On Friday, 30 January, at 5.30 pm, a research presentation of the student educational programme Loaded Silence will take place in the Reading Room of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), together with participating students and the programme’s curators and mentors, Jogilė Ulinskaitė and artist Vytenis Burokas.
The CAC invites audiences to the final event of the Loaded Silence student educational programme, during which participants from the 2025 programme will share insights, texts and visual materials developed through meetings and discussions. This is the fifth edition of the programme, which brings together the disciplines of political science and art, and traditionally consists of both closed and public meetings, discussions and workshops.
This edition focused on the relationship between culture, the social sciences, war and militarisation. The starting point for dialogue was the exhibition ‘Bells and Cannons’, which examines – through artworks, discussions and texts – how militarisation shapes contemporary life, the factors that have led to the current situation, and the futures we might anticipate.
This final gathering invites both participants and audiences to engage with the themes and questions developed throughout the programme. Evolving at the intersection of politics, contemporary art, economics and experiential knowledge, the programme has involved mapping collective and personal memories, tracing shifting temporal trajectories, and analysing how fluid borders, resource exploitation, and constantly changing narrative structures reshape physical and conceptual landscapes.
Since the programme’s inception, shifting geopolitical conditions have lent these investigations a strong sense of contingency, unfolding through questions of memory, trauma, sleep, representation and voice. Participants’ group research – addressing transgenerational trauma, selective or disappearing memory, anxiety, repetition and temporal loops, as well as borders as social and mythical constructs that travel with us – centres on shared concerns: how memory is produced or erased, who speaks when it disappears, and how landscapes, bodies and identities are transformed in these processes. The final meeting opens a space for collective reflection, bringing together different perspectives, experiences and geographies, and inviting exploration of how narratives – human and more-than-human – may transform through artistic, spatial or speculative practices.
The event will be held in English and participation is free of charge.
PROGRAMME CURATORS AND MENTORS
JOGILĖ ULINSKAITĖ is an Associate Professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University. Her research focuses on the discourse of populist parties and the memory of post-communist transformation.
VYTENIS BUROKAS is an artist, curator and lecturer. He holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Sculpture and Art Pedagogy from the Vilnius Academy of Arts (VAA). He has worked as an education and exhibition curator at the LNDM National Gallery of Art and currently teaches in the Sculpture Department of the VAA.
PARTICIPANTS OF THE LOADED SILENCE PROGRAMME:
Aksana Troneva, Anna Navitskaya, Daria Ovsyannikova, Emilija Višinskaitė, Flo Kammel, Gabrielė Navickaitė, Hanna Schwarzenberg, Jovita Mincevičiūtė, Katrė Motuzaitė, Kornelijus Pelkys, Ksenia Miroshnikova, Luka D. Misiūnaitė, Marta Liaukevich, Nunilo Rumbutis, Ramunė Hvajon Vaicekauskaitė, Roman Honcharov, Veronika Bolotnikova, Vėjūnė Leškytė, Zakaria El Majdoub
PROJECT CURATOR
KAMILĖ KRASAUSKAITĖ is Curator of Public Programmes at the Contemporary Art Centre and an interdisciplinary art practitioner. Her practice explores how conditions for being together are produced in contemporary contexts. Working at the intersection of social, ecological-anthropological and mythopoetic research, she approaches culture as a sensitive and responsible practice of shaping reality.
Photography and/or filming may take place during the event. Photographs and/or video recordings may be used to promote the event on social media, websites, in the media, and elsewhere.