"To take on notice" - final event of the Experiments' Platform to draw attention to environmental monitoring practices

In the third season of the Experiments Platform, Eglė Kliučinskaitė, Vika Pranaitytė, Magdalena Beliavska and Ervinas Blažys reflect on the practices of environmental observation and self-care from different perspectives in individual projects. Their discoveries are based on experiments, untested methods and trials and tribulations, which were overcome together with a team of mentors from the European LINA platform, who worked together for five months: the French architect and visual artist Tevi Allan Ston Mensah and the architect and researcher Max Utech, a member of the “Palace of Un/Learning”. The mentor team is also joined by the TAAT art collective and Aiste Ambrazevičiūtė, a digital artist and architect practicing experimental architecture.

During the final event, the curator of the Experiments’ Platform, Gabrielė Černiavskaja, will invite the mentors to a discussion about experiments and the theme of observation that connects them, which is particularly relevant when thinking about how we perceive space, how we “consume” it and what expressions of ecological sustainability we can find in architecture if we actively look. The discussion will also be joined by XANTHO, participants of the Experiments’ Platform from previous seasons, who are forming a contemporary pilgrimage through decaying urban landscapes, and Goda Verikaitė and Aušra Česnauskytė, the creators of the Neo-Futuristic Walks, who are travelling through different European and American cities. The audience will also be treated to a guest lecture by Helsinki-based curator and spatial researcher Martin Born.

The curator of the Experiments’ Platform stresses that for this project it is important to open up the field of architecture to creators from other disciplines, to provide a comfortable platform for new and unexpected perspectives. These aims are reflected in the projects of this year’s selected participants. Ervinas Blažys’ project Posters as Architectural Catalysts delves into the temporary world of paper posters, capturing their ever-changing existence as an urban layer, created and changed by non-architects. Magdalena Beliavska, presenting sleep spaces as unconventional platforms for thought and discussion, invites us into the realm of sleep with her project “A Room to Dream”, where the boundaries between the physical and metaphysical worlds disappear, and sleep is transformed into a unique architectural experience. Eglė Kliučinskaitė’s project “Redefining the existing” focuses on the slow disappearance of spaces and re-imagines their future. Through the lens of the artist’s work, which focuses on the architecture of Lithuanian socialism, its remnants and possible histories come to life. Meanwhile, Vika Pranaitytė, who explores the abandoned corners of Kaunas’ outskirts in her project Melancholy Spaces, invites to a melancholic journey, where abandoned spaces are wrapped in an experimental melancholy tapestry. More about these projects in the final event of the Experiments’ Platform.

13:00 – 13:30 performative presentation on organisational fiction by curator and researcher Martin Born
13:30 – 14:00 Conversation between the curator of the Experiments’ Platform Gabrielė Černiavskaja and the mentors of the Experimentats’ Platform Aistė Ambrazevičiūtė, Goda Verikaitė, Max Utech and Tevi Allan Ston Mensah.
14:00 – 15:00 Break
15:00 – 15:30 Presentation of Ervinas Blažys’s project “Posters as Architectural Catalysts”
15:30 – 16:00 Presentation of Magdalena Beliavska’s experiment “Room to Dream”
16:00 – 16:30 Presentation of Eglė Kliučinskaitė’s experiment “Redefining the existing”
16:30 – 17:00 Presentation of Vika Pranaitytė’s experiment “Melancholy Spaces”
17:00 – 18:00 Discussion among the participants of the Experimentation Platform

Design by Valentin Duduk.

Experiments’ Platform is part of the Architektūros fondas’ programme on the European architecture platform LINA, co-funded by the European Union. Our activities are financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.