Part II
“Is it difficult to comprehend the architecture of modernism? Probably, but it's wonderful because every element, every word about it is associated with social content.”
(Bruno Zevi, Italian architect, theorist, and curator)
The Heritage Programme Modernism for the Future undoubtedly made an enormous contribution to the growth of the comprehension of it and the general raising of awareness of Kaunas local modernism. It was done not only through scientific and educational events but through numerous art projects, which is even more pivotal for the wide promotion of the built heritage, for the language of arts is the most universal and convincing.
I talked about the contemporary narrative of Kaunas modernism to Viltė Migonytė-Petrulienė (Vytautas Magnus University), curator of the Programme, whose incredible commitment to the modernism legacy impresses not only me but everyone around. She told me that more than 5 years of work had resulted in involving 500 local and almost 300 foreign partners and artists, and more than 4 million modernists around the world had appreciated the diversity of the representational ways of the local modernism phenomenon.
Photo credit LithuanianStories-Marina Macrì
- This year has been densely filled with cultural events and each of them is worth mentioning. However, I would like to highlight the brightest one.
First of all, it is the MoFu 360/365 exhibition, the presentation of two-year work, with which we started the opening of our Modernism for the Future Programme in January 2022. It was opened at Kaunas Central Post Office on January 22. Five partners from modernist cities – Kaunas, Lviv, Brno, Kortrijk, and Tel Aviv united to represent a great collection of artworks that create a rich narrative about modernist architecture as a phenomenon from the perspectives of the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, and beyond.
In the exhibition, the number 360 symbolizes all possible perspectives on Modernism: cultural, political, economic, etc. Meanwhile, the number 365 refers to our attention to everyday heritage.
26 artists of the exhibition from the above cities drew reflected in an artistic way on religious buildings and museums as well as residential buildings of the Modernist period and created 18 projects interpreting their history today.
And it`s very symbolic that the exhibition was presented in the Kaunas Central Post Office, with its complicated and contradictory history. We signed a contract with the Post Office, which had been abandoned for many years and now became a venue for numerous pop-up exhibitions.
Our special pride is the Klostės (Pleats, or Folders) film by an Irish artist Aideen Barry, winner of the Golden Fleece Award, whose works are exhibited around the world.
It`s a fantastic work of art that is created by a large team, brings modernist buildings to life with the help of moving images, using various animation and video editing techniques. 
I met Aideen in 2017, at the conference in Pécs (Hungary), organized by the European Union, where she presented her academy paper on public art. She was so inspiring that I invited her to come to our Modernism Conference in 2018, and later probably in 2019, there was a workshop on how we can interpret modernism in different ways using artistic forms, with her participation. We had the idea to have a movie about modernism, but I couldn`t imagine how it should be done because the budget provided only €100,000, due to the economic crisis even before the pandemic. Anyway, it wasn't enough for a very high-quality movie. I prepared a public procurement and announced an open call for our local directors and filmmakers asking them to propose their ideas. Unfortunately, none of them met our expectations. Mainly, they suggested some sort of a “DW documentary”. It was not the format of the European Capital of Culture.
What impresses me most about Aideen, she can engage and unite the community, using very different approaches, and how she tackles very sensitive social topics. For example, according to ancient Irish law people with disabilities cannot have any sexual relations. It is valid till our days and it`s a pain. Aideen created a very touching short movie about this. She is very criticizing about such ridiculous things but uses very subtle, metaphoric language.
I was thinking about her as a very good candidate to create this movie because we were working trying to engage the local heritage community basically from 2017 and we already had this target audience to participate in the cooperation process. She agreed to create not a documentary but an experimental movie. And it does not pretend to be historically precise. It`s a 67-minute monochrome poetic piece having some features of surrealism, noir aesthetics, and at the same time good humour and irony.
Aideen engaged over 500 children and young people, over 60 professionals, amateur, and volunteer actors, as well as filmmakers and prop makers, who worked on the film, shooting in 16 locations, and more than 70 people created the stop-motion animations. Totally, over 1000 persons were engaged. It was an unprecedented opportunity for Kaunas residents to come together and be in the story of the city.
Aideen divided the process into several parts. For example, she ran numerous stop-motion and experimental performance workshops. A professional writer Sandra Bernotaitė conducted a workshop for amateur writers who would site specifically tell the stories of concrete buildings. As far as I remember, there were over fifty short stories with imagined or historically true plots, which revealed hidden or censored narratives. Do you remember the opening of the European Capital of Culture, with the ruining buildings? It is inspired by workshops where children made the performative costumes of wearable buildings for the film.
After all, this film is about people who devotedly love their city.
Aideen researched our history as a whole, local modernism history, exploring not only the landmark objects. And the main thing is the stories behind these buildings. She was very sensitive about stories related to trauma, Holocaust, and suppression by Soviet power. It is important how you can watch this movie, for people from other cities and countries can`t recognize particular buildings, or understand the reason and criteria for choosing them. The film has a website https://www.klostes.com with the text by Sandra Bernotaitė explaining how to watch it and information about the buildings.
Of course, this project had an obvious impact on the owners of the “modernist” property shifting their perception of it to the higher appreciation of Modernism.
We planned only three screenings in Lithuania as we needed to rent cinema theatres, and spread the news about the film. But the administrations offered us to arrange additional screenings because children who participated in making props or acted in the film brought their families and friends. The film exceeded our expectations. It`s a great success. I don't know other artistic films devoted to some specific architecture. They are very rare.
By the way, there is a rule in the cinema industry that if you are creating a movie for a festival you need to show it as a premier elsewhere to get all those labels. Touring the world, it was presented in the US this year, then in France, Italy, Canada, and even in Mexico, at the Galway Film Fleadh (Ireland), and at London architecture festival. Then we showed it in September and after we finished our premier screenings, we dealt with the national broadcaster and the TV showed the movie. You can see it here.
We made September and October fully about architecture. The third grand event was the Modernism for the Future. Interpretations International Conference on 21-22 September 2022.
On the first day, we invited people to learn about what we had done. We started with attending the interactive pavilion “Archi/Textura” which presented three years of research on the topic of non-visual experiential architecture by architect Rasa Chmieliauskaitė and art theorist Justinas Kalinauskas, together with the Lithuanian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired community. It was a kind of dialogue with the architectural environment through tactile and auditory experiences.
After the presentation, Rafał Lis and Agata Etmanowicz (Impact Foundation team) held an audio description workshop “ADed VALUE” on the topic of accessibility, especially in arts and architecture. The focus on the audio description enabled to provide access to architecture and visual arts to a wider audience.
I can`t but mention an amazing show Kaunas Modernism Interpreted in the iconic Iljinai Family House owned by the Blank Page studio now.
In 2021 we organized a 3-day residency devoted to interpreting Modernism through design and visual arts by Kolektiv Cité Radieuse, a curatorial group based at UNESCO-listed Le Corbusier Housing Unit in Marseille. Kolektiv Cité Radieuse invited four European designers to come to Kaunas and share their insights into making modernist heritage part of popular culture through graphic design, textile design, photography, and other multidisciplinary practices.
Then we invited about 24 designers, visual artists, and architecture practitioners from Kaunas and Lithuania to attend this collective residency and get inspired. As a result, there were created textile design, graphic works, videos, installations, and furniture, presented at the exhibition launched on September 20, 2022.
The Blank Page studio was founded by designers Dovilė Urbonavičiūtė and Rūta Bužinskaitė Skaitykite. They rented this house by chance, looking through ads on the real estate website. Later they acquired a deeper understanding of their new property and invented various events to promote it as something extremely significant. They also organized an excursion "How does the pearl of interwar modernism – A. Iljiniene's house – "live" today?" Well, it was a nice chance for people to see Modernism from the inside, through the perfectly restored interior spaces, to feel the whole atmosphere...
Free tours into modernist buildings when you can get into private modernist interiors are another large part of the programme. They are very similar to the Open House initiative. This year they included the improvisation by the Kaunas Dance Theater “Aura” when some oral stories were interpreted through the dance. Kaunas is famous for its dance school in Lithuania, so the reactualization of modernism is possible not only through the visual arts, but also through the dance. It’s a part of the video series of the “Dance Plus City” project by LRT, the Lithuanian Dance Information Center, and Kaunas 2022. There were created five video clips shot by Marios Paplauskas. These dancers acted as protagonists in the Roles of forgotten “Others” of Kaunas in the Klostės.
The second day was filled with lots of discussions on various interpretations and practices, panels, and reports by experts, artists, representatives of the ICOMOS, etc.
We tried to find different approaches to engage the local community. When we started this program in 2015, modernism was becoming more and more popular, not least because of the recognition from the European Union. But the problem of realizing its value is still quite acute. Therefore, we focused on networking, creating a network of owners of modernist houses who could learn and pass on knowledge about modernism to others. And, of course, they solve the tasks of preservation and restoration in a practical way, based on the recommendations of experts, for which we organized meetings for them in restoration workshops. We also printed postcards for them with these objects and this awakened pride in them. They made short videos, using their stories of living in such houses, and published them not only on social media but also showed them on television. We paid maximum attention to these people, which made them look at the heritage in a completely different way and value it not as a place of living, but as a part of national culture. This is how a community of like-minded people was formed.
In 5 years, we have attracted over 400 people. Now they come to us themselves - asking how they could help in the promotion of modernism, and become our ambassadors. Together, we are inventing creative ways of interpreting these stories, to reinvent the language of the narrative about modernism.
And now I can see a great change in the people`s attitude to Modernism illustrated by figures.
The power of the community can make a huge impact, for example in the case of the Post Office. The Ministry of Culture intends to buy it (as well as Klaipeda`s Post Office) aiming to establish an Architecture Center there which is a tremendous success.
I am not saying that it’s all the merit of the European capital of culture. But we started pop-up exhibitions and thus showed the possibilities of the revitalization of such objects.
Also, it hosts the CulturEUkraine, an open creative space for Ukrainian artists whose temporary home is Kaunas. The fifth triennial of modern Ukrainian art “Ukrainian Cross-Section. Ukraine! Unmuted” was held there, providing an excellent opportunity for the Lithuanian audience to get acquainted with Ukrainian contemporary art.
Seeing all those activities around the Post Office, the Ministry of Culture was convinced.
As for the future Architecture Center (or Institute of Architecture, the issue of naming is in progress), it`s a good chance to attract more international attention to our heritage. It will consist of two departments: a museum and a Center. We want to digitalize and transfer all the descriptions on the MoFu website to a new internet platform to make it accessible to the global community.
Second, we need to preserve all the tours we have developed, to wind the financial mechanisms to ensure that the work with the community will go on. Maybe the Center of Architecture will take on this mission. Being a national institution, it is situated in Kaunas thus automatically having the support of the local community. So we can have a bright future because of this infrastructural project.
Drawing attention to the smaller cities with less revealed modernism is crucially vital, as it`s a part of our identity. It can`t be less important in the context of Europe as we are talking about a common identity that consists of different ones. It`s about a contemporary approach. What is the main point for us to step up is to find new ways of contemporary narrative and storytelling. Working for the local context we are working for the global one.
Special events
East-East 5 Dialogue
In September-October 2022, in the Post Office there were presented the results of the Kaunas International Architecture Festival (KAFe) under the curatorship of architect Gintaras Balčytis, in particular, the Lithuanian-Japanese architectural project East-East 5.
Two countries with different histories and cultural traditions – Japan in the east of the world, and Lithuania in the east of Europe – have already had 20 years of architectural cooperation, involving Lithuanian and Japanese architects of various ages and students of architectural schools.
This year's theme is "Recovery". The festival was opened by Kengo Kuma, a Japanese architect, and winner of the Pritzker Prize. 40 architectural works by Lithuanian and Japanese authors were shown at the "Recipe for Restoration" exhibition. The variety of ideas makes your head spin, but they are all united not only by environmental relevance but also by a deep knowledge of their history and respect for it.
For example, Tsuyoshi Tane (DGT, Paris), one of the authors of the grandiose Estonian National Museum in Tartu, often refers to the aesthetics and function of "primitive construction". Many projects were dedicated to the restoration of historical buildings, and the improvement of the surrounding areas, where modern comfort and respect for history make a successful combination.
The object of the workshop "Playground for Restoration" was the unfinished 14-story Britannica hotel in the center of Kaunas. It was commissioned by the Britannica Company in the 80s. Later, it turned into a haunted house with breathtaking views of the city and a location for numerous artistic gestures. As part of the architecture festival, an intervention was organized to see what it takes to transform a building from a concrete ghost into a landmark.
During the 2 days of the intervention, it was visited by about 1,500 people. Unfortunately, there are plans to demolish it. So the students were asked to create new stories for an old building worth saving. There were lots of projects of cultural and youth centers, campuses, and public spaces.
By the way, Lithuanian architects are also ready to help with the restoration of our cities. Currently, there is a project for a modern school in Bucha by 2L Architects in cooperation with Ukrainian colleagues (Zvidsy Agency) - a multi-layered space with green areas and greenhouses.
Modernism Time Capsules by Chirag Jindal
A special pleasure for me was the exhibition “Hiding Places of the Mythical Beast in Photographic Cross-Sections of Kaunas Modernism” by the New Zealand artist Chirag Jindal within KAUNAS PHOTO festival which opened on 26 November 2022.
Chirag visited Kaunas for one day to represent personally his works which were displayed in the form of lightboxes in the adjacent Vienybės Square. His artist talk took place in the “Stevenson” hall of the “BLC” business center.
I was lucky to catch the artist for a short interview. His depth-in and sophisticated approach to interpreting modernist legacy seemed to me astonishing, given the fact that he had never shown special interest in that kind of architecture. All the more surprising that the artist succeeded to create the unique iconography of Kaunas modernism. It consisted of 11 images.
The project’s curator Mindaugas Kavaliauskas told a little about the prerequisites of their acquaintance. The whole story hints at the magic power of occasions and coincidences. In 2019, Mindaugas showed his solo exhibition “A-Spot” at the InterPhoto festival in Białystok (Poland). There he attended the exhibition of the InterPhoto 2019 Grand Prize Candidates and was much impressed by an artist from New Zealand who depicted Auckland’s cityscapes and volcanic caverns merging them in one surrealistic image. Later the curator was convinced that the artist not only had a brilliant command of the techniques but demonstrated an intellectuality while creating the artworks. But then Mindaugas just predicted that Chirag Jindal would be the one to win the prize. You can call it an instinct of a curator whose experience allows him to spot a true star in a pile of contenders, or just a bold choice of a gambler who relies on luck (won or lost). In any case, Mindaugas got to the point. And he immediately invited the artist to apply his method to expose the icons of Kaunas modernist architecture in a new fresh way.
In September 2021, Chirag became a participant in the art residency organized by the KAUNAS PHOTO festival starting his profound penetration into the interwar architecture of Kaunas. The final choice of objects included: a water reservoir, engine room, prison cells, workshop, archives… Spaces like “time capsules collecting layers of history”: “For me, the search for the ‘mythical beast’ was synonymous with the search for the story of Kaunas, remnants of which could be found in these buildings – not only the iconic facades and the overall typology, but also the artifacts inherited in their deepest recesses. Many of these basements are unchanged, either unintentionally or through museification. By making deliberate section cuts through the unseen, evidence of this layered history begin to emerge”.
To a greater extent, it deals with the imagination, when the artist reveals the invisible, sometimes scary, and shameful stories thoroughly hidden behind the basement walls. The Mythical Beast of Kaunas hiding there since ancient times would be the most innocent and charming of them if we remember how often such basements could be used as torture cells by the punitive organs. The underworld of that sort is fraught with unexpected discoveries.
It’s how the artist describes one of his works:
“No. 91 Vytauto. Originally built in 1933 for the offices of the local Kaunas government. Only 7 years later it was taken over by the invading Russian NKVD, followed by Nazi Gestapo and eventually members of the Soviet KGB, who would remain seated there for the next 50 years.
While the basement was intended for archive rooms, courier apartments, and boiler houses, it was later repurposed to interrogate, torture, and kill enemies of the occupied state – namely Lithuanian freedom fighters.
The building was designed in the Kaunas’ interwar architectural style - a modernist typology unique to the only period of Lithuanian independence during the 20th century (until 1990).
“After Poland occupied Vilnius in 1919, Lithuania's government moved to Kaunas, alongside artists, craftsmen, and architects. There was not enough housing to accommodate the new state functions. Two-storey tsarist houses would be torn down to make way for new five-six-storey structures that were more in tune with international architectural trends. Art was a means to move away from the former occupying forces – not just architecturally, but politically, too. Some even referred to Kaunas as ‘Little Paris.’”
Almost a hundred years later, the style continues to echo the signatures of cultural independence and urban identity and forms the subject of a residency project I was grateful to be invited into by Kaunas Photo.
Using terrestrial LiDAR and the orthographic projection, the images unfold interwar street elevations and unseen basements across the city, mapping an iconography of Kaunas and traces of its layered history.”
It should be noted that the technical execution of the project was rather complicated. For simplicity, the image of every building is a combination of the facades and underground spaces, invisible to the passers-by, and created by 3D laser scanning technology. In the final results, both the façade and the basement of the buildings can be seen in one single image. Chirag explained that “unlike photography, there is little out of frame—the section cut reveals all at once and we are presented with past and present paraphernalia as they exist in situ.”
It was not an easy project in several aspects, far from it. The entire process was aggravated by the extremely short duration of the residency due to pandemic restrictions and the demanding nature of equipment which is a rare and hardly available device not only in Kaunas but in the entire country. It was the company Northpoint.lt that saved the situation by providing its 3D scanner.
Another challenging moment was the complexity of coordinating the access to historical buildings. Fortunately, almost all the buildings selected except for the Bank opened their doors to the artists.
After the artist talk, Chirag and Mindaugas invited the audience to a tour around the lightboxes, intentionally finishing the indoor presentation when it got dark. The shining “secret life” of the basements appeared to us in all its amazing details. The view was very mesmeric, you physically felt how these interiors drag you into their secrets and the loop of time is ready to overflow on your neck. Unless, of course, you are ready to go through the same difficult road as the artist went.
Chirag Jindal (b. 1993) is an artist-surveyor working at the intersection of documentary journalism, new media art, and contemporary cartography. After graduating with his Master’s Degree in Architecture in 2016, Jindal began exploring the role of terrestrial LiDAR as an emerging medium for photographic documentation. His research-based approach brings him to collaborate with groups close to his subjects, including scientists, landowners, indigenous groups, and local government. Jindal is best known for his debut project Into The Underworld – an ongoing series that has gained critical recognition, including the 2020 Royal Photographic Society Under 30’s Award and the Bialystok Interphoto Grand Prix.
The material was prepared within the framework of Culture Moves Europe, funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, and implemented by the Goethe-Institut, with the support of the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Kaunas 2022.
