What's so scary about a falling tree

Collective listening & discussion

Kata Bitowt, Martyna Šulskutė
Audio story, 23’42’’
2022

Society by definition is the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community. What if we were to broaden these boundaries to other species? Living in a capitalist economy, our culture is innately anthropocentric, constantly expanding our influence and power over the natural world, controlling the resources and deciding about the habitats of others.
What would we gain from another type of expansion? Expansion of perception, including other kingdoms of life into our society?

After a listening session of the piece 'What's so scary about a falling tree', we invite you to a further discussion with one of the episode's interlocutors, botanist Dr. Radvilė Rimgailė-Voicik.

We will further discuss the topics of broadening our concept of 'society', if we should or shouldn't compare animals and plants, why are we prone to categorise and label everything, and can we escape language?

Dr. Radvilė Rimgailė-Voicik - botanist, a researcher at Life Sciences Center, Vilnius University. Lecturing about plant diversity and its importance. Curious to learn and share challenging ideas about vegetal life.

Kata Bitowt is a sound producer and recording engineer based in Vilnius. Her main interest is in the music-noise-sound boundaries and how they can be manipulated. She creates electroacoustic compositions and audio stories, which is a great place to combine field recordings with synthetic sounds and sterility of the recording studio.

Part of KIN exhibition

Supported by
Lithuanian Council for Culture, Stadt Wien, Litauische Botschaft in Wien

Viktoras Urbaitis aka Teatre creates and plays alternative electronics, traversing across techno rhythmics, synth hybrids, wave melodies, and everything in-between. The Lithuanian producer and DJ has been actively releasing material since 2018 on cassette, vinyl and digital formats on Lithuanian and international labels, debuting with a 12'' vinyl release on Lux Rec in 2021.

Photos by Maria Belova

Dance performance/concert "Dance for washing machine and mother" by Greta Grinevičiūtė.

During the performance Greta will invite the audience to travel together through her past and present memories and to visit an installation - a dream that can no longer be dreamt.

Lithuanian choreographer and dancer Greta Grinevičiūtė, who started her 2018 creative triptych with the performance Dance for a vacuum cleaner and dad, presents her second work, which deals with family ties. Grinevičiūtė works with the creator, performer and contemporary dance teacher Andrius Katinas, who will be represented in the performance by projections recorded in Helsinki or by a voice that lives in phone calls. Her work at a distance during the quarantine not only retained the idea of performance, but also gave it a new form, reminiscent of the dancer's relationship with her father.

Photos by Maria Belova

An interactive audiovisual performance

The growth of an identity is a constantly dynamic process, which is formed by external influences on the self. Thereby the self-reflection by digital and social media plays an increasingly important role.

On our screens we are used to seeing the fragments of a fast-paced and volatile construct. Characters are optimized, transformed and flattened. How can this selective and fragmented image of the self get more complex and comprehensive, so that it goes together with the fluid and procedural character of a human identity?

This question is the starting point for a sound based performance. The virtual staging of identity is compressed, scaled, trans-formed and critically questioned in a generative setting: The movement and the voice of the performer are captured by a webcam and a microphone and represented in a live-stream. Thereby the stream’s video image is transformed depending on the input of the performer's voice. The result is a distorted duplication of the performer, which is live projected back on her body.

Like this a constant interactive process between the real performer and her virtual double is provoked, that can be directly comprehended by viewers, who themselves get part of the process for example by getting captured by a camera movement.

By integrating the viewers into the live-stream the border between watching and being watched is dissolving. In our performance the video reacts to the pitch of the voice and according to this project's particular images. Going further, we can reach the point where not a human voice at all, but some wildly transformed sounds would come out from the performer’s mouth, thus achieving not only depersonalization but even dehumanization of the performer.

Tickets: free entrance

(limited seats available, please register: contact@ltartvienna.com)

The program “Lithuanian Shorts: Cinematic Connections” holds 6 films with great artistic and cinematic effort, and presents a spectrum of subjects associated with interpersonal-social environment-technology relationships. This program will guide you through the world of the heartbroken, artificial or very distant people, the world of nature full of fear and unfairness.

Films of the program have already been successfully presented at national and international film festivals and won numerous awards.

The selection is curated by Lithuanian Short Film Agency “Lithuanian Shorts”.

Total duration: 83 min.

Tickets: ADMIRAL KINO

THE BEARERS OF MEMORIES

Dir. Miglė Križinauskaitė-Bernotienė

experimental, 2020, 13 ‘

With every moment – one more memory. But memory sometimes goes blind and what is left becomes hazy.

MY BIRTH

Dir. Eglė Davidavičė

animation, 2017, 3 min.

“My Birth” is a confrontation with the fear of nocturnal forests, its dwellers and deep darkness.

ONE LIFE

Dir. Marija Stonytė

documentary, 2019, 19’

On a private farm, butterflies are raised only to be sold as props for a classical concert performance. We follow one of these fragile creatures on its short-lived journey to the music hall as it struggles to survive ‘civilization’.

COMMUNITY GARDENS

Dir. Vytautas Katkus

Fiction, 2019, 15’

It is a story about a cold relationship between a father and his son. Their bond, plagued by indifference, disintegrates completely.

Apeiron Theatre's premiere of “Virgin Conceptions” was inspired by a recent article in the international press about a female shark that had given birth in the Cala Gonone aquarium on the island of Sardinia, where she had lived for more than ten years with her only companion, a female shark of the same species.

According to the researchers, the phenomenon of parthenogenesis occurs in animal species that have a very high mortality rate or have had difficulty finding a mate of the opposite sex, such as aphids, bees, ants, spindles, etc.

The creators of the performance ask the question "what happens when nothing is born?" in a broader sense - when ideas, passion, children, revolutions, new life forms are not born? But at the same time - can it be that something is born when nothing is born?

The actors have chosen a white sheet of paper as their main instrument - a kind of tabula rasa, with plenty of space for something to be born, but here a mother of five children interjects: "You know, it will be very difficult to give birth on A4, because the legs will creep out of the edges anyway".

Directed by Eglė Kazickaitė and Greta Gudelytė
Actors: Ričardas Bartašius, Greta Gudelytė, Eglė Kazickaitė.
Costume designer: Erika Jankauskaitė
Music by Grid707

Tickets: free entrance

(limited seats available, please register: contact@ltartvienna.com)

Apeiron Theater

is a professional theatre founded in 2012 by two young directors Eglė Kazickaitė and Greta Gudelytė.
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The concept of “apeiron” although difficult to understand, can, for many, become the key point entering the world of Apeiron's theatrical performances. These performances include elements of post-dramatic, surreal, absurd, social grotesque, other theatrical styles and open up a wide field of interpretations (as intertextual dramaturgy practically does not set any boundaries for perception). Apeiron is an indefinite limitless being. According to the Greek philosopher Anaksimander, the apeiron is an eternal, all-encompassing, all-controlling origin that has no beginning and is endless, which itself does not change, only its forms varies.
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The Apeiron Theater avoids monotony, consistency of time and action, too many contexts, links with philosophical concepts, poetry, but always gives priority to thought. The audience plays very important role and is understood as the co-author of the performance, which is also encouraged to see, interpret or understand the performance in its own way.

Creators of the Apeiron Theater analyzing society in psychological, sociological aspects, observing the reactions of the spectator, the prevailing theatrical forms and the possibilities of their variations, experimenting with the language and the theatrical expression of dramaturgy, develop the idea of discursive theater. During a short lifetime, Apeiron Theater became one of the most intriguing theaters in Lithuania.
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“Provocative“, ”experimenting“, “boundary-breaking“, “brutal“, “uncomfortable“, “chaotic“, “irrational“, “amorphous“ – different epithets are used to describe the Apeiron Theater. Theater lovers and critics do not agree on what the Apeiron Theater is: "ambivalent, its theater language, its spectator-looking theater" (Andrius Jevsejevas), or "graphomania claim to post-modern theater" (Simonas Norbutas).
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The creators of the Apeiron Theater do not try to please the proponents of the particular theatrical conception, theory or ideology of any particular concept, nor seek to become a "true" theater. They use specific dramaturgy, visual and acoustic expression, do not identify with the theatrical tradition of "passing" 20th century and create their own vision of theater instead.

WITHOUT LETTERS

Without Letters is an experimental Lithuanian band, exploring the landscape of off-kilter electronic, dance and guitar music.

NANCIE NAIVE

The space of "Improper Walls" echoes with the sound of high-heels. Elegant steps seem to float in the air – she walks on earth just the way she walks in Heaven. She manifests as contemporary Mary, – a common girl with the name of the Mother of God's. She's now been blessed. Her body becomes your daily bread, your earnings, your money. Her body is the indulgence of the 21st century, a sacred currency. Nancie redeems her sins with her own self, she sells herself, bodily sacrifices to God. She is the lamb, the snake, she is a divine coin. Her phantom foretells the misfortune neither of future, nor of past, but of today – a peculiar, distant existence and a careless death of ecclesiastical faith.