2008 DIY Vilnius

rear-view mirror
  • place: en route Vilnius, Lithuania - Berlin, Germany

25::May::2008 09:06 → permalink

Vilnius in the rear-view mirror, up at 0500, taxi to the airport, as we leave the Academy hostel, a few of the girls are returning after a night’s partying, I guess. Tired all day after that early wake-up and very late evening last night, not much done but some organizing of things for the next week or so.

 → comment
→ cats:: 2008 DIY Vilnius, travelog
→ tags:: , , ,

cathedral ambience

24::May::2008 19:03 → permalink

 Comments Off
→ cats:: 2008 DIY Vilnius, aporee::maps, audio, project, travelog
→ tags:: , , , , , , ,

DIY workshop space

24::May::2008 18:58 → permalink

 Comments Off
→ cats:: 2008 DIY Vilnius, aporee::maps, audio, project, travelog
→ tags:: , , , , , , ,

day three – rain
  • place: Vilnius, Lithuania

24::May::2008 06:04 → permalink

it ends up that we two are the only ones to take a sound walk. the rain started last night and continues most of the day. she takes me to her favorite church, the one without any gold, because gold doesn’t have anything to do with God. she genuflects deeply on entering, on leaving. it is pouring rain, she wants to go get some boots on at her house so that we can walk to her favorite place along the river. the cobble road is flooded and we use our umbrellas to block the splashing from cars as they noisily drive past. she walks ahead of me. the door to her flat doesn’t work properly, so she has to call her room mate to open it from the inside. it’s dark, there is a cat. it is warm, humid inside. the rain drums on the windows.

the water drains into a hole in the ground right outside a manhole cover. we go to look at the river which has risen at least half a meter since morning. then we slowly walk back to the workshop space to continue preparing for the DIY plug-in-party happening tonight.

food, equipment, installations. the students are enthusiastic and energized despite the sporadic and unfocused situation. day slides into evening, and the party begins.

 → comment
→ cats:: 2008 DIY Vilnius, audio, images, travelog
→ tags:: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

student protest march
  • place: Vilnius, LT

22::May::2008 16:11 → permalink

 → comment
→ cats:: 2008 DIY Vilnius, aporee::maps, audio, project
→ tags:: , , , , , , , , ,

student protest march
  • place: Vilnius, LT

22::May::2008 16:07 → permalink

 → comment
→ cats:: 2008 DIY Vilnius, project
→ tags:: , , , , , , , , ,

student protest
  • place: Vilnius, Lithuania

22::May::2008 05:14 → permalink

the workshop begins erratically. 30 minutes late, time already runs down. the first impression is, wow, mostly young ladies attending — somehow a bit of a surprise

end up at a rather raucous student march through the city, well, not raucous, maybe noisy, around 500 students. they marched from the Parliament to the University where they went in to the administration building and barricaded the university professors in their offices. this for the fact that the professors did not oppose governmental changes to the free education system. I believe it all stems back to the Bologna Accord which seems to bring much harm to the system. although as we later talked about, the system of standardization can bring systems lower than the standard up to a standard. it’s all relative. in general it appears that the Lithuanian system is a bit at a bottleneck, with younger students expecting more than their professors can offer in terms of open-ness and progressive thinking.

will reactions to the Bologna Accord finally bring back some serious student activism in opposition to its blatantly globalist/capitalist view on education? it’s not clear, 40 years after the ’68 movement. they need more effective theoretical platform to work from in terms of the broader view of what education should be, compared to what it actually is. so it goes.

in the evening we are brought to a hot gallery opening — clearly a scene, to be seen, to see. brazen and blatant art market-ism at it’s very pretentious worst. I won’t even repeat the name of the gallery or the curator, for to name is to bring more attention to the blighters than they deserve. and clearly the local art/culture consumers are mesmerized by the imagination of London come to Vilnius. uff. this can only have a negative effect on the cultural community.

 → comment
→ cats:: 2008 DIY Vilnius, images, travelog
→ tags:: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

non-transformative systems
  • place: en route Berlin, Germany - Vilnius, Lithuania

21::May::2008 14:39 → permalink

flying in: back in Lithuania. immediately the impression of the system not having changed much. not like the transformations happening in Berlin. aside from the few tourist drags, the town is like it was four years ago. and the system still resonates a deep conservative polarity with an inertia still flowing in resistance to … anything new.

lunch with Mindaugas with the first of several very mediocre meals. and meet Viktorija and Agle, the enthusiastic and hard-working student union officers who are organizing the whole workshop. I am impressed immediately with their determination to make a difference. sadly it is exactly these kinds of spirits who are the ones who leave Lithuania because a realization that things are not changing.

got to tour the Academy, with all it’s meter-thick walls and pre-Gothic arched ceilings. no wonder the wi-fi (communications) network doesn’t work so well. the place is naturally shielded from anything, it is part of some older church construction. a convent chapel or so. along with a 1970′s-era structure which is quite intense. in the center of the complex are two major churches, St. Francis’ and the Bernardine. there were the big changes from the East-West polarization collapsing, but since then there are few if any shifts in the faculty, and worse, the mentality. departments are rigidly defined by materialist agendas and territories of control. students are given only cursory freedom to innovate. huh? how do they survive. stoic, a little like Icelanders, but dreaming of more, with Europe at the doorstep. thank god for the Erasmus exchange program which allows the most adventurous to escape to better things.

Alvydas, head of the Media Department, the most open situation in the Academy, mentions again the idea of inviting me back as guest faculty, but I have reservations. on one hand any place is tolerable for a year, but it would be a serious challenge to cope with the conservative vectors in the social system.

we stay in rooms reserved at the academy hostel, in the guest’s wing, with windows opening on a small street that is so loud, it’s hard to carry on a conversation with the window even cracked open. the garbage truck rattles the windows and so does each car blasting up the street. stone walls, narrow streets, no speed limits, bad roads — equals intense noise levels.

 → comment
→ cats:: 2008 DIY Vilnius, audio, beds, images, project, travelog
→ tags:: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,