Vilius Vaitiekūnas

The tangible heritage determines our habits of thinking and the understanding of our environment. Besides that, it also provides past-accepted ways of interacting.

Our heritage, for example artworks, is thus charged with the ways of thinking, interacting and approaching the world we live in,  specifically the way we perceive, interpret and interact with artworks. The intention of Untitled is to deconstruct these habits of interacting of the audience and to mediate them through the installation. This site-specific installation was designed for the Graduation Show 2018 of Academy Minerva and takes into account the location, marketing material of the event, artwork of students, established ways of presenting students’ work at the final exhibition of their education, and so forth. Untitled plays with the habits of the audience to perceive an artwork at an art academies Graduation show. The perception of the viewer is mediated previously by encountering various mass and social media representations of art and artists. This installation holds a mirror up to the viewer while questioning the myths created about art, the fame of art, and the social and economic position of art. 

 

Untitled consists of four parts, a video, a reoccurring motif – the snap, a fictitious prize and merchandise goods. The design of the installation coincides with the promotion material of the Graduation show. The three used colours (black, white and pink) are taken from the marketing design of the Academy Minerva promotion material for the graduation show. Black curtains in front of wall-installed boxes stimulate the excitement of the viewer and provide a personal physical experience while uncovering the merchandise goods at display in the boxes. The design of Untitled is inspired by the presence and importance of the experience economy in the current cultural and economic spheres; the way locations, for example museums, are being designed to create and stimulate an experience that eventually would become inseparable from the product.

 

Video. A video shows the participants of the Art Academy Minerva’s Graduation Show 2018 while making the works they exhibit during the show. Or so would one think. The captured processes of creating are filmed in their studios and staged and directed by the artists and Vilius Vaitiekūnas; the only authentic part of the process of making is the artist, the work and sometimes their studio. The way the artists act in the process of making their work, using tools, procrastinating ideas, gathering information, the way they contemplate their artworks and physically engage in the making is staged based on stereotypical expectations about the artist and the moment of creation.

Snap. At the beginning and the end of each segment of the video participants click their fingers. The icon of a snap is also present on the walls of the installation. This frequently repeated action and motif becomes an associative element of Untitled. 

Snap is inspired by branding motives in the contemporary art scene and the way repetition of an artist’s name in the mass media eventually mediates the viewers experience with an artwork. The intention of the motif is to play with the ways products of western culture are mediated through advertising and branding.

 

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Art Prize. The award is inspired by the way art prizes and nominations influence the viewers’ experience in relation to artists and their artworks. The Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven art prize can potentially draw the audience’s attention to a specific work. However, this prize is a scam, it does not exist. There is no official Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven foundation and they thus do not reward any prizes. Nevertheless, seven participants of the Graduation Show got nominated by Vilius Vaitiekūnas and stuck the icon of the fictitious prize next to their artwork, just like the artists granted with a real award. During the event the prize raised awareness for the nominated artworks on display: visitors were spending more time looking at the works, taking business cards of the nominees and interacted longer and more openly with the nominated artists.

 

Merchandise goods. The works which the artists in the aforementioned video are making and which are exhibited during the graduation show are reproduced in merchandise goods to mediate the experience of the visitor. The products refer to museum shops and other commercial input in the art scene, for example how art related institutions are using the habits of consumption-friendly visitors to flourish their willingness to buy event-related goods. 

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Edited by Vanessa van 't Hoogt