As a Journal, Sierakausko Str. 15, Vilnius (2025)

06/08/2025

The story behind the cover of issue no.8

“I bumped into Kemežys at the CAC – we were both working there at the time – and I said, ‘Take a photo of me.’ ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘I’ll bring the camera.’ I was sweaty, wearing a T-shirt, but I threw on a jacket. I opened Čiurlionis’ book, which has his portrait in it, and I looked at my reflection in the window of the CAC courtyard on the first floor. I asked him, ‘What do you think, does it look similar if I stand like this?’ Click. It took four takes to do it. We chose one of those photos. Others agreed it looked similar. That portrait of me ended up hanging in a winery – people would say, ‘Yeah, I know, that’s the painter, Čiurlionis.’ It’s like KFC or Che Guevara on a T-shirt, it’s like a brand – you get confused, you get mistaken,” said Donatas Jankauskas-Duonis.

Excerpt from a conversation between Asta Vaičiulytė and Donatas Jankauskas-Duonis

Photo: M.K. Čiurlionis Museum of Art, photographer Gustina Keturakytė

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, No. 8.
Get your copy now – available in our online shop.

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12/06/2025

Escape from M.K. Čiurlionis, or perhaps together with him?

AS A JOURNAL, invited guests to the presentation of the eighth issue, ESCAPE, the first in the magazine's history to be inspired by a single person. The event took place at the Nacionalinis M. K. Čiurlionio dailės muziejus in Kaunas.

The editor of the issue, philosopher, writer and curator of the Contemporary Art Centre Edvardas Šumila and sculptor Donatas Jankauskas-Duonis attended the event. Editor-in-chief Kotryna Lingienė moderated the discussion.

Photo: M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum, photographer Gustina Keturakytė.

Čiurlioniui 150

27/05/2025

ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

Lukas Brasiskis interviews Deimantas Narkevičius | From Tarkovsky to AI: On the Evolving Resonance of Solaris

Lukas Brasiskis is the Curator of Film and Video at e-flux. He was a co-curator of the 14th Shanghai Biennale (2023–24) and is one of the three Artistic Directors of the upcoming Seoul Media City Biennale (2025). After receiving his PhD degree in Cinema Studies from New York University in 2022, he has taught courses at Columbia University and Brooklyn College/CUNY. His writing on moving image is widely published, and most recently he was the co-editor of Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe (Berghahn Press, 2024) and Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running (Yale University Press, 2022). Since 2024, he has been a co-editor of e-flux’s weekly publication Film Notes.

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, NO. 8.
Get your copy now - available in our online shop

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25/05/2025

ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

Goda Palekaitė | Hallucinating Čiurlionis

Goda Palekaitė is an artist, writer and researcher working at the intersection of contemporary art, performance, artistic research, literature, and anthropology. Her practice revolves around projects exploring the politics of historical narratives, the agency of dreams and imagination, and social conditions of creativity. Her recent solo exhibitions have been held at Beursschouwburg in Brussels, Västerås Art Museum, Kunsthal Gent, Editorial in Vilnius, and Konstepidemin in Gothenburg. In recent years, her performances and installations have been presented at Whitechapel Gallery in London, BOZAR Brussels, Vartai Gallery in Vilnius, Tranzit Bratislava, The Biennale Architettura 2018 in Venice, Galerie Georg Kargl in Vienna, Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Kanal–Centre Pompidou in Brussels, among others. In 2020 she published the book of fiction, Schismatics (Lapas books). She is currently the curator of the Alternative Education Programme at Rupert, Vilnius. Palekaitė holds a BFA in fine arts, an MA in social and cultural anthropology, a Post-Master in artistic research and is soon to defend a PhD at Hasselt University.

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, NO. 8.
Get your copy now - available in our online shop

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Photo by Jonas Balsevičius

23/05/2025

ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

Valentinas Klimašauskas | Vocal Notes for Labouring Worlds

Valentinas Klimašauskas is a curator and writer. In 2024, he curated the Lithuanian pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennial (with Jo.o Laia, artists: Pakui Hardware and Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė) and ‘Inflammation’, a solo show by Pakui Hardware, at the Museum of Applied Arts and Design, Vilnius. Together with Jo.o Laia, Klimašauskas curated ‘The Endless Frontier’, the 14th Baltic Triennial at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius (2021). Other recent curatorial projects include ‘Ocean Eyes’, the Coast Contemporary festival in Lofuotta/L.fot/Lofoten Islands (2023); ‘An Incomplete & Unreliable Guide to Social Media War Room’ as part of the ‘Curated by’ festival at Galerie Georg Kargl, Vienna (2021) and ‘The s*x lives of fruit flies’ at Low gallery, Riga (2021). Klimašauskas is the author of Telebodies. Bleeding Subtitles for Postrobotic Scenes (Mousse Publishing, 2024).

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, NO. 8.
Get your copy now - available in our online shop

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21/05/2025

ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

Chiara Bottici | Two Fragments and an Imaginal Journey

Chiara Bottici is a Professor of Philosophy and co-founder of the Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute at The New School for Social Research in New York. She is the author of several books, including Anarchafemminism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), A Feminist Mythology (Bloomsbury, 2021), Imaginal Politics (Columbia University Press, 2014), A Philosophy of Political Myth (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and Men and States: Rethinking the Domestic Analogy in A Global Age (Palgrave, 2009). With Benoit Challand, she co-authored Imagining Europe: Myth, Memory, Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations (Routledge, 2010). She has published in leading academic journals, including The Journal of Political Philosophy, European Journal of Social Theory, European Journal of Political Theory, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, and Globalizations. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages.

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, NO. 8.
Get your copy now - available in our online shop

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19/05/2025

ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

Šarūnas Nakas | Fragments of Čiurlionis

Šarūnas Nakas is a composer, essayist, radio broadcaster, and curator. From 1982 to 2000, he directed and conducted the Vilnius New Music Ensemble, which he founded. With the ensemble, he toured 16 countries, performing works by Lithuanian composers written especially for the group. He has worked as an editor for the music sections of various cultural publications and has written around 100 articles. In 2001, he published the textbook Contemporary Music, which explores twentieth-century music and its most prominent composers. Since 2002, he has produced radio-essay programmes on contemporary music and the history of Lithuanian music. He curated the music section of the international art exhibition ‘Dialogues of Colour and Sound. Works by M. K. Čiurlionis and his Contemporaries’ (2009) and organised the exhibition ‘Juzeliūnas’ Cabinet: Modernising Lithuanity’ (2016), both at the National Gallery of Art, Vilnius. In 2007, he was awarded the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Art. He is currently working on a book about M. K. Čiurlionis.

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, NO. 8.
Get your copy now - available in our online shop

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17/05/2025

ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

Guest edited by philosopher, writer and curator Edvardas Šumila, ESCAPE delves into various artistic and discursive histories and awaken our esoteric curiosity. While moving toward a critical take on spirtuality, it attempts to personalise the seemingly institutionalised. Staring at the black sun that belonged to one of Stravinsky's, never to be found again, we will imagine scores that were perhaps only dreamed and never composed.

There must be a secret; have we been hiding from it, has it eluded us, or has it always been present, embedded in our cultural milieu? Has history done justice, or has it trapped us within a perpetually unfulfilled promise? Have our minds been split in so many directions that we can hardly utter a sentence without a certain name? As we move from the poems of the previous issue through the constellation of these questions, it may turn out that we have always had a figure lurking behind us, becoming our lens or a principle.

He never heard his poems played; we mean M. K. Čiurlionis.

Guest Editor Edvardas Šumila
Editor Kotryna Lingienė
English Language Editor Gemma Lloyd
Issue Design Vytautas Volbekas

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Photo by Jonas Balsevičius

15/05/2025

ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

Yumiko Nunokawa | Personal Reminiscences through Jonas Mekas and M. K. Čiurlionis

Yumiko Nunokawa. PhD, is a part-time lecturer at Waseda University, Tokyo. She earned her PhD from Kaunas University of Technology and her MMus from Goldsmiths College, the University of London. Her writing on composer Serge Prokofiev has been published in Three Oranges Journal of the Serge Prokofiev Foundation, London in 2008 and 2012. In 2009, she contributed to the publication of the Japanese edition of Prof. Vytautas Landsbergis’s book Čiurlionis: Time and Content. In 2011 she assisted as a producer and translator for Čiurlionis Piano Works (URTEXT), compiled by Prof. Darius Kučinskas and published by Yamaha. Since 2010, she has been a regular participant in Čiurlionis-themed conferences. Her research interests include M. K. Čiurlionis, Lithuanian folk song music, the synthesis of the arts in fin-de-si.cle Europe, and Japonisme.

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Čiurlionis’ street in Warsaw, 2011

Jonas Mekas. Sills from the film Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania, 1972. © Jonas Mekas. Courtesy of the Estate of Jonas Mekas

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, NO. 8.
Get your copy now - available in our online shop

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13/05/2025

* as a Journal offers a fresh outlook on contemporary cultural movements and recognises the insightful contributions that artists, creators and researchers from Lithuania and beyond bring to topics of global concern.

Published twice a year, the title of * as a Journal, changes along with the theme of each issue and invites readers to immerse themselves in a single topic from a range of unexpected cultural perspectives. The content of each issue of the magazine is developed by guest editors with a special interest in the chosen topic and created by an international team of contributors.

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Photo by Jonas Balsevičius

11/05/2025

ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

A conversation between Asta Vaičiulytė and Donatas Jankauskas-Duonis | Another Hundred Years

Asta Vaičiulytė is a curator and art publications editor working at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius. Among other projects, she has curated and co-curated solo exhibitions by artists Jochen Lempert, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Melanie Smith, and Algimantas Kunčius. Between 2012 and 2016 she worked in a curatorial collaboration which focused on the experiential, the material, and the elusive within the contemporary art field and explored non-verbal perception and ways of alternative exchange. This research resulted in three international group exhibitions; ‘Ritual Room’ (2013), ‘Words aren’t the thing’ (2015), and ‘Anachronikos’ (2016) at the CAC, Vilnius. In 2017, she was a co-curator of the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, presenting artist Žilvinas Landzbergas, and in 2018 she co-curated the video programme ‘Fast Forwarded: Selected Lithuanian Video Works Since the 1990s’, which was screened at MAXXI, Rome. In 2022 she edited Conversations about Lithuanian Contemporary Art, a book published by the CAC featuring 30 conversations with artists, curators, art critics and other cultural figures who have shaped the Lithuanian contemporary art scene over the past 30 years.

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Donatas Jankauskas–Duonis. Pages from Marčiurlionis, artist’s book, series of 9, circa 1997 – ongoing

Donatas Jankauskas–Duonis. View of exhibition ‘Retrospective’, 1999. Photo: Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius archive

Donatas Jankauskas–Duonis, The Birthday of Venus, installation, 2022, water tower in Piliuona. Photo: Martynas Plepys

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, NO. 8.
Get your copy now - available in our online shop

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09/05/2025

ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL

Ben Eastham | The Sun is God. On the Naturalism of M. K. Čiurlionis

Ben Eastham is a writer and editor based in Rome. He is editor-in-chief of e-flux Criticism and co-founder of The White Review. His second book, The Imaginary Museum, was published in 2020. He is the editor of books on artists Fabio Mauri (2019), Luis Camnitzer (2020), and Arshile Gorky (forthcoming, 2025). He was the publications editor and a co-curator of the 14th Shanghai Biennale and is the publications editor of the 2025 Seoul Mediacity Biennale. His writing on art and literature has appeared in The New York Times, London Review of Books and other major publications. He has also written monographic essays for artists, including Ed Ruscha, Camille Henrot, Kati Heck and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. Previously, he was an editor at ArtReview and an associate editor at documenta 14. He is currently working on a new book to be published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

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This article appears in full in ESCAPE AS A JOURNAL, NO. 8.
Get your copy now - available in our online shop

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