In 2019, during July and August, KAH hosted the second curator to participate in the year’s programme – Eglė Mikalajūnė (LT) who conducted a lecture “Illegal realities in contemporary society and fake news as an artistic strategy”.
Contemporary art contains numerous often-used ‘mantras’. One of them is the notion of encouraging subjective stories, discourses and perceptions of reality instead of pursuing a single truth or a grand narrative. However, how does this maxim work in the everyday and in the field of contemporary art, formed by political systems, moral codes and new technologies? This lecture will provide an overview of a variety of different social contexts, to all of which questions of ‘illegal realities’ are currently immensely relevant, including the discourses of virutal reality and mental health, whilst also presenting the artistic strategies employed by the new generation of artists in which fake news or the principles of alternative realities cut across the inner structures of a work of art and become tools in the further processes of communication and PR.
Eglė Mikalajūnė is curator at the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, Lithuania, lecturer at Vilnius Academy of Arts and art critic. Since 2007, she has curated exhibitions, video screenings, artistic collaboration projects and community projects in Lithuania, Portugal, Norway, Germany, Latvia, Russia, France and other countries. In her practice, she often seeks to research the local within the context of global and to foster collaborations between artists of different fields, artists and scientists, artists and communities. Eglė was also one of initiators of the movement of Reformatų square and since 2018 is a volunteer at Mental Health Center of Vilnius City.