On Thursday, 26 October at 6pm, a performative lecture-workshop How One Becomes Antenna by artist Tata Frenkel will take place at the National Gallery of Art of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art.
In this year’s JCDecaux Prize exhibition In Exchange to Ages, Tata Frenkel presents a work of the same title as the lecture-workshop, How One Becomes Antenna. The interactive piece, evolving and expanding throughout the duration of the exhibition, consists of electronic instruments’ prototypes – pre-created by the artist and constructed by the workshop participants – and a performative lecture.
During the workshop, which can be attended without prior preparation, Tata Frenkel will present the principles of constructing a space-controlled electronic instrument circuit, and invite listeners to participate in the practical part of the event by building their own instrument. This instrument is controlled without direct physical contact: hand movements around the pitch antenna can adjust the frequency of the radio waves. The experimental educational workshop will use electronic, radio, electroacoustic and other tools.
The workshop will be accompanied by a performative lecture, during which Tata Frenkel will present her research of the Unseen Arts using the principle of storytelling. The focal problematic point of this study is a critical educational activity that creates knowledge through the sharing of the invisible senses, sonification and radio-acoustic ecology. Through a series of diagrammatic narratives, the artist will present not only schemes and maps of the constructed synthesizers, but also stories about invisible celestial bodies, the human body moving in the air, its potential to become an antenna, and the possible consequences of such transformation.
The event will be held in English with the possibility of a Lithuanian translation.
The event is open to a limited number of participants, so pre-registration is required.
Venue: National Gallery of Art, 3th floor, 5th hall
Duration of the event: 1,5 hours
The event is free of charge.
Tata Frenkel is an artist and educator living and working in Vilnius. She graduated from the Department of Photography and Media Art at Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2022, and now researches the Unseen Arts (a term coined by herself), i.e. performative speaking, storytelling and other forms of articulation or sonification. She also performs electroacoustic performances and plays the theremin.
The JCDecaux Award is an exhibition annual series established by the Contemporary Art Centre and JCDecaux in 2016. Its aim is to promote the work of emerging Lithuanian artists, its dissemination in Lithuania and abroad, and the public interest in contemporary art. Each year, the project’s curators evaluate the applications received through an open call and select participants who are given financial and institutional support to create new works and present them at the exhibition. A one-off prize of 4,000 EUR established by JCDecaux is awarded to one participating artist or artist collective, as decided by an international jury, for the originality, relevance and artistic expression of the work. Every year, the public is also invited to express their liking. The author of the project that receives the highest number of public votes gets the opportunity to present their project on JCDecaux Lithuania’s outdoor advertising billboards.
More information about the exhibition: https://cac.lt/paroda/jcdecaux-premija-2023/
The exhibition will run until 3 December 2023 at the National Gallery of Art (Konstitucijos pr. 22, Vilnius). Opening hours of the gallery: II-III 11am-7pm, IV 12-8pm, V-VI 11am–7pm, VII 11am–5pm.