The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...
The exhibition 'Slow Rushes: Takes on the documentary sensibility in moving images from around Asia and the Pacific' was shown recently in Vilnius, Lithuania. Here Monika Krikstopaityte looks at how this work was received and understood by an audience whose world sensibility is so far removed from that of the artists who produced it.
In the centre of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, there is a living utopia: the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC). Actually. it is a small community of people immersed in art, who also are internationally interactive. The existence of this 'utopia' made the project 'Slow Rushes' possible. There are probably no more than 5000 people in the whole country of Lithuania who truly understand the CAC art projects. A paradox is that the tiny old town of Vilnius is swarming with highly sophisticated personalities educated at universities and academies, and it may give a very good first impression of the country. Bear in mind that this is an intellectually concentrated spot: small and pungent like a peppercorn.
The exhibition 'Slow Rushes: Takes on the documentary sensibility in moving images from around Asia and the Pacific' curated by Rhana Devenport, was timely. First of all, because in Lithuania we know almost nothing about the contemporary art of Asia and the Pacific. Secondly. because in our own contemporary art we miss having a developed, strong and suggestive form.
Knowing only the name of the exhibition, I was prepared for films in black and white featuring marching crowds, the stony-faced Mao, and bouquets of red carnations. Propaganda had been called documentary for so long, that willy-nilly in our memory they have grown to form one body. In postregime countries the... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline