Lina Lapelytė (United Kingdom/Lithuania) – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

Lithuanian pavilion in the Venice Biennale will transform into a singing beach

In the next year’s 58th Venice Biennale, for a few months, Lithuanian pavilion will transform into a brightly-lit, casual beach. The country will be represented by contemporary opera-performance Sun and Sea created by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė. The project that might seem lightweight at first glance – but which actually analyzes extremely relevant ecological issues - will be presented by Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts and the pavilion will be curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, the curator of public programs at the Serpentine Gallery of London.

Lithuania will present itself with a rather unusual genre for the Venice Biennale - it will take the ambitious opera off the stage and settle it next to an imaginary sea. The main character of Sun and Sea - a modern society of vacationers dressed in colorful bathing suits - is lying down on the floor covered with several tons of sand while singing and performing the routine beach procedures. In the libretto, vacationers’ thoughts are expressed in a lively and casual language. In their solos, actors sing about real-life troubles, happy moments, unpleasant memories, loftiness; they voice sophisticated thoughts, even describe the sunscreen’s list of ingredients and morning plans for making an omelet.

Different stories gradually grow into a global mosaic - a universal choir of the ecosystem. Accompanied by synthetic sounds, it reinforces the mood of anticipated catastrophe and impermanence and indifference of human species. In their opera, artists speak airily, aptly and with a mild irony about societal and natural crises and collapses. By creating a scenic design that requires specific architecture, they invite to observe this lively installation from above, as if you were that toxic sun or something other than human.

Although the premiere of Sun and Sea took place in the National gallery of Art in October 2017 during the international theatre festival Sirenos, the development of the opera started in 2016 at the Akademie Schloss Solitude Residence. Its manager and artistic director, founder of the program and chairman of the board Prof. Jean-Baptiste Joly was approved as the second commissioner of the Lithuanian pavilion. In addition to this artist residence (the largest in Germany), the opera-performance is co-produced by the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Münchner Kammerspiele, Goethe-Institut and Dresden State Theatre where the German version of the opera was presented in March 2018. The main producer is public institution Neon Realism (former A-Laukas).

• Project: opera-performance Sun and Sea
• Artists:
  • Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė
    • (b. 1983, based in Vilnius) works as a theatre and film director. Her favorite creative strategies consist of exploring the tension between objective and imagined realities and challenging anthropocentric way of thinking in a playful way.
  • Vaiva Grainytė
    • (b.1984, based in Vilnius) is a writer, playwright, and poet, engaged in interdisciplinary theatre projects. Her latest works exhibit the features typical of her oeuvre: personal and collective memory, daily routine and social issues are in harmony with poetic, slightly absurd and surreal overtones.
  • Lina Lapelytė
    • (b.1984, based in Vilnius and London) is an artist and musician. Her performance-based practice is rooted in music and flirts with pop culture, gender stereotypes and nostalgia.
• Curator:
  • Lucia Pietroiusti
    • (b. 1985, based in London) has been working as a curator of public programs in the Serpentine Galleries in London since 2013. She is the initiator, curator and co-creator of Park Nights, Saturday Live, Talks and Seminar, Serpentine Cinema and other programs.
• Commissioners:
  • Rasa Antanavičiūtė
    • (b. 1972, based in Vilnius) is the initiator, developer and executive director (since 2011) of Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts.
  • Jean-Baptiste Joly
    • (b. 1951, based in Stuttgart) is the founder, chairman of the board, head and art director (since 1989) of Akademie Schloss Solitude - the largest artist residency program in Germany.