As a Journal

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the launch of Vessel as a Journal!

Together with Defne Ayas, Raimundas Malašauskas, and Neringa Černiauskaitė (Pakui Hardware), we explored performance as a form of reality-making and a space for collective imagination.

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Photo by Vytenis Jankūnas

VESSEL AS A JOURNAL

The ninth edition, edited by Defne Ayas (Senior Curator-at-Large at New York’s PERFORMA and the new director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven), explores the relationship between the production of reality and visual art performance, how performance shapes our understanding of politics, and vice versa. It also addresses questions of selfhood, desire, and camouflage in the twenty-first century, examining convergences and encryptions as they relate to matters of intimacy. Ultimately, this issue asks how artists connect with one another and with their immediate audiences amid tides of annihilation, and how they continue to sustain their nexus of ideas, hold fast to their core of artistic thinking, and remain committed to its manifestation on stage, most often, under the lights.

Guest Editor Defne Ayas
Editor Kotryna Lingienė
English Language Editor Gemma Lloyd
Issue Design Inga Navickaitė-Drąsutė

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Photo by Jonas Balsevičius

The story behind the cover of issue no.8

“I bumped into Kemežys at the CAC – we were both working there at the time – and I said, ‘Take a photo of me.’ ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘I’ll bring the camera.’ I was sweaty, wearing a T-shirt, but I threw on a jacket. I opened Čiurlionis’ book, which has his portrait in it, and I looked at my reflection in the window of the CAC courtyard on the first floor. I asked him, ‘What do you think, does it look similar if I stand like this?’ Click. It took four takes to do it. We chose one of those photos. Others agreed it looked similar. That portrait of me ended up hanging in a winery – people would say, ‘Yeah, I know, that’s the painter, Čiurlionis.’ It’s like KFC or Che Guevara on a T-shirt, it’s like a brand – you get confused, you get mistaken,” said Donatas Jankauskas-Duonis.

Excerpt from a conversation between Asta Vaičiulytė and Donatas Jankauskas-Duonis

Photo: M.K. Čiurlionis Museum of Art, photographer Gustina Keturakytė

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, No. 8.
Get your copy now – available in our online shop.

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Escape from M.K. Čiurlionis, or perhaps together with him?

AS A JOURNAL, invited guests to the presentation of the eighth issue, ESCAPE, the first in the magazine's history to be inspired by a single person. The event took place at the Nacionalinis M. K. Čiurlionio dailės muziejus in Kaunas.

The editor of the issue, philosopher, writer and curator of the Contemporary Art Centre Edvardas Šumila and sculptor Donatas Jankauskas-Duonis attended the event. Editor-in-chief Kotryna Lingienė moderated the discussion.

Photo: M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum, photographer Gustina Keturakytė.

Čiurlioniui 150

ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

Lukas Brasiskis interviews Deimantas Narkevičius | From Tarkovsky to AI: On the Evolving Resonance of Solaris

Lukas Brasiskis is the Curator of Film and Video at e-flux. He was a co-curator of the 14th Shanghai Biennale (2023–24) and is one of the three Artistic Directors of the upcoming Seoul Media City Biennale (2025). After receiving his PhD degree in Cinema Studies from New York University in 2022, he has taught courses at Columbia University and Brooklyn College/CUNY. His writing on moving image is widely published, and most recently he was the co-editor of Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe (Berghahn Press, 2024) and Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running (Yale University Press, 2022). Since 2024, he has been a co-editor of e-flux’s weekly publication Film Notes.

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, NO. 8.
Get your copy now - available in our online shop

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ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

Goda Palekaitė | Hallucinating Čiurlionis

Goda Palekaitė is an artist, writer and researcher working at the intersection of contemporary art, performance, artistic research, literature, and anthropology. Her practice revolves around projects exploring the politics of historical narratives, the agency of dreams and imagination, and social conditions of creativity. Her recent solo exhibitions have been held at Beursschouwburg in Brussels, Västerås Art Museum, Kunsthal Gent, Editorial in Vilnius, and Konstepidemin in Gothenburg. In recent years, her performances and installations have been presented at Whitechapel Gallery in London, BOZAR Brussels, Vartai Gallery in Vilnius, Tranzit Bratislava, The Biennale Architettura 2018 in Venice, Galerie Georg Kargl in Vienna, Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Kanal–Centre Pompidou in Brussels, among others. In 2020 she published the book of fiction, Schismatics (Lapas books). She is currently the curator of the Alternative Education Programme at Rupert, Vilnius. Palekaitė holds a BFA in fine arts, an MA in social and cultural anthropology, a Post-Master in artistic research and is soon to defend a PhD at Hasselt University.

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, NO. 8.
Get your copy now - available in our online shop

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Photo by Jonas Balsevičius

ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

Valentinas Klimašauskas | Vocal Notes for Labouring Worlds

Valentinas Klimašauskas is a curator and writer. In 2024, he curated the Lithuanian pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennial (with Jo.o Laia, artists: Pakui Hardware and Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė) and ‘Inflammation’, a solo show by Pakui Hardware, at the Museum of Applied Arts and Design, Vilnius. Together with Jo.o Laia, Klimašauskas curated ‘The Endless Frontier’, the 14th Baltic Triennial at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius (2021). Other recent curatorial projects include ‘Ocean Eyes’, the Coast Contemporary festival in Lofuotta/L.fot/Lofoten Islands (2023); ‘An Incomplete & Unreliable Guide to Social Media War Room’ as part of the ‘Curated by’ festival at Galerie Georg Kargl, Vienna (2021) and ‘The s*x lives of fruit flies’ at Low gallery, Riga (2021). Klimašauskas is the author of Telebodies. Bleeding Subtitles for Postrobotic Scenes (Mousse Publishing, 2024).

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, NO. 8.
Get your copy now - available in our online shop

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