Video Hills

13/14

Rūta Junevičiūtė

21st June 2020

[...]

I revise my yellow for the second solstice to turn it into green

The video work Stendhal syndrome is a part of a site-specific installation at National Gallery of Art, Vilnius – a solo exhibition Aesopica by Rūta Junevičiūtė, taking place from the 19th of May to the 28th of June, 2020. It is based on the architectural interpretation of Aesopian language. The exhibition was postponed due to the pandemic and was adapted to the constantly changing measurements of safety. The video was conceived imagining that a visitor will not be allowed to touch any surface, sit down and will watch works cautiously passing by.

You are warmly invited to take a tour of images and read a review of the exhibition Aesopica, written by Mónica Mays here.

***

Aesopian language – a term coined after Ancient Greek fabulist Aesop (Aísōpos), is a type of cryptic communication system, where a text has several layers of meaning often contradictory to each other and which seek to convey official and subversive hidden meanings simultaneously. It is usually employed under conditions of omnipresent state censorship to communicate officially forbidden or taboo subjects and opinions. As a system it contains three members – an author, a censor, and a reader. It uses various modes of circumlocution and euphemisation, innuendo and poetic paraphrasing, which can also be seen as an aesthetic style. It has been advocated for artistic benefits as poetics of omissions, concealment, and travesty. On the other hand, it has been criticized as a sign of conformity and humiliation. In Lithuania, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been popularly regarded as a position of dissent, but such an interpretation received criticism from contemporary scholars.

Although Aesopian language has been widely employed in former Soviet Russia and Soviet Lithuania, I was told by a historian, such a mode of expression is not a characteristic of a specific region and century – it is probably as old as censorship itself.

Credits

Stendhal syndrome, HD video, stereo sound, 09:21 min, 2020

Performance: Victoria Russo, Nicholas Matranga, Eric Post
Cinematography: Rūta Junevičiūtė
Video editing: Aneta Bublytė, Rūta Junevičiūtė
Sound: Jokūbas Čižikas
Advisor: Marta Popivoda

I wish to thank to: resourceful and radiant SNDO 2, Bojana Mladenović, Bruno Listopad, Marta Popivoda, Igor Dobričić, Keren Levi, Stephanie Lühn, Eline Oosterbroek, Frederick Rodrigues, Gabi Iasspara and Matej Kejžar for some Zoom dance, Ria Higler, National Gallery of Art Vilnius, Aneta Bublytė, Jokūbas Čižikas, Justinas Dudėnas, Gailė Pranckūnaitė, Anastasija Sosunova, Grėtė Šmitaitė, Mónica Mays, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Victoria Russo, Nicholas Matranga, Eric Post. <3

Bio

Rūta Junevičiūtė is an interdisciplinary artist and a former cultural agent partly based in Amsterdam, where she is studying the potential of dance and choreography. Between 2011–2016 she has had a number of curatorial positions within Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, her home city, having worked on projects such as solo exhibitions by artists Raimundas Malašauskas, Eglė Budvytytė and XI Baltic Triennal of International Art amongst other things.

She has also worked as a dance dramaturge with We Cie Compagnie, a work that has received some nominations and awards in Lithuania. In 2017 she was a DanceWEB scolarship recipient in the framework of ImpulsTanz festival. Since 2018 she has been working in a collaboration with Lilach Livne, Goshka Macuga and Emmilou Rößling.

She holds degrees in Art Theory (BA) and Fine Arts (MA) from Vilnius Academy of Arts and has also studied masters of philosophy in University of Vilnius.