Birutė Letukaitė (Lithuania) & Almyra Bartkevičiūtė-Weigel (Lithuania-Germany) & “Aura” Dance Theatre (Lithuania) “Am I the One Who I Am?”

Choreography: Birute Letukaite

Textille art instalation: Almyra Bartkeviciute-Weigel

Interpretation and performance: Liza Baliasnaja, Gotautė Kalmataviciute, Ruta Lelyte, Indre Puisyte, Andrius Stakele and “Aura” Studio dancers  

Video: Kristijonas Jakubsonas

People in video: „Aura“ dancers ir Almyra Bartkeviciute-Weigel ,Vaidotas Dauksa, Gintare Masteikaite, Pilypas Misiukevicius, Jokubas Nosovas  

Clothes, which cover and protect the body, create a cultural and sexual identity of a person. Transparency in the objects of Almyra Bartkeviciute-Weigel construct the space, through which the ostensibly hidden identity, power and influence can be observed. The power and influence comes from the world around aiming to change the identity. Installation objects “Dear Time”, “24 hours”, “Aprons” and “Personal talk” reflects on the personal and social metamorphosis – result of technological inventions and new technologies, which evolve and rapidly invade contemporary society. Choreographer Birute Letukaite enters the world of art-objects by Almyra Bartkeviciute-Weigel and reflects those topics using the language of dancing bodies and relations between those bodies. Am I the one who I am? Am I something made of the rules of the society or something that has grown in time as my personal identy. Who am I? The mouse, that spins in circle of domestic interests? Mouse, that runs looking for it‘s “cheese“? A computer mouse, which steals time? Or the office chair, evolving into the piece of art? These questions are distributed from personal to the public space. Time is not so valuable anymore, conversation is not so personal; being in the society is not personal. The performance in the public space discuss the topic of personal identity. The imagined line between private and public is destroyed by the gaze of passers-by, passing cars, people in the bar. This way an artwork, which aims to build bridges between individual body, society and technology, is created. In this exiting field of observation, the world of traditional gender roles, stereotypes is affected by our individual identity, which is constantly constructed and re-constructed by the world outside, leaving the footprints in our personality.

Almyra Bartkeviciute-Weigel – is a textile, visual artist and curator. Was educated in Vilinius Academy of Arts, Kaunas Institute of Arts, later she taught there. Since 2001 Almyra lives in Berlin. Almyra extensively employs non-traditional materials in her artworks. The signature attribute of her work is development and usage of hot glue technique. She is an artist in the field of experimental textiles. In her recent projects, employing contemporary topics an techniques, she aims to connect to cultural and social tradition, by accepting, reflecting and developing traditional form, content and stereotypes. In the core of this reflection lies human body and the clothes covering it. Participant of many exhibitions in Germany, Check Republic, Latvia, Austria, Hungary and Lithuania. Currator of exhibition “Modern Textile from The Baltics” in fair “Creativa” in Dortmund and of “Lithuanian textile art” in Bonn Women’s Museum in Germany. She is a Merit Prize winner of “Global Intrigue”, 3rd European Textile and Fibre Art Triennial, Riga, Latvia in 2007 and the holder of The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania artist grant for the years 2006 and 2007.

[Rodyti skaidres | Slideshow]