10 Jul 2009

'This is not a title' at Open Door Museum, Vilnius

Participants (live acts): Bumsteinas Plays Baldessari Sings Sol LeWitt Karaoke, Betoniniai Triušiai, Golden Guts, icontact, Koenigsberg, Mes Repetuojam Sekmadienį, New Wave Gypsies, Popezija, Rimkus & Griskevicius, Tytia Mina Teremina, and others;

Works (posters, slides, video recordings, etc.) to be presented by: DDD, Laura Garbštienė 'The Bremen Town Musicians', State Protected Monument, Stiprus Sliekas, and more;

The 24-Hour Festival/Exhibition escapes the confines of a particular conception, title and a homogeneous visual identity. Other co-existing titles include: 'Artists play guitars', 'Other People's Titles', 'Only Dead Painters', 'Did It Again' (last three borrowed from Stefan Brüggemann), 'Everyone who creates a title is an artist', 'Bumsteinas Plays Baldessari Sings LeWitt Karaoke with Mario Garcia Torres', 'The Festival Of Singing Sculptures', 'The Gallery of Guitars Smashed to Make Sound', etc.
Among the variety of concepts proposed by the 24-Hour Festival/Exhibition, one example could be this: the musical event can be seen as an (ironic) attempt to fuse the two disparate spheres of contemporary art and popular music (such as pop, punk-rock, post-rock, hip hop, and others). Another concept is that a concert serves as a perfect setting for the artist to meet his/her audience. Only this time the artists will employ their body and the sound as a means of communication or a barrier.

The performative nature of the 24-Hour Festival/Exhibition, as well as the communicative qualities of music, determines both the format of the event and its further dissemination. Music was the first to penetrate the Iron Curtain, while other means of communication always seek to go beyond the walls, both physical and ideological. Václav Havel believed that rock music and its attributes initiated the fall of the Iron Curtain. Meanwhile, in his book 'The Psychic Soviet', Ian Svenonius claims that the defeat of the Soviet Union caused a universal „cosmic depression' which directly led to the 'DJ is God' cult identified with the increasing dominance of the World Bank, neoliberalism, and free-market economy. Svenonius contrasts the cult of the DJ to that of rock music; according to the musician, for a while the latter substituted religion and, consequently, with the sudden end of the Rock Era, the world dangerously moves outside the confines of this 'cosmic depression'.

When establishing a temporary band, one could aim to demolish the boundaries between music and contemporary art, as well as to exploit and re-contextualize the musical attributes (i.e., DIY and indie subcultures, mass production, stardom, show conception, listening (dis)pleasures, etc.). John Baldessari based his attempts to fight the elitism of art on similar principles. In 1972, a year after creating 'I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art', the artist decided to sing Sol LeWitt's 'Sentences on Conceptual Art' (1969), thus contributing to the diffusion of Sol LeWitt's ideas. Acknowledging the particular relevance of pop music, Baldessari used different popular tunes for each of the 35 legendary sentences. This work was widely commented on by the artists of the younger generation. As it is put by Sol LeWitt himself in the 33rd sentence, 'It is difficult to bungle a good idea'. The 21st sentence states that 'Perception of ideas leads to new ideas': in 2001, Pierre Bismuth and Jonathan Monk created 'John Baldessari sings Sol LeWitt in Lithuanian'; in 2004, Mario Garcia Torres offered „Baldessari sings Sol LeWitt' karaoke; in 2005, Arturas Bumsteinas recorded an instrumental piece entitled 'Bumsteinas plays Baldessari sings LeWitt'. However, there are many other ways to approach the relationship between popular music and contemporary art, i.e., artists often promote the musicians that work beside them. It is difficult to imagine the existence of The Factory or the 'Exploding Plastic Inevitable' events (with the likes of 'The Velvet Underground' participating) without the presence of Andy Warhol, as well as the development of Graham Rodney's career without Jeff Wall and 'UJ3RK5' (read as 'You Jerks').

The 24-Hour Festival/Exhibition will be staged around the performances of amateur musicians, bands, and saboteurs; eventually, the festival will be transformed into an exhibition space where the recordings of the performances of the legendary artists band DDD and the „Independent Drawing Gig' musical performances organized by Linas Jablonskis will be screened. Following the unconventional rules of a DIY festival, the 24-Hour Festival/Exhibition allows everyone to get involved since the title is still to be given and the space is to be remodeled by the posters the visitors will make themselves.