The project “Obscene West. Naglis” (named after the monthly magazine of the gay community in Lithuania in the 90s) is dedicated to queer culture and its manifestations in Lithuania and the neighbouring Baltic countries – Estonia and Latvia. The Naglis section focuses on practices of queer artists and the social context of their works during the end of the past century.
The video program is dedicated to the artworks or filmed video material (TV archives) of the 90s and 00s that analyze the problems related to the views towards queer culture, the self-representation of LGBTQ people and the social turmoil in post-Soviet countries at that time. More broadly, the program focuses on gender equality and feminist approaches in video art.
“Obscene West. Naglis” draws a social landscape of the three newly established nation states and their polarized relations towards gender and its cultural and social status, leading to questions how these histories and relations resonate with the trajectories of global developments and how can we mediate them today.
Date: September 29
*Before the screening, at 18:00, there is guided tour at Jaanus Sammas’s exhibition “Iron Men” in English.
Program at 19:00
Anna-Stina Treumund (EST) “Mothers”, 2008, 8 min, Estonian with English subt.
Anna-Stina Treumund “Loser”, 2011, 1 min, English with Estonian subt.
Mark Raidpere (EST) “Shifting focus”, 2005, 9 min 27 s, Estonian with English subt.
Laura Stasiulytė (LT) “From the Life of Young Ladies”, 2001, 14 min, Lithuanian and English.
Santa Lingevičiūtė (LT) “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” 2008, 4 min 34 s, English.
Arta Biseniece (LV) “I love you”, 1992, 2 min 35 s, English.
Dace Džeriņa (LV) “Liberation”, 2002, 12 min.
EKKM and Maria Helen Känd thank the co-curators Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė (Kaunas Artist House) and Andra Silapetere (Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art) for their research and collaboration. We also thank the artists and their families who helped us to gather the works.
The project “Obscene West. Naglis” is organised by Kaunas Artists’ House (Lithuania) and funded by the Lithuanian Council of Culture.