Narkevičius Deimantas Narkus Robertas Navakas Mindaugas

Narkevičius Deimantas

g. 1964

Deimantas Narkevičius is an artist and filmmaker born in 1964 in Utena, currently based in Vilnius. He graduated sculpture at Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts and spent a year in London in 1992/93, which affected his later interest in site-specific art and concern with the concept of place in a broader discursive sense. Since the late Nineties he mostly works in film and video, experimenting with the film structure and thematizing the weight of subjective memories and personal revisions of the History. As the artist has himself stated a number of times, his films in a certain way are extended sculptures, not only closely adjusted to the physical sites of their installation, but also thematically departing from very specific personal circumstances or experiences. Nevertheless, working in different film formats, often inserting fragments of other media – drawing, found photograph and footage into his films, Narkevičius expands temporal and spatial boundaries of his narratives. With these insertions from another time, another place and another story, he thus thickens the web of suggested meanings, and the told stories acquire an almost inexhaustible wealth of links, connections and connotations. The artist described his themes of interest in the following way: 'Although my works deal with contemporary themes, the underlying problems usually go back a long time. I started my work as an artist in a period of dynamic change for my society. The stress and neurosis caused by all the dynamism diverted this society from both historical reflection and future concerns. The ideological 'orientation' that dominated for decades was - among other things - an attempt at creating a society above and beyond history. The new political situation re-inserted us into the rotating circuit of history, which inevitably requires a vision. But as we started working on such a vision for ourselves, things re-emerged from the past; phenomena that had been hidden under the surfaces of ideology. They lead us into uncharted, unwanted, unpleasant territory, muddling our vision of the future.' Deimantas Narkevičius has gained wide recognition within the international art scene and represented Lithuania at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2003. He took part in Manifesta, Busan and Gwangju biennials of Contemporary Art, Münster Skulptur 2007, the International Film Festival in Rotterdam.

<>1/9

"Europa 54’54 – 25’19",1997, 16 mm film, 8 min.

"His-story", 1998, 35 mm film, 7 min.

"Legend Coming True", 1999, 8 mm, 8 min.

"Countryman",2002. 16 mm, 19 min.

"The Scene", 2003, Super 8 mm, 10 min.

"The Role of a Lifetime", 2003, BetaCam SP, 17 min.

"Once in the 20th Century", 2004, BetaCam, 7 min.

"Disappearance of a Tribe", 2005, video, 10 min.

"Revisiting Solaris", 2007, 35 mm, 18 min.

A trip by car from Vilnius to the geographical centre of Europe not far away. Nervously and somewhat chaotically, a hand-held camera follows the road and the roadside on a drive through residential areas, older neighbourhoods, a housing project on the outskirts of town, and then into the countryside, the universal vagueness of Central Europe. From time to time, the artist delivers commentary in a personal way, as if speaking to himself. He has chosen this destination because Europe is a stressful concept, for both him and the young Lithuanian state. A road sign points to the 'centre of Europe:' across a field and over a wooden bridge. So far, the silence of the journey has been broken only by the artist's voice. Now the camera 'gets out of the car' and captures the sounds of nature. Trees sought in the wind. A stroll across the meadow towards the stone symbolizing the geographical centre of Europe, an ironic expedition to an existential symbol.

A walk in the beach stirs memories in the artist - narrator of his family, flashes of his childhood, , images of their life, full of dramas for which history was responsible. The narrator is telling his wife the story. It continues on the train; they and their child are on the way to their hometown. The narrator is caught up in the story but tries to control his emotions. He obviously identifies with the problems his father had, entangled in another history, a history with no place for independence. In 'that history,' expressing yourself meant risking your life. The artist's narrative segues into his brother's dream about their dead parents. The story ends with a harshly beautiful panorama of the forest. Their father could still be working there, but he died prematurely, 'killed by history.' The tale is free of pathos, pomposity or defiance of historical violence. There is only melancholy and an unexpressed conviction that man, not history, marks out the road we follow.

Taken from Maria Anna Potocka. "This is not what you see…" Exhibition catalogue of Deimantas Narkevicius. Cracow: Bunkier Sztuki, 2006.

The story of a girl spans an extraordinarily vast territory - Kaunas, Vilnius, Israel, Varena, Tadjikistan, Italy, Latvia, Paris, Australia, Toronto, Siberia, Stutthof, Los Angeles, Paneriai. The extensive network of a scattered Jewish community. But the fundamental topography of the film is made up of four aspects of Vilnius: the childhood street, the school facade, the ghetto yard and the Rudninkai forest. Although Lithuanian prince Gediminas and his soothsayer beginning the film are both men, Deimantas Narkevicius' main character is a woman. The personal and collective history of a community is spoken through her. The image techniques - the streams of light that organise memory in this film - suggest that we should interpret its use of time in photographic terms. To watch Legend Coming True is like flicking through an album of photographs at high speed. Narkevicius' protagonist delves into the past in order to save the future, i.e. the collective project of the Future. History is not re-written, but re-filmed, with the objective of organising the future more rationally and correctly.

Taken from Raimundas Malašauskas on Deimantas Narkevičius , newspaper 29, November-December 2001 of Galerie Jan Mot, http://www.janmot.com/deimantas_narkevicius/text2.php, accessed on September 20, 2007.

'The narrative of the film Kaimietis is based on the monologues of two individuals, who do not know each other. These monologues have been recorded for a young sculptor, the male character of the film, getting ready to leave his country, while the text of a female student was recorded just after leaving the home country. Both characters are not typical economic or political immigrants. They share a common drive for new experience in another country, another cultural context. Both young people delve into their personal important issues, without attaching too much to linear sequence. The visual structure of the film is aimed at creating visual suggestions of these two documental narratives, without filming the actual narrators. The sculptor is speaking while showing a portrait of the national hero, created by himself, while the monologue of young female student is accompanied by photographs:- the snapshots of her first days in the strange city. The first reflections of traveling, moving house and experiences are compared with the point of departure, the city, which they know well; from the first moments of departure this point becomes an object of remembrance.'

Taken from newspaper 39, October 2003 of Galerie Jan Mot, http://www.janmot.com/deimantas_narkevicius/text2.php, accessed on September 20, 2007.

A presentation of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius. Ostensibly objective, it begins with the whole of the building and then picks out details in slow, ineluctable sequences. Then the interior. Wide shots fade into architectural details. Music for which the geometrical abstraction seems to be the score (excerpts from works by two modernistic Lithuanian composers) plays in the background. Then, again, the whole building from the outside, shown under a different convention. First, a picture in grey winter scenery, with falling snow. The shots in the next sequence are in strong sunlight that brings out the colors. We see two 'mental states' of the same building. In the background, commentary by three people who appear briefly in the frame: CAC staff member Aneta Raževaitė, CAC director Kęstutis Kuizinas, , and Vita Zaman, the owner of the Ibid Projects galleries in Vilnius and London. The building's spiritual state is inferred from the commentator's psychological states. The presentation of the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius uses various documentary tricks, yet meticulously avoids showing any art.

A film constructed in an exceptionally refined way. A subtle paean to the lies the media tell. The film's skeleton consists of remarks by Peter Watkins then living in Lithuania (the maker of para-documentary films where the suggestion of truth is more important than the authenticity of the image). Watkins talks about his films, the close connection between biography and creativity, and the particular role of the documentary. These private statements reveal a dependency on creativity. In the background of this confession is a mix of film and drawings: landscapes, found film, vacation films and drawings by Mindaugas Lukošaitis, whose consciously modern art relies on hyper-conservative, realistic drawing. A filmed landscape with trees fades into a drawn landscape, but without being literal about it. Various means of representation, various means of 'contaminating' and revealing the truth. Exceptional perceptual effects: the things presented can sometimes not be seen, and other things appear that, apparently, no one wanted to show.

A film devoid of any commentary. It is impossible to tell what language by the crowds shown in several lengthy sequences. We do not know what country we are in. It is a lovely summer day, and everyone is happy and well dressed. The assembled people are animatedly observing something. Finally, the high plinth of a monument appears. The lower legs jut from it in insolation. A truck, with a gigantic torso of Lenin on it, drives into the frame. Shouts of joy are heard. The truck halts in the middle of the crowd. People jump onto it and clamber over the vanquished torso. The euphoria of Paleolithic hunters. Now time reverses; the film begins running backwards, and a crane raises the metal torso above the crowd. Lenin's outstretched arm swings in a suggestive gesture of reconciliation. The operator of the 'backward crane' adroitedly places places the monument atop the isolated legs. Lenin is whole again, and domineers over the scene.

A medley of several score black-and-white photographs from a family album, making up the story of one man. The 'narrative' begins in the early 1950s with youth rallies, excursions and military service. Over time, the situation becomes increasingly private. A woman appears, a wedding, a child. The story end's with the protagonist's funeral. The soundtrack alludes to the scenes; now the buzzing of bees, now burbling water or the creaking boards of the stage in an amateur theatre. The only scene in complete silence is the one with the coffin, shown as a panorama of adjacent photographs. The deceased is not shown, only the mourners, achingly, motionlessly staring at the place where the body probably rests.

The film summarizes the artist's family history and depicts his father's funeral. The artist appears as a child and a young man in several of the pictures. However, the autobiographical element of the film is nowhere stressed. On the one hand, the narrative shocks us with the poverty of motionless traces that the person leaves behind; on the other, it amazes us with the scale of the contact that can nevertheless be achieved with this person.

Taken from Maria Anna Potocka. "This is not what you see…" Exhibition catalogue of Deimantas Narkevicius. Cracow: Bunkier Sztuki, 2006.

In my short film,Revisiting Solaris, the actor Donatas Banionis appears in his role as Chris Kelvin again more than forty years after Andrej Tarkovskij'sSolariswas made.Revisiting Solarisis based on the last chapter of Lems' book, the part that had been left out of Tarkovskij's version. In this last chapter, Kelvin reflects on his brief visit on the "soil" of the planet Solaris shortly before his return from the space mission. As material to visualize landscape of Solaris, I used a series of photographs made by the Lithuanian symbolist painter and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis in 1905 in Anapa. Ciurlionis' works are marked by an original conception of space, producing the impression of an infinite expanse and limitless time. The pictures thus take on a quality of cosmic vision and deep inner concentration. I found it very interesting that in 1971 Andrej Tarkovskij filmed the same surface of the Black Sea inCrimeato represent the landscape of the mysterious ocean.

Taken from: Deimantas Narkevičius on Revisiting Solaris in CACVilnius, June - August, 2007