After winning “Creative Europe” funding in May, “Kaunas 2022” project “Modernism for the Future 365/360” gains momentum: the received submissions were carefully evaluated and the commission selected artists to participate at local and international residencies. Artists of various disciplines will interpret modernist architecture in 8 local and 7 international residencies, located in these cities: Kaunas (Lithuania), Lviv (Ukraine), Kotrtijk (Belgium) and Brno (Czech Republic). A list of selected artists can be found in this document.
The project partners from Lviv, Brno and Kortrijk were looking for local artists, offering them to creatively interpret the modernist heritage in their own and partner cities. The artists were invited to interpret different objects: not only the buildings that were well known to the public, such as the former Prior department store in Brno, the Officers’ Chamber in Kaunas or the Trade Union Palace in Lviv, but also private homes such as Bohuslav Fuchs Villa in Brno or Gaverzicht Waregem. villa in Kortrijk and many others.
Numerous strong applications were received where artists shared their visions of how they would interpret the heritage of modernist architecture in their own or partner countries: the artists carefully studied the modernist buildings offered for interpretation, analyzed their authentic layers, and found some conflicting nuances of heritage and modern society.
“Evaluating the proposed ideas, the main attention was paid to their conceptuality and diversity of artistic forms. Modernist buildings have been suggested to be interpreted by light, object or sound installations, experimental documentaries, provocations, graphic design projects and other original solutions. We considered the artist’s vision of how to involve researchers, creators and the local community in the co-creation process in order to create a long-lasting result to be a very important criterion,” says Viltė Migonytė-Petrulienė, the curator of Kaunas – European Capital of Culture 2022 program “Modernism for the Future“.
The curators of the project hope that even in the conditions of a global pandemic, all the artistic ideas will be implemented. Everything is planned well in advance: the necessary information about the buildings and their history are gathered, contact with the local community and artists is developed.
The result of the work of these artists creating in 15 residencies, will be seen in 2022 in Kaunas, at the opening events of the European Capital of Culture.
Luko Mykolaičio nuotr.
