Grande Saison Sanuak
‘Grande Saison SanuaK’ was a programme of artistic guided tours presented in the frame of Kaunas European Capital of Culture 2022. International artists were paired with local tour guides to collaboratively adapt an existing art project to the Kaunas context within the scope of a one-week residency period.
The title ‘Grande Saison SanuaK’ refers to the 1921 Spring series of tours and excursions organized by the Dada group in Paris, entitled “Grande Saison Dada”. In line with Dada’s playful anarchistic and all-negating stance, the programme challenged the hierarchical nature of knowledge, playfully reappropriated touristic practices and undermined the hegemonic authority of the guide.
The programme was developed before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While attempting to balance personal and professional positions, the tour guides, artists and curators decided to continue with the project as planned but subtly adjust particular aspects of the artworks. As a result, some of the tours engaged more directly with transgenerational trauma, reflected on the historical connection between modernist architecture and war in Kaunas, and were presented in English and Lithuanian in order to accommodate both local and newer-local audiences alike.
‘Grande Saison SanuaK’ was a collaboration between B_Tour and Ekskursas, a non-formal, volunteer-based initiative and collective of tour guides from Kaunas with a specific focus on modernist architecture.
curated by Yael Sherill & Lianne Mol
produced by Algimantas Grigas & the Ekskursas team
artists Gianni Maccaroni, Mirja Busch, and Anna Schiefer & Gabriel Hensche
guides Eglė Urmanavičiūtė, Indrė Urbelytė, and Nerijus Babrauskas
Mamos Mama Mena
Gianni Maccaroni in collaboration with Eglė Urmanavičiūtė
1 May 2022
In ‘Mamos Mama Mena’ (‘Mom’s Mom remembers’) female senior inhabitants of Kaunas shared their memories of Lithuania under Russian influence. Looking at the history of the Soviet regime in this city through a personal lens, the tour guided participants into an individual encounter with a contemporary witness. This instruction-based artwork led audience members to a white chair in a specific location in the city that represented the women’s personal stories, which offered the stage for a one-to-one phone call.
Gianni Maccaroni is a Berlin-based collective that consists of artists, architects, urban planners and graphic designers. Since 2016, they have been working together with actors, dancers, performers, dramaturgs and experts. The collective presented their project "Casino" in 2017 at the supporting programme of documenta 14 in Kassel. Their project "Macht zart - b- reich Nachbarschaft" and the telephone intervention "By a friend" have been invited to several festivals in Berlin.
Eglė Urmanavičiūtė is a professional philologist and language editor with extensive experience in the culture management field. She has been working as a lecturer for Lithuanian as a foreign language. She ran various projects related to contemporary art, cinema and architecture. Egle joined Ekskursas in 2018, and since then has been creating and guiding tours in various places in Kaunas.
This tour was based on the project ‘MACHT ZART -b- REICHE NACHBARSCHAFT’, originally developed for tak - Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg with support of Stiftung Kommunikationsaufbau in 2018, and shown in the frame of ‘Tracks in a Box’ in 2019.
Puddle Watching
Mirja Busch in collaboration with Indrė Urbelytė
8 May 2022
Exploring different puddle species and their site-specific behavior, ‘Puddle Watching’ made Kaunas’ puddles visible, visitable and experienceable - even in a dry state. Although puddles are an ephemeral phenomenon, they do not occur randomly. This guided tour looked into their preferences, needs and logic, asking why they appear where they do, thus offering a new view on puddles and the city. A booklet accompanying the walk offered everything to facilitate a journey into the world of ‘Puddle Watching’.
Mirja Busch is a conceptual artist. Her practice engages with the capturing and visualization of marginal and background phenomena. For many years, she has been collecting puddles worldwide for her Puddle Archive. Through simple shifts of attention, her mostly installation-specific and site-specific works open up new spaces of engagement and subtle experiences.
Indrė Urbelytė is an art historian based in Vilnius. This summer she will obtain her MA degree from Vilnius Academy of Arts. Her field of interest is twentieth-century art with a focus on Soviet propaganda, war trauma and imagery of the Second World War. Since 2017, she has been working at the National Museum of Lithuania, now taking up the position of curator and researcher at Kazys Varnelis House-Museum.She has been engaged in the activities of Ekskursas as a tour guide since 2016.
‘Puddle Watching’ was originally commissioned by B_Tour for the project ‘Tracks in a Box’ with support of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europa. Special thanks to Anna Mándoki (graphic design), Laimonas Kinčius (translation LT), and Auksė Bruverienė from Goethe-Institut Vilnius for her help in the mediation.
Die Wohnung
Anna Schiefer & Gabriel Hensche in collaboration with Nerijus Babrauskas
15 May 2022
Shaped by a housing project from the 1920s in Stuttgart, the first Bauhaus settlement worldwide, ‘Die Wohnung’ (‘The Dwelling’) is a “generic” guided tour, generated from a tour originally conceived for the Bauhaus settlement. The ideas that were manifested in this project have become a predominant ideology, over time ceasing to be recognizable as such. The tour discusses the universality of the Bauhaus concept and takes it as a culturally formed presupposition; it performs the migration of the Bauhausian idea in order to question our own prospects and expectations of the surroundings we live in.
Gabriel Hensche is an artist based in Berlin, who follows a situational, conceptual, and collaborative approach. His work has been presented offline and online in museums, biennials, galleries, film festivals, residencies, and public spaces. From 2017 to 2022 he was managing director of Campus Gegenwart at Stuttgart State University of Music and Performing Arts.
Anna Schiefer is a multi-disciplinary artist and lecturer for visual arts at the faculty for architecture and urban planning at the Brandenburg Technical University in Cottbus, Germany. She is working on technicity and instruction based practices in her performances, installations and publishing project Verlag für Handbücher.
Nerijus Babrauskas will receive a degree of History of Art from Vytautas Magnus University in 2022. Nerijus has been taking up the role of the organizer of cultural events as well as perfecting the status of architectural tour guide since 2016. In the last year, Nerijus has taken up the role of professional tour guide at the local private Art Deco Museum, which earned the award as the Most Successful Tourism Project in 2021.
‘Die Wohnung’ was shown as part of the B_Tour Festival in 2014.
The title ‘Grande Saison SanuaK’ refers to the 1921 Spring series of tours and excursions organized by the Dada group in Paris, entitled “Grande Saison Dada”. In line with Dada’s playful anarchistic and all-negating stance, the programme challenged the hierarchical nature of knowledge, playfully reappropriated touristic practices and undermined the hegemonic authority of the guide.
The programme was developed before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While attempting to balance personal and professional positions, the tour guides, artists and curators decided to continue with the project as planned but subtly adjust particular aspects of the artworks. As a result, some of the tours engaged more directly with transgenerational trauma, reflected on the historical connection between modernist architecture and war in Kaunas, and were presented in English and Lithuanian in order to accommodate both local and newer-local audiences alike.
‘Grande Saison SanuaK’ was a collaboration between B_Tour and Ekskursas, a non-formal, volunteer-based initiative and collective of tour guides from Kaunas with a specific focus on modernist architecture.
curated by Yael Sherill & Lianne Mol
produced by Algimantas Grigas & the Ekskursas team
artists Gianni Maccaroni, Mirja Busch, and Anna Schiefer & Gabriel Hensche
guides Eglė Urmanavičiūtė, Indrė Urbelytė, and Nerijus Babrauskas
Mamos Mama Mena
Gianni Maccaroni in collaboration with Eglė Urmanavičiūtė
1 May 2022
In ‘Mamos Mama Mena’ (‘Mom’s Mom remembers’) female senior inhabitants of Kaunas shared their memories of Lithuania under Russian influence. Looking at the history of the Soviet regime in this city through a personal lens, the tour guided participants into an individual encounter with a contemporary witness. This instruction-based artwork led audience members to a white chair in a specific location in the city that represented the women’s personal stories, which offered the stage for a one-to-one phone call.
Gianni Maccaroni is a Berlin-based collective that consists of artists, architects, urban planners and graphic designers. Since 2016, they have been working together with actors, dancers, performers, dramaturgs and experts. The collective presented their project "Casino" in 2017 at the supporting programme of documenta 14 in Kassel. Their project "Macht zart - b- reich Nachbarschaft" and the telephone intervention "By a friend" have been invited to several festivals in Berlin.
Eglė Urmanavičiūtė is a professional philologist and language editor with extensive experience in the culture management field. She has been working as a lecturer for Lithuanian as a foreign language. She ran various projects related to contemporary art, cinema and architecture. Egle joined Ekskursas in 2018, and since then has been creating and guiding tours in various places in Kaunas.
This tour was based on the project ‘MACHT ZART -b- REICHE NACHBARSCHAFT’, originally developed for tak - Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg with support of Stiftung Kommunikationsaufbau in 2018, and shown in the frame of ‘Tracks in a Box’ in 2019.
Puddle Watching
Mirja Busch in collaboration with Indrė Urbelytė
8 May 2022
Exploring different puddle species and their site-specific behavior, ‘Puddle Watching’ made Kaunas’ puddles visible, visitable and experienceable - even in a dry state. Although puddles are an ephemeral phenomenon, they do not occur randomly. This guided tour looked into their preferences, needs and logic, asking why they appear where they do, thus offering a new view on puddles and the city. A booklet accompanying the walk offered everything to facilitate a journey into the world of ‘Puddle Watching’.
Mirja Busch is a conceptual artist. Her practice engages with the capturing and visualization of marginal and background phenomena. For many years, she has been collecting puddles worldwide for her Puddle Archive. Through simple shifts of attention, her mostly installation-specific and site-specific works open up new spaces of engagement and subtle experiences.
Indrė Urbelytė is an art historian based in Vilnius. This summer she will obtain her MA degree from Vilnius Academy of Arts. Her field of interest is twentieth-century art with a focus on Soviet propaganda, war trauma and imagery of the Second World War. Since 2017, she has been working at the National Museum of Lithuania, now taking up the position of curator and researcher at Kazys Varnelis House-Museum.She has been engaged in the activities of Ekskursas as a tour guide since 2016.
‘Puddle Watching’ was originally commissioned by B_Tour for the project ‘Tracks in a Box’ with support of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europa. Special thanks to Anna Mándoki (graphic design), Laimonas Kinčius (translation LT), and Auksė Bruverienė from Goethe-Institut Vilnius for her help in the mediation.
Die Wohnung
Anna Schiefer & Gabriel Hensche in collaboration with Nerijus Babrauskas
15 May 2022
Shaped by a housing project from the 1920s in Stuttgart, the first Bauhaus settlement worldwide, ‘Die Wohnung’ (‘The Dwelling’) is a “generic” guided tour, generated from a tour originally conceived for the Bauhaus settlement. The ideas that were manifested in this project have become a predominant ideology, over time ceasing to be recognizable as such. The tour discusses the universality of the Bauhaus concept and takes it as a culturally formed presupposition; it performs the migration of the Bauhausian idea in order to question our own prospects and expectations of the surroundings we live in.
Gabriel Hensche is an artist based in Berlin, who follows a situational, conceptual, and collaborative approach. His work has been presented offline and online in museums, biennials, galleries, film festivals, residencies, and public spaces. From 2017 to 2022 he was managing director of Campus Gegenwart at Stuttgart State University of Music and Performing Arts.
Anna Schiefer is a multi-disciplinary artist and lecturer for visual arts at the faculty for architecture and urban planning at the Brandenburg Technical University in Cottbus, Germany. She is working on technicity and instruction based practices in her performances, installations and publishing project Verlag für Handbücher.
Nerijus Babrauskas will receive a degree of History of Art from Vytautas Magnus University in 2022. Nerijus has been taking up the role of the organizer of cultural events as well as perfecting the status of architectural tour guide since 2016. In the last year, Nerijus has taken up the role of professional tour guide at the local private Art Deco Museum, which earned the award as the Most Successful Tourism Project in 2021.
‘Die Wohnung’ was shown as part of the B_Tour Festival in 2014.