EVENT: THE SECRETARY, THE SHAMAN, THE SCHOLAR, THE LOBBYIST, THE PUBLICIST, AND THE VIRTUOSO
On November 21-22 Rupert invites to the final event of the Alternative Education Programme – The Secretary, the Shaman, the Scholar, the Lobbyist, the Publicist, and the Virtuoso.
Let’s consider the artist not as a solitary genius, but as a secretary of invisible labour, a shaman of the collective, a scholar of the unspeakable, a lobbyist for the marginal, a publicist of the ephemeral, and a virtuoso of the everyday. What if these roles are not metaphors, but methods and muscles?
This year, Rupert’s Alternative Education Programme, curated by Goda Palekaitė, was a vessel for drifting through archetypes and a toolkit for the under-represented edges of artistic work. By shifting positions and roles we slip, knowingly or not, into and out of our artistic, institutional, and interpersonal lives, which determine our artistic practices and cultural labour. The programme unfolded as a choreography of research, fiction, administration, and care, framed by endless discussions.Here, at the conclusion of our vessel’s journey, we invite you to this two-day public event – a culmination, a continuation, a gathering of roles and rituals.
Ten participants provided the programme’s pulse. Their practices – diverse, porous, and insistently personal – animated the archetypes. Marta Finkelštein listens to the echoes of classical music and curates their contemporary mutations, composing the virtuoso’s score with romantic irony. SUNRS uses field recordings to restage ‘real’ and familiar sounds within fictional domains in order to position the listening as a gateway and intersubjective act. Oscar Mathieu le Bussy performs transfaggotry while merging bodies, lobbying for agency at the margins of gender and authorship. Luisa Berghammer interrogates the friction between theory and practice, autonomy and collectivity, like a scholar of conceptual debris. Janina Fritz sculpts environments that register bodily absence and presence, tracing the quiet archive of architectural intimacy. Chris Tegho codes, moves, and models multiplicity, crafting playful interventions into memory and belonging. Charline Gdalia collects recipes and family stories, tracing the migration of language and tradition with the care of an archivist of the intimate. Charles de Agustin writes and makes films through critique and insurgency, wielding administration as both subject and medium. Alexandra Bondarev documents human states with poetic precision, translating protest and tenderness into photographic anthropology. Anton Karyuk excavates queer memory through minimalist visual narratives, archiving what resists erasure.
A constellation of tutors guided the programme, whose practices offered tools for navigating the often invisible boundaries between art and life, fiction and function, autonomy and entanglement. Artist and feral economist Kate Rich spent decades trading inside and outside institutions, experimenting with business as an artistic method. Artist-researcher Adrijana Gvozdenović explores the elasticity of exhibition-making and the anxieties embedded in institutional roles. Artist and educator Vijai Maia Patchineelam investigates the artist’s position within institutions, advocating for embedded, employee-like positions. Carina Erdmann, working at the intersection of game design and philosophy, speculates on roleplay as a method of social reworlding. Robertas Narkus, with his practice of “the management of circumstances,” brings together entrepreneurship, comedy, and social engineering. Jonas Palekas cooks up social encounters through food, its history, and hosting within natural environments. Kris Dittel writes, curates, and creates, with a focus on language between auto- and theory; Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė examines the politics of care and feminist labour histories; Soft Power (Eva Herrmann and Linnéa Bake) offers direct encounters with local cultural agents, revealing the conditions of creative organisation. Futurefarmers help us navigate the dark, winding waters of the future through performative agriculture.
The programme’s trajectory was marked by a series of public events, each a performative punctuation. It began with “Mass Moving”, a ceremonial relocation of Rupert from Valakampiai to the city centre – invoking movement as method, and the ship as metaphor. The second event, “The Administrator and the Enthusiast”, unfolded as a correspondence between Kris Dittel and Vijai Maia Patchineelam. At the end of the programme, already in Rupert’s new Naujamiestis home, a curators’ talk by Soft Power shared their questions about the potential and pitfalls of interactions between art and the state. Through readings, debates, and shared moments with the tutors, curators and among the participants themselves, the programme explored how care, critique, honesty and relationality cohabit the same envelope.
An important chapter of our trajectory took place in Belgium, centred in Brussels, where the participants travelled for a research trip. There, we primarily engaged with local institutions, artists, and curators. The Brussels-based artist cooperative Level Five shared their model of collective infrastructure for artists. The visits to MORPHO residency and Kunsthal Extra City in Antwerp provided a peek into their lively ecosystems. The trip culminated in a multifaceted workshop and public gathering at WIELS, in collaboration with the KASK Curatorial Studies programme from Ghent.
We invite you to join us for the culmination of this year’s AEP – a gathering of gestures, objects and rituals. It is the culmination of this year’s journey, yet only the start of a more attentive practice for these secretaries, shamans, scholars, lobbyists, publicists and virtuosos.
Programme
Friday, 21 November
18:00
Doors open
18:30-22:00
Live programme:
Anton Karyuk
Chris Tegho
Luisa BerghammerCharles de Agustin
Oscar Mathieu Le Bussy
Saturday, 22 November
18:00
Doors open
18:30-22:00
Live programme:
Charline Gdalia
Luisa Berghammer
Oscar Mathieu Le Bussy
Charles de Agustin
Marta Finkelštein
From 22:00
Afterparty at Zuikio Daržas (Kauno g. 3A)
In between visit the installations by Janina Fritz, SUNRS, Alexandra Bondarev, Charline Gdalia, Luisa Berghammer, Charles de Agustin, Chris Tegho, and Anton Karyuk.
There will be small bites served by Charline Gdalia and Gustė Kripaitė.
A publication dedicated to this year’s AEP, will be presented in December in a special event. Stay tuned!
Participants of the 13th edition of the AEP: Alexandra Bondarev, Anton Karyuk, Charles de Agustin, Charline Gdalia, Chris Tegho, Janina Fritz, Luisa Berghammer, Marta Finkelstein, Oscar Mathieu le Bussy, SUNRS.
Director Viktorija Šiaulytė
Curators of the Residency and Public Programmes JL Murtaugh, Monika Lipšic
Curator of the Alternative Education Programme Goda Palekaitė
Project Manager Augustė Verikaitė
Coordinators Aistė Frišmantaitė, Ioanna Valavanis
Head of Partnerships Agnė Liukaitytė
Communication & Digital Content Manager Aistė Marija Stankevičiūtė
Curatorial Assistants Gustė Kripaitė, Connor Manship
Graphic Design Jana Sofie Liebe, Augustinas Milkus