“It’s just your fear…can you believed?
In our problems… faces of comforts…
and only time can forget you…
and next minutes hands opening shadows…
The same day… the same day… the same day…”
– Emerson, “Same Day,” in Songs Without Music, 1984. (Wording reproduced faithfully according to the original manuscript)
Every day we wake up to intimations of a script. A script that feels strangely familiar but is not entirely legible. Sunrise presents a variation on a theme that is violently pre-sanctioned. Joyful or sad, a day always invites revolt – an inclination to live a life unscripted. There are days of compliance and days of rebellion and there are days of truce. Most days culminate in a draw or a defeat. More rarely in a victory. Each day is its own wondrous struggle. It recycles and replenishes without reassurance. Some attempt to gain control over this cycle. They observe, study, memorise, and predict patterns, but each application of that knowledge is only inhaled, a brief expansion – exhalation is unavoidable. And yet sometimes, this intimate breathing widens time to such an extent that one forgets the arrangement between the earth and the sun. For others, the grid worn is so tightly fitted around the day that it becomes the day itself. Focused narrowly on the precise movements of light, extreme compliance begins to feel like an escape. The cycle of a day lends itself to whimsical interpretation, which reflects back the unruly nature of its feeling. One might be captivated by it or experience that captivation as a penultimate freedom. One might get lost in a frame they can so clearly see while never seeing themselves, while others may be resigned to accepting it as their very own outline. Again, one might train themself to feel the full force of days collecting, withstanding the mechanical amnesia of their resolved rotation. They might forcefully yet humbly, stubbornly even, relieve the days of their sufficiency. Elaborations on the day are born this way. Saturations that echo assured encounters with former happiness.
Same Day includes contributions by Rey Akdogan, Nick Bastis, Kazimierz Bendkowski, Geta Brătescu, Matt Browning, Tom Burr, Elene Chantladze, Josef Dabernig, Aria Dean & Laszlo Horvath, Gintaras Didžiapetris, Jason Dodge, Kevin Jerome Everson, Simone Forti, Michèle Graf & Selina Grüter, Villu Jõgeva, Tarik Kiswanson, Michael Kleine, Běla Kolářová, Jiří Kovanda, Kitty Kraus, Bradley Kronz, Kaarel Kurismaa, Simon Lässig, Ian Law, Klara Lidén, Jolanta Marcolla, Ugnė Nakaitė with Urtė Jarmuškaitė & Pranas Gustainis, Elena Narbutaitė, Ewa Partum, Matthew Langan-Peck, Julie Peeters & BILL, Cameron Rowland, Margaret Salmon, Stephen Sutcliffe, Tanya Syed, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Raša Todosijević, Thanasis Totsikas, Maria Toumazou, Rosemarie Trockel, Christos Tzivelos, Mare Vint, Tanja Widmann, Marina Xenofontos, and Eiko Yamazawa. The exhibition is curated by Tom Engels and Maya Tounta.
On September 6 & 7, the opening weekend of Same Day will present a live programme of contributions by Andrius Arutiunian, Mette Edvardsen & Iben Edvardsen, Toine Horvers, Dana Michel, and Eszter Salamon.
The exhibition takes its title from a poem of the same name, written by the Greek poet Emerson in New York City in 1984. The poem is part of Songs Without Music, a typewritten, and previously unpublished manuscript of poems and lyrics found in the archives of Greek photographer George Tourkovasilis.
Same Day was preceded in 2023 by an introductory event held at the National Lithuanian Drama Theatre in Vilnius as a prologue to the main exhibition. Its title, Remain in Zero, was also borrowed from Emerson’s manuscript and it included contributions by Betzy Bromberg, Draugų Vardai, Emerson, Mette Edvardsen, Han-Gyeol Lie, Honour, Julie Peeters, James Richards, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Margaret Raspé, Remigijus Pačėsa, Seiko & Casio, and Ugnė Nakaitė.
The final chapter of the 15th Baltic Triennial will take shape in a publication developed by Tom Engels and Maya Tounta, and designed by Julie Peeters, to be published in mid-2025.
The Baltic Triennial was first held in Vilnius in 1979 as an exhibition showcasing young Baltic artists working in a non-conformist spirit. Since then it has grown into a major international exhibition in Northern Europe. The upcoming edition is the first international exhibition to be held at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) since its reopening after 3 years of renovation. It also opens alongside the contemporary art festival Survival Kit 15 (Riga), encouraging visitors to explore what the wider region has to offer this autumn.
15TH BALTIC TRIENNIAL CURATORIAL TEAM
TOM ENGELS works at the junction of visual arts and performance. Since October 2021, he has been the artistic director of Grazer Kunstverein, where he has presented artists such as Pan Daijing, Sandra Lahire, Celeste Burlina, Iris Touliatou, Maria Toumazou, Marija Olšauskaitė and Miloš Trakilović. In 2021, he initiated front, a series of storefront exhibitions in Brussels featuring Trevor Yeung, Elena Narbutaitė, Julie Peeters, and Hamish Pearch. His other curatorial projects include trust & confusion in collaboration with Xue Tan and Raimundas Malašauskas, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2021); Touch Release, Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden (2021); Techno-Intimacies in collaboration with Joanna Zielińska, M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp (2021); Hana Miletić: RAD/Materials, Haus, Vienna (2020); another name, spoken, Jan Mot gallery, Brussels (2017); and the series Matters of Performance at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK), Ghent (2017–2019). He is the co-editor of Conversations in Vermont: Steve Paxton (Sarma, 2020) for which he received a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archive Research Grant. He has collaborated with choreographers such as Alexandra Bachzetsis as part of documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, and Mette Ingvartsen for steirischer herbst in Graz, as well as with Mette Edvardsen, Bryana Fritz and PRICE/Mathias Ringgenberg. His first project in Vilnius was Circa 2022, a two-picture exhibition curated together with Raimundas Malašauskas for Montos Tattoo in 2022.
MAYA TOUNTA is a curator and writer who lives and works in Athens, Greece. She is currently the director of Akwa Ibom, a nonprofit exhibition space that she co-founded with Otobong Nkanga in 2019. At Akwa Ibom, Tounta has staged shows by Rosalind Nashashibi and NBA (Agency of New Way: Nick Bastis, Liudvikas Buklys, Gintaras Didžiapetris, Dalia Dūdėnaitė, Ona Kvintaitė and Elena Narbutaitė), Thanasis Totsikas, Jason Dodge, Ellen Gallagher and Dora Economou, Marina Xenofontos, and Nicole Gravier, among others. Through Akwa Ibom and together with Radio Athènes and Melas Martinos, she represents the Estate of Christos Tzivelos and the archive of George Tourkovasilis. Together with Gerda Paliušytė, Gediminas G. Akstinas, and Liudvikas Buklys, Tounta is a co-founder of the space Montos Tattoo in Vilnius. From 2021 to 2022, she worked as the Art Director at e-flux journal. From 2017 to 2021, she worked in close collaboration with Otobong Nkanga in connection to Nkanga’s Carved to Flow (2017–ongoing), from which Akwa Ibom emerged. Together, they curated a series of public programmes for documenta 14 in Athens and Gropius Bau in Berlin, hosting talks by Newton Harrison (of Harrison Studio), Maria Thereza Alves, Fernando García-Dory, Iris Touliatou and others. Tounta’s forthcoming projects include a presentation of Blue Gardenia, a photonovel by Helena Papadopoulos, and a group show presentation departing from the work of fashion designer Kostas Murkudis with contributions by Murkudis, Jodie Barnes, Marietta Mavrokordatou, and Lenard Giller, including a live showcase of K M S/S 2024 at Akwa Ibom, Athens in November 2023.
Image: Death, circa 1970s, silver gelatin print attributed to Elia Lekodimitri under the pseudonym Emerson. Photograph courtesy of The George Tourkovasilis Estate
