A screen of the present

Greetings! We would like to introduce ourselves. We are an artistic duo: a theatre director from Lithuania Agnė Nemanytė and Wood restaurator and gilder from Romania – Stefania Pasăre.

Greetings! We would like to introduce ourselves. We are an artistic duo: a theatre director from Lithuania Agnė Nemanytė and Wood restaurator and guilder from Romania – Stefania Passare. At the end of December, we started our artistic residency at a completely new venue in the city of Panevezys called Artihost. Artihost is a hostel and a residency space run by Justinas Brikys and Ieva Brike. The aim of this venue is to cultivate a cultural field in the town of Panevėžys and support artists in their research and creative processes. 

It has already been a month of our residency at Artihost and so far, we have experienced a rollercoaster of events and met a variety of local artists and craftspeople. It has been an adventure that slowly opened to us the heart of the city. To give you an insight into our residency and artists and activists in Panevezys, who inspire us, we are going to share with you a story of our first encounters with Local influential artists. 

On a very stormy morning of January 2022, we decided to visit the exhibition “Dabarties ekranas” on the site of the historical TV screen factory. The artists named this exhibition – Dabarties Ekranas, which translates as “A screen of the present”. 

There could not be a better moment than this to visit the exhibition: it was the beginning of the year, a cold winter day, everything looked and felt frozen. And here there was laying a real secret covered by the heavy footsteps of time. A living museum of memories. We encountered the eyes of the previous employees of Ekranas factory and the striking glance that holds so much in itself- time, loss, victory, passion and fragility. 

“These remind me of large scale frescoes that start talking to you through the most crucial part of the human body – the eyes. People‘s eyes and faces draw attention to the transience and fragility of human life. I feel that it also highlights the intersection between the present and the past, between what is lost and what is gained. We did not rationalise these Frescoes, but tried to catch the feelings that arose. As if the past and the present were having a conversation about history and its role in the city’s identity. And we were merely the witnesses of this creative explosion that was and is inevitable. Tears of pain and joy were the only words that could come out. “ – Agnė Nemanytė

“There are similar factories in similar conditions in my country, Romania. And I have never really paid attention to the abandoned factories in my home country but Dan’s project opened my mental eyes to a new perspective. I learned that after the factory closed, some of the people were never able to get any other job, because they did not know how to do anything else. Wow… the alienation produced by this change, the fragility of not having a routine in your lifestyle, the shattered souls like the glass that you could find all over the garden…” – Stefania Passare

As far as we know, the factory itself used to be an integral part of Panevėžys city, once even being bigger than the city itself in terms of its significance, size and impact. After spending some time in the streets of Panevėžys and meeting local people and communities, we recognise now that Panevežys has uncountable stories to tell and share, that needs to be heard and valued as historical events to paint the image of the city’s identity. Hopefully through our up-coming artistic projects we will be able to touch the stories of this town and let them echo once again.