Vytautas Michelkevičius
Fellow tea lounge host Vytautas arrives on Friday with a fresh batch of wild Lithuanian herbs and proceeds to make a reviving tea ceremony in the hkw foyer...
Keywords: Fluxus sand, the Baltic sea as a medium, beaches and breeze, labyrinths of forest paths, smoked fish, solitude, mind massage, landscape meditation, contemplating the ten-meter-high studio space, migrating from water to water, the company of moose, foxes and wild boar, media lab, reinventing tradition, creative sunbathing, socializing in an artists‘ community.
Whenever you come to a residency, you always have some expectations. What if you try not to have any before coming? But if you don’t have any, you don’t have any motivation to come.
Everything must have a reason behind but what if there is only one reason which usually doesn’t count when you are applying somewhere. If you have a reason to re-collect your multiple fragmented identity which in nowadays precarious working conditions could be described as nomad self-curating artist—researcher-producer-concept designer?
Nida Art Colony which is located in a village Nida with several thousand inhabitants looks like a slow island which has nothing to do with contemporary and media art. If you are artist arriving in this quite conservative community, mostly interested in hunting visitors in order to offer accommodation, you will meet obstacles from the very beginning. However there is still a possibility to make welcoming open doors event and try to invite local community no matter how global you are.
When you arrive, after first days of excitement, you start to feel the time of the place which is let’s say from 2 to 10 times slower than in a usual everyday life of an artist in a big city. Nida situated in the middle of the Curonian Spit, which is a 98 km long peninsula separating the Curonian Lagoon and the Baltic Sea. So, between the Colony and the mainland there is a gap of about 1 hour trip by bus and ferry. If you want to reach the closest biggest city with some art&cultural life (Vilnius), you would need about 5 hours by bus-ferry-bus/train. Of, course, you have some cultural life after one hour trip in the first mainland city Klaipėda which is a 200.000 inhabitants having seaport but this experience is rarely promising because of the very small artist community. Therefore it is better to put on your shoes and go for a walk in the labyrinths of forest paths in Nida. Another option is to take bike and cycle for 50 km forth and back along the Spit. These two ways of movement brings you to completely different understanding of time because there are hardly any time indicating and calculating machines – no traffic lights and no public clocks, except the sun.
Staying in Nida Art Colony could be described as staying in solitude but in a positive way. A chat with neighbourhood artists is always available, if you start feeling alone. The only thing which matters is to put your efforts in order to transform this solitude into creative process.
Contemplation of the limited studio space and unlimited open space in front of big waters is a nice shift when you want to move your mind from specific to undefined issues. Sometimes being in a slow mode, could bring you into routine which is easy to break with a nice conversation having a cup of tea with your neighbour.
It’s a right time to come back to the beginning and contemplate the keywords of the place again - that’s how cyclical understanding of slow time is functioning.
...dreaming of a slow month by the baltic sea at nida art colony
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http://nidacolony.lt/
