Undercurrents, 08:20, 2024, 4K video, stereo
In the dark suburban world, I trace the echoes of myth intertwined with modernity. As cities expand and the natural world is reshaped, people’s connection to the landscape evolves, yet beliefs in the supernatural remain. Reflecting this the video's structure is based on the storytelling style of fairytales.
Karaoke spills into the humid night, voices rising like incantations, blending with Hanoi street vendors’ chants and the drone of distant machinery. These sounds weave into a mosaic of longing, resilience, and transformation. People still swim, fish, and explore the dark urban waters, embodying habits that persist despite urbanization and threats — a persisting connection to nature. These habits, though private on their own, emerge as collective patterns in groups — swarms of swimmers in forbidden zones, people burning night fires, fishermen drawing prey into the light — becoming parts of the landscape.
Through movement — traversing the city, suburbs, and countryside, looking for different vantage points — I capture images alongside sounds that diverge and converge. Each shift unveils a tension: between clarity and enigma, the real and the imagined, tradition and modernity. These fleeting fragments form a sensory narrative, where the estranged ordinary takes center stage. In Undercurrents, I seek connections — between the fleeting moments that bind them, creating a story both personal and universal.
Project financed by Flanders State of the Art and Lithuanian council for Culture
About the residency:
Month of Arts Practice (MAP) is an artistic project dedicated to the development of contemporary art, initiated and annually organized by Heritage Art Space, the only independent art organization based in Hanoi, Vietnam, registered and audited. MAP takes place with an aim of creating a platform for artistic practice, intellectual exchange, public programs, and events. Curators and artists from Europe and Asia, along with young talented Vietnamese artists will join this workshop and intellectual programs for several months, then present their works in two final exhibitions. MAP connects artists to an international discourse and is an active node in the network of independent artists and art centers in Southeast Asia.
Annually, MAP has a specific theme that addresses current aesthetic and philosophical directions, inspiring artistic exploration and ultimately new artistic works by participants. Since 2023, MAP initiated a 3-year-program to redefine and explore the theme of “Mobility” with artist-Prof Ingo Vetter, artists and students at the Bremen University of the Arts (HfK Bremen). After the first year working on new definitions of Mobility, it moves to the 2nd phase - MAP 2024 - which is named “Going Places, Moving Things”, in order to put those new approaches of phase 1 to the real locations and living circumstances. Mobility will lie in the choice of place, in practice, or in the artist's movement to capture diverse forms of movement to search or design alternative sustainable possibilities for the future.
MAP 2024 will have the participation of artists and art students in Germany and Europe, as well as the Asian and Vietnamese artists and curators. Together they will create multiple forms of artist studios from indoor to outdoors spaces, from the urban area to the peripheral and bordering zones. The public showcases also pose another empirical possibility for the interpretation of Mobility. It will take place in a progressive manner, where each work will be presented to the project and the public in the 'artist workshops/ laboratories' according to the process of the artist. They will choose a public presentation model based on their Mobility experiment of each workshop, as well as in the engagement/ conversation with the environment and local context. At the end of the residency period, a collection of Mobility documentaries will be collected and displayed in an exhibition space in Hanoi and Bremen, to look at the entire making process.
https://heritageartspace.org.vn/m25ucc3h7yqom2ey/paulius-%C5%A1liaupa.html
