Vilnius, 2009
City Sutartiné was created during the residency Five Senses of Vilnius and won the Audience Prize
Concepted and construted by the Hearing Sense Team:
Sophie Andersson
Ignas Kozlovas
Laura Mello
Lucy Pawlak
coordinated by Antanas Kucinskas and Lina Lapelyte
The sound of stillettos on cobble stones, the roar of a road bike, basket balls boucing, church bells pealing, Lithuanian, Russian and Polish voices, these are a handful of the sounds of the city of Vilnius. Within this multifaceted metropolis we encounter concordance and contradiction; in the shopping malls and down the back alles, between rughless capitalistic privatization and gentle, even hippy-ish communal sensibilities, between catholic rituals and pagan traditions, between scrawls of graffitti and baroque cornices upon a single house. Vilnius is much more than the somewhat contrived notion of an european capital city of culture – I´d sooner have a community with a culture than a cultural community any day!
This patchwork of disagreements and agreements has led us to utilize the framework of Sutartinés as a starting point for our composition. Sutartinés derive their name from the word sutarti roughly translated as to agree or to be in concordance with. In the vocal form mainly only two voices may sing Sutartinés at one time, while one voice sings a semantic (with meaning) refrain the other sings a non-semantic part. The two elements are different and yet they form and agreement. For our non-semantic part we took a wide range of sound gathered from around Vilnius and cut them into short phrases to build a series of rhythms of the city from juxtapositions and samples of its daily hustle and bustle. For our semantic part we recorded conversations with residents of the city.
Five Senses of Vilnius invited artists from Lithuania Italy, Russia, UK, Sweden, Germany, USA, Belgium, the Netherlands, Croatia and Israel to participate in the project: create together with an untraditional perception of urban history and the history of the Vilnija Region, its culture and environment through the five senses: hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch.
The aim of the project was to produce a functional, aesthetic, long-term and value lasting souvenir Vilniaus simbolis, erupting from the dominion of „amber Gediminas Tower pictures“ and highlighting the unique tradition of Vilnius dialogue, the coexistence of ethnical communities, and Vilnius as a city open to the idea of Europe.
The first two weeks were devoted to theoretical lectures and experimental master classes, creative workshops, laboratories and excursions.
The resulted Souvenirs were presented in 5 columns (advertisement stands) located in the city center with each of them dedicated to one of the senses.
