 1989) and recreates a territory, which is not territorial. I contend that performative spaces should become a significant part of modern cities and particularly those in 'new Europe' as capable of transposing history and reshaping the ontological categories of space and public.


Pro-Test Lab. Photo: www.vilma.cc


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