Eglė Razumaitė
An artist and founder of the analogue moving image studio/lab Spongé.
Eglė Razumaitė (b. 1993, Lithuania) is an artist and founder of the analogue moving image studio/lab Spongé. She graduated in Philosophy from Vilnius University in 2016, and was a participant of the Rupert Art Centre’s Alternative Education Programme in 2017. Her artistic practice evolves in an interdisciplinary field, including painting (2013-2016), collective works of social sculpture (The Pull No1, The Pull No2 (2016-2017, in collaboration with artist Kipras Dubauskas), artist-run restaurant Delta Mityba (2016-2019, in collaboration with Kipras Dubauskas, Jonas Palekas and Robertas Narkus) and moving image art, experimental cinema and photographic works created with analogue technology (16mm and 35mm film).
The work presented at the exhibition explores the challenges of modern heritage conservation in Lithuania. Real estate objects exhibiting signs of cultural value are abundant in Lithuania, but they do not appear in the national register of cultural values, instead being destroyed or irresponsibly renovated; and often not because they are considered of no value - they simply have not yet been evaluated at all. The author focuses on postmodern architecture and public spaces, starts a certain inventory and offers a critical gaze. She captures postmodern architecture and socio-cultural content in the public spaces of her hometown that have already disappeared, are still standing, but abandoned, or have been transformed. The factors that determine the designation of an object as to be preserved, constantly changing forces, the criteria for heritage assessment and protection are all relative factors; thus, Razumaitė offers a critical look at the existing regulations that define heritage-related processes. As the state becomes less and less involved in the latter, people’s awareness and non-governmental initiatives become crucial in protecting not only post-modern architecture, but also public spaces, monuments and other elements of the urban landscape. In this work, different aspects of these issues are explored through a photographic collage, a short film and an open discussion.
