The newly conceived performance for the 12th Kaunas biennial was a part of long-term relationship project ‘FTIJs’ (FIRST TIME IN JACUZZI. sorry) created by Inga Galinyte and Anna Papathanasiou. They started working together after meeting in 2018 during the International Summer Program at the Watermill Centre in New York (USA) under the direction of Robert Wilson. The core idea behind the project was to create a common sacred immaterial space that is not defined by geographical coordinates but instead by an invisible emotional and spiritual cord between the two artists. 

 

In September 2018 Inga and Anna started an online daily correspondence that gradually took the form of an audiovisual shared diary of collected data, consisting of texts, images, sounds and movements. The daily practice of remaining loyal to an idea or a significant other brought them to the exploration of the utmost fundamental act of separation that every single being undergoes during a lifetime – the separation from the mother’s womb and the phenomenon of the trauma manifested as a bruise. A bruise is the emotional trace that every single interaction leaves us with after each separation since the separation from the mothers’ womb. Without our connection with the whole – in the wider sense of the Universe – every bruise could be interpreted as a fear for the unknown, a display of natural limitations.

​

The performance Empathetic body: march at the beat of your own drum was the third display of ‘FTIJs’ project and lasted for the whole time of Kaunas Biennial where to artists aimed to build a space where traumatic experience can be healed through shared experience and empathy.

​

The first part of the performance consisted of two artists' physical meeting during the 12th Kaunas Biennial opening weekend. Inga shared her happy memories of Kaunas, where she lived as a child, and the trauma of dislocation from her birthplace to another district of the city. Meanwhile Anna attempted to empathise with Inga's story, reflecting on and responding to it. The second part of the performance moved from the personal story to traumatic history of Kaunas. Throughout the duration of the Biennial, performing alone, Inga initiated a dialogue with the audience and became the medium: connecting spectators' experiences with the meaning of a bruise. Each shared experience of trauma was inscribed into the platform that also functioned as a public place for people to contemplate and meditate on their experiences of trauma. For the final part of the performance, Anna returned to Kaunas and both artists attempted to empathise with traumatic experience as a whole, based on the collective memory of the city. 

​

During the first and final parts of the performance (when Inga and Anna met in Kaunas) the public was invited to participate in the act of sleeping under the stars. This shared experience created space and time for healing, and walking up with the sunrise lead to a new beginning. 

​

Interview >>>

Trailer >>>

​

​

​

​