Valentinas Klimašauskas, Alphavilnius: A Strange Adventure of Arnold Sputnik, The Starling Bureau, 2008.
selectedletters.lt/
This novel within a novel begins when an aspiring author suffering from writer’s block answers a telemarketing call and inadvertently orders a brain implant that allows the direct download of his thoughts and dreams, automatically sending them to publishers and producing books. Arnold Sputnik, a character in one of these books, is from the future, a person fooled by pirate biotechnology companies and their conspiracies, an unfortunate victim of ideological mechanisms. When Arnold falls in love with Vera, an elite escort, they go on the run, searching for a new and simpler life. They end up in the obscure provincial town of U, pretending to be brother and sister.
Alphavilnius is a conceptual adventure novel, a theme park where Arnold and a host of characters roam through the realms of realism, sci-fi, literary theory, kitsch and porn literature, creating a kind of infinity mirror effect. A bold experiment in metafiction that challenges conventional thinking on literature, and even the book as an object: the novel’s cover is located in the middle; parts are written in programming language or include email threads.Linear reading is disrupted by a fragmented narrative and by sections of crossed-out text. It is up to the reader whether to include those parts in the story or leave them aside. Blacked-out content speaks of certain taboos or things that should not have been said or done. The author discusses LGBT issues and feminism, and mocks contemporary politics and power struggles. In addition to the genre-bending textuality, Klimašauskas provides references, quotes and commentary from pop culture, media and other genres, from Joseph Brodsky to Slavoj Žižek, David Bowie and even Paris Hilton.
“This novel is a real hurricane in Lithuanian literature, a challenge to a stagnant Lithuanian literary establishment that fears pop or internet culture. Likely side effects may include feeling weight-
less or surreal, and the possibility of forgetting your way home. There is a kind of magic in this.” - Tomas Marcinkevičius
https://www.thestarlingbureau.com/alphavilnius/
Valentinas Klimašauskas, B and/or an Exhibition Guide In Search Of Its Exhibition, published Torpedo Press, Oslo, 2014.
contains written exhibitions that float in time and space with or within a joke, one’s mind, Voyager 1, Chauvet Cave or inside the novel 2666 by Roberto Bolaño.
Download the pdf: B and/or an Exhibition Guide In Search Of Its Exhibition
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Let us be deceived, but let us stay realistic — what looks like a simple line of capital letters in alphabetical order may also be a poem by Aram Saroyan (b. 1943) or Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006), entitled STEAK (1968) and Arcady (1977) respectively. Artist Fiona Banner (b. 1966) also uses these 26 letters to make a neon alphabet that she titles as Every Word Unmade (2007), and then proposes to ‘unmake every word, or story imaginable’. Which of the works were you reading as you were reading this ‘simple line of capital letters in alphabetical order’? All three and more? With all these works we may as well curate an exhibition, shouldn’t we?‘
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? The guy who wrote that song wrote everything’, pronounces American stand-up comedian Stephen Wright (b. 1955), while French poet Louis Aragon (1897–1982) explores other options; Aragon uses the same material but very different techniques — all the letters appear in lowercase and split into rows to complete an arguably less ambitious poem Suicide (1920):
abcdef
ghijkl
mnopqr
stuvw
xyz
Not everyone starts learning a new foreign language with an alphabet. Though, however you start it, whether by repetition or by quoting, ‘the moment one learns English, complications set in’, Catalan American writer Felipe Alfau (1902–1999) opens his novel Chromos (1990). In 2010, Swedish sculptor and poet Karl Larsson (b. 1977) publishes his poetry book Parrot; here he reveals a parroting technique of using a foreign language, language of the other, to create something he can’t completely comprehend. Indeed, is one actually able to comprehend language completely, non-parrot-like?
This is the opening of Valentinas Klimašauskas first English book B and/or an Exhibition Guide in Search of its Exhibition. In it he is using imaginary or language based artworks and artefacts by various, including, fictional artists to stage situations for written exhibitions that might be set or located in someone’s head, Palaeolithic Chauvet cave, a collage of footnotes, floating in memory or the outer Solar system with Voyager 1, to mention a few.
Valentinas Klimašauskas is a curator and a writer who curates texts and writes shows. While being interested in speculative economies of language, he is into linking concepts & readers into language based performative systems. He lives and works in Athens and Vilnius.
Texts by Laura Kaminskaitė and Elena Narbutaitė.
Copy editors Chris Fitzpatrick, Eglė Kulbokaitė
Illustrations Virginija Januškevičiūtė, Laura Kaminskaitė, Fridrikas Samukas.
cargocollective.com/torpedopress/Valentinas-Klimasauskas-B-and-or-an-Exhibition-Guide-In-Search-of-Its
Harvesting patterns of your life or a self-portrait from the perspective of a failure or a drone, hovering above for Imaginary Reader, Ed. Marie Nerland by Volt, Bergen, 2016. Download the pdf: Harvesting patterns of your life
How To Clone A Mammoth (In Three Voices And With A Fisherman’s Exaggeration) is a reading afternoon on the poetics of de-extinction in the economy of clicks that premiered at Radio Athènes, Athens, 2015, and later was performed at the De Appel, Amsterdam, the RCA, London, Temporary Gallery, Cologne, HIAP, Helsinki, Mount Analogue, Stockholm, Brud, Warsaw, the Baltic Triennial, the CAC Vilnius and Kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga. Using the structure of traditional Lithuanian polyphonic songs, the reading unites fragments, poems, quotes, stories about new friendships (as a metaphor for an old internet), on the importance of becoming Neanderthals, why Gertrude Stein would not pass the Turing test, the AI of language, and other random companies of post-humanist assemblages.
Download the pdf: How To Clone A Mammoth (In Three Voices And With A Fisherman’s Exaggeration). 2015
Gertrude Stein would not pass the Turing test for Nocturnal News Good Times and Nocturnal News #3 edited by Carl Palm and Eglė Kulbokaitė. Presented at Overgaden, Trust exhibition, curated by Sonia Dermience.
Download the pdf: Gertrude Stein would not pass the Turing test. 2014
What’s on your mind? text for Loop de Loop show by Iza Tarasewicz at Bikini, Lyon, FR.
Download the pdf: Whats on your mind? 2014
Every sentence is a symposium. The CAC Interviu magazine, On Crocodiles and Motors Issue, the CAC Vilnius.
Download the pdf: Every sentence is a symposium. 2014
Cadavere Quotidiano. A daily mourning book project. Published by Project X Foundation for Art & Criticism. Edited by Shana Lutker. 2013
Spectator’s letter for Footnotes. Every Artwork as Different Entry to the Same Show, CAC Vilnius, LT. Download the pdf: Spectators letter, in Lithuanian and English. 2013
An Exhibition in Futura, “A Clock That Runs on Mud” project, Nero magazine. 2012
MORE OR LESS, A FEW POCKET UNIVERSES, HIAP, Helsinki. Download an exhibition guide More or Less. 2011
Standard Length of a Miracle, a text for Goldin+Senneby solo, the CAC, Vilnius. 2011
“If you do know that here is one hand…,” the CAC, Vilnius. Download the exhibition catalog: If you do know that here is one hand & If you know that here is one hand 2. 2010
An interview with Darius Mikšys about the artist’s childhood for the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition de la Biennale di Venezia. 2009
For the First and the Second Time, the CAC, Vilnius. Download the exhibition catalog: For the First and the Second Time. With Virginija Januškevičiūtė. 2008
The Baltics Riveter: Voices of the Liminal Generation – Modern Lithuanian Literature by Erika Lastovskytė
Valentinas Klimašauskas is a curator and writer currently working at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre in Riga as a programme director. He is the author of B and/or an Exhibition Guide In Search of Its Exhibition (Torpedo Press, Oslo, 2014) and a founding co-editor of The Baltic Notebooks of Anthony Blunt. Polygon, his most recent work on the post-truth era, is forthcoming in Lithuania from Six Chairs Books.
Valentinas Klimašauskas, B and/or an Exhibition Guide In Search Of Its Exhibition, published Torpedo Press, Oslo, 2014.
contains written exhibitions that float in time and space with or within a joke, one’s mind, Voyager 1, Chauvet Cave or inside the novel 2666 by Roberto Bolaño.
Download the pdf: B and/or an Exhibition Guide In Search Of Its Exhibition
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Let us be deceived, but let us stay realistic — what looks like a simple line of capital letters in alphabetical order may also be a poem by Aram Saroyan (b. 1943) or Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006), entitled STEAK (1968) and Arcady (1977) respectively. Artist Fiona Banner (b. 1966) also uses these 26 letters to make a neon alphabet that she titles as Every Word Unmade (2007), and then proposes to ‘unmake every word, or story imaginable’. Which of the works were you reading as you were reading this ‘simple line of capital letters in alphabetical order’? All three and more? With all these works we may as well curate an exhibition, shouldn’t we?‘
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? The guy who wrote that song wrote everything’, pronounces American stand-up comedian Stephen Wright (b. 1955), while French poet Louis Aragon (1897–1982) explores other options; Aragon uses the same material but very different techniques — all the letters appear in lowercase and split into rows to complete an arguably less ambitious poem Suicide (1920):
abcdef
ghijkl
mnopqr
stuvw
xyz
Not everyone starts learning a new foreign language with an alphabet. Though, however you start it, whether by repetition or by quoting, ‘the moment one learns English, complications set in’, Catalan American writer Felipe Alfau (1902–1999) opens his novel Chromos (1990). In 2010, Swedish sculptor and poet Karl Larsson (b. 1977) publishes his poetry book Parrot; here he reveals a parroting technique of using a foreign language, language of the other, to create something he can’t completely comprehend. Indeed, is one actually able to comprehend language completely, non-parrot-like?
This is the opening of Valentinas Klimašauskas first English book B and/or an Exhibition Guide in Search of its Exhibition. In it he is using imaginary or language based artworks and artefacts by various, including, fictional artists to stage situations for written exhibitions that might be set or located in someone’s head, Palaeolithic Chauvet cave, a collage of footnotes, floating in memory or the outer Solar system with Voyager 1, to mention a few.
Valentinas Klimašauskas is a curator and a writer who curates texts and writes shows. While being interested in speculative economies of language, he is into linking concepts & readers into language based performative systems. He lives and works in Athens and Vilnius.
Texts by Laura Kaminskaitė and Elena Narbutaitė.
Copy editors Chris Fitzpatrick, Eglė Kulbokaitė
Illustrations Virginija Januškevičiūtė, Laura Kaminskaitė, Fridrikas Samukas.
cargocollective.com/torpedopress/Valentinas-Klimasauskas-B-and-or-an-Exhibition-Guide-In-Search-of-Its
On the Importance of Being a Neanderthal: In 3 Voices and with a Fisherman's Exaggeration
Valentinas Klimašauskas
A reading on the poetics of de-extinction in the economy of clicks based on writings by Valentinas Klimašauskas. Using the structure of traditional Lithuanian polyphonic songs, the video unites fragments, poems, quotes, stories about: new friendships (as a metaphor for an old internet); becoming Neanderthals; why Gertrude Stein would not pass the Turing test; the AI of language; and random companies of post-humanist assemblages. The text is read by Salomėja Marcinkevičiūte. Born after Voyager 1 left the Earth, Klimašauskas is letters, but also a curator and writer interested in the robotics of belles-lettres and the uneven distribution of the future. His book B and/or an Exhibition Guide In Search of Its Exhibition published in 2014 by Torpedo Press, Oslo, contains written exhibitions that floated in time and space with or within a joke, one’s mind, Voyager 1, Chauvet Cave or inside the novel “2666” by Roberto Bolaño. Valentinas lives and works between Athens and Vilnius. More of his writings may be found at his website, Selected Letters.
http://www.thedeepsplash.com/posts/valentinas-klimasauskas
SELECTED WRITINGS
On a Mollusc as an Exhibition Space. A review of 10 000 YEARS LATER BETWEEN VENUS AND MARS, curated by João Laia. Cura magazine, online version. 2018
Pattern Recognition. Five Picks from Skulptur Projekte Münster. Spike Art Quarterly, online version. 2017
Cube Fatigue. Spike Art Quarterly, Issue 52 Summer 2017. Download the pdf: Cube Fatigue. 2017
Fountain. Text written as the PR for Olli Keranen’s solo show FOUNTAIN, 5.3.–23.4.2017, SIC, Helsinki.
Download the pdf: Fountain. 2017
Download the pdf: Fountain. 2017
Harvesting patterns of your life or a self-portrait from the perspective of a failure or a drone, hovering above for Imaginary Reader, Ed. Marie Nerland by Volt, Bergen, 2016. Download the pdf: Harvesting patterns of your life
How To Clone A Mammoth (In Three Voices And With A Fisherman’s Exaggeration) is a reading afternoon on the poetics of de-extinction in the economy of clicks that premiered at Radio Athènes, Athens, 2015, and later was performed at the De Appel, Amsterdam, the RCA, London, Temporary Gallery, Cologne, HIAP, Helsinki, Mount Analogue, Stockholm, Brud, Warsaw, the Baltic Triennial, the CAC Vilnius and Kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga. Using the structure of traditional Lithuanian polyphonic songs, the reading unites fragments, poems, quotes, stories about new friendships (as a metaphor for an old internet), on the importance of becoming Neanderthals, why Gertrude Stein would not pass the Turing test, the AI of language, and other random companies of post-humanist assemblages.
Download the pdf: How To Clone A Mammoth (In Three Voices And With A Fisherman’s Exaggeration). 2015
Gertrude Stein would not pass the Turing test for Nocturnal News Good Times and Nocturnal News #3 edited by Carl Palm and Eglė Kulbokaitė. Presented at Overgaden, Trust exhibition, curated by Sonia Dermience.
Download the pdf: Gertrude Stein would not pass the Turing test. 2014
What’s on your mind? text for Loop de Loop show by Iza Tarasewicz at Bikini, Lyon, FR.
Download the pdf: Whats on your mind? 2014
Every sentence is a symposium. The CAC Interviu magazine, On Crocodiles and Motors Issue, the CAC Vilnius.
Download the pdf: Every sentence is a symposium. 2014
Cadavere Quotidiano. A daily mourning book project. Published by Project X Foundation for Art & Criticism. Edited by Shana Lutker. 2013
Spectator’s letter for Footnotes. Every Artwork as Different Entry to the Same Show, CAC Vilnius, LT. Download the pdf: Spectators letter, in Lithuanian and English. 2013
An Exhibition in Futura, “A Clock That Runs on Mud” project, Nero magazine. 2012
MORE OR LESS, A FEW POCKET UNIVERSES, HIAP, Helsinki. Download an exhibition guide More or Less. 2011
Standard Length of a Miracle, a text for Goldin+Senneby solo, the CAC, Vilnius. 2011
“If you do know that here is one hand…,” the CAC, Vilnius. Download the exhibition catalog: If you do know that here is one hand & If you know that here is one hand 2. 2010
An interview with Darius Mikšys about the artist’s childhood for the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition de la Biennale di Venezia. 2009
For the First and the Second Time, the CAC, Vilnius. Download the exhibition catalog: For the First and the Second Time. With Virginija Januškevičiūtė. 2008
The Baltics Riveter: Voices of the Liminal Generation – Modern Lithuanian Literature by Erika Lastovskytė
Valentinas Klimašauskas is a curator and writer currently working at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre in Riga as a programme director. He is the author of B and/or an Exhibition Guide In Search of Its Exhibition (Torpedo Press, Oslo, 2014) and a founding co-editor of The Baltic Notebooks of Anthony Blunt. Polygon, his most recent work on the post-truth era, is forthcoming in Lithuania from Six Chairs Books.
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