Those of you that know me personally, know that this has been an even darker year than my usual, and that the themes I’ve been working on more than on anything else have been those of grief and ecological disaster.

This work of mine is finding various forms: I am interested in what and how we hear when we listen to the noise around us, how noise of anthropogenic nature is affecting the natural world, how wall of industrial noise adds to the disconnect that has been fostered by the discourses of humans being above the natural world rather than being completely dependent upon it. I am interested how a body in space can change the ways the power works, how bodies affect each other through proximity, voice and sound and how that can be used to reclaim the spaces as well as the power. I research how caring and togetherness – of humans, other species as well as landscapes – can become a restorative practice which is needed to halt and/or reverse the catastrophe.

All of these things on my mind are taking various shapes, and one of them is going to be a live concert that’ll take place Friday and Saturday in two venues in Northern/Western part of Lithuania – in Kuliai and in Bukantė manor. The composition is called Budynės, which I would translate as wake. The term that was used to define the period of three days during which the relatives would mourn the deceased, staying next to coffin with the body, contemplating their life and in such a way seeing them off to their afterlife. In the particular geographic area in which the composition will be performed, this three-day ritual would also be accompanied by the singing of Žemaičių kalnai (en. Samogitian Hills), however, the latter is heavily rooted in the Catholic tradition. I’ve based the entire piece on the idea of the wake though, and the idea of this particular threshold or a gateway that such ritual of being together of those living and those dead creates. 

The venues are not exactly regular venues for drone and dark ambient type of sounds, however, these are the most interesting ones. In Kuliai the performance will take place in an underground of an 18th century building which was intended to shelter priests that have gone astray. In Bukantė we’ll play in a museum of a female Lithuanian writer, one of the first ones, who wrote extensively about the lives of women in the 19th century, Žemaitė. To be more precise, we’ll play in a room which has historically been used for this exact ritual of three days mourning.

I’m gonna be travelling there with some of my dearest collaborators – Gabija Juknevičiūtė on cello, Laura Lapinskė on accordion, and Matulaityte Akvile on video materials.

The project gained form via proposal delivered and coordinated by Valentinas Charitonovas and Margarita Charitonova, and supported by Lithuanian Culture Council.