Kaunas Faculty of Humanities has few very special professors and more than a few exceptional students - that is our conclusion from our 3 days teaching course there, supported through the Erasmus program. We are independent curators from Zagreb, Croatia, running an non-for-profit curatorial organisation for 14 years called KONTEJNER | bureau of contemporary art praxis. KONTEJNER is oriented towards critical examination of the role and meaning of science, technology and the body in contemporary society. KONTEJNER deals with investigative intermedia and interdisciplinary art projects referring to relevant phenomenon of today's art and culture, dealing with societal taboos and ethical systems, society of the future, intervention to to body by cybernetics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, etc.
Our works was recognised by the two women of science from Kaunas Faculty Department of Philosophy and Culture Studies – Virginia Jureniene and Aistė Urbonienė who decided to invite the two women of creativity (at least that's how they called us) to open the students to a new field and a new experience. This invitation was a consequence of our previous meeting in Zagreb, where we introduce Kontejners' publications and short history of our festivals and other projects.
Virginia and Aistė proposed us a bold idea: to teach their students about performance and, even bolder, to try to do with them a performance. It was a big challenge for us because we have worked with art students on this topic but never with students of cultural management. In a very short time we made a workshop with students of 1st and 3rd year and the result was amazing. Even if they have never studied performance or performed themselves they showed great self-motivation, commitment, organisational skills and skills to establishes collaborative relationships. But above all they demonstrated bravery because they decided to do a very difficult assignment.
They were given a choice to select from already existing performances to do an experiment in reenactment. The performance that students ended up doing was a reenactment of a piece originally done for a Touch me festival in Zagreb in 2005 by Serbian artist Zoran Todorović. In his piece called No Name or Absent the artist tied up one by one all of the members of the audience and left them in a room, without expected art piece. Members of the audience found themselves in a discomforted situation, which becomes very interesting, exciting and ambiguous and which they could interpret in various ways: as being challenged, as being victims, as being put on a test etc. Well, art is not a safe place.
That was a piece unanimously chosen after a debate to be performed by students, and it took a lot of courage, since some of the audience members were their professors. So fellow students, professors, head of department and their guests, all ended up in a basement auditorium and they had to figure out how to get free: the only possibility is by helping each-other.
Besides working with students and their enthusiasm and well as the professors', we were really impressed with the Kaunas domestic and international culinary scene, with romantic and historical city center and incredible hospitality of our hosts. We are looking forward to our next visit there and a new challenge they will propose us.
Olga Majcen Linn & Sunčica Ostoić / Kontejner
Zagreb, March 2014