Using examples of the works of mainly contemporary Lithuanian artists, filmmakers, activists and curators, this presentation looks at the nature and various ways of working with archives, and strategies and forms of recycling, while also reflecting on the powers of such material as it is being actualised, i.e., asking the question of what sort of work such archives are performing in our times.

Bio:

Inesa Brašiškė is an art historian and curator who holds an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art from Columbia University in New York. Her research covers post-war European and American art, and avant-garde cinema. Brašiškė is one of the co-authors of the book Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running (Yale University Press, 2022) and curator of the exhibition Jonas Mekas and the New York Avant-Garde at the National Gallery of Art. She is currently working on several books, including the first-ever monograph on the Romanian artist André Cadere (1934–1978). Brašiškė has taught at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, organised a series of symposia titled The Post-Socialist Object: Contemporary Art in China and Eastern Europe (Columbia University, 2017) and Jonas Mekas and the New York Avant-Gard (National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, 2022). She is also the initiator of the lecture series Thinking Contemporary Art. Brašiškė publishes her writing in academic publications, catalogues and journals, and curates exhibitions and film programmes.