EventsCommon Ground

Jonas Mekas: Filming Independence

Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR

Thursday, January 14, 2021 1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific

These free events are produced by The Brooklyn Rail.

A conversation on re-filming history as subjective media archaeology with Kelly Taxter, Lukas Brasiskis, Avi Lubin, and Philippe-Alain Michaud, moderated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi

In this Talk

Thirty years after the tragic and courageous struggle that led the Lithuanian people to regain their independence, two international online panel discussions will be dedicated to Jonas Mekas and his last book, which retraces those events from a personal perspective. Titled Transcript 04 44’ 14” Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR (Humboldt Books, 2020), the book originates from a movie by Mekas which is at the same time a precious historical document and an important piece of avant-garde cinema.

The curators of the publication, Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, will dialogue with other thinkers, artists, and historians in a virtual roundtable involving Italy, France, Israel, Lithuania, and the U.S.

Organized by the Lithuanian Culture Institute in these different countries in collaboration with Humboldt Books and the Anthology Film Archives, the 2-day event will be hosted by Scandinavia House and the Brooklyn Rail.

The first event in this series will be on January 13 at Scandinavia House. The special guest of the gathering will be the first Head of State of the Republic of Lithuania, Vytautas Landsbergis, who described Jonas Mekas’ book with the following words: “Lithuania became part of the American life for some months, for one year, for two years and Jonas took it into his evidence, into his camera. Jonas comes as a reminder and does present Lithuania as a reminder. Lithuania is a little reminder of very great things.” Learn more about this event on scandinaviahouse.org ».

{{< note >}} The event is organized in partnership with: Scandinavia House, Humboldt Books, Anthology Film Archives, Consulate General of the Republic of Lithuania in New York, Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in France, Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Italy, Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Israel, Lithuanian Culture Institute. {{< /note >}}

Kelly Taxter

Currently the Barnett and Annalee Curator of Contemporary Art at the Jewish Museum, New York, Taxter is organizing Jonas Mekas: The Camera is Always Running, Mekas’s first survey in the United States opening February 2022. She has organized major surveys of Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Rachel Feinstein, and Isaac Mizrahi; projects with Math Bass, Eliza Douglas, Chantal Joffe, Eva LeWitt, Willem de Rooij, Valeska Soares, and Vivian Suter; and thematic group exhibitions including Take Me I’m Yours (co-curated with Hans Ulrich Obrist) and Unorthodox.

Lukas Brasiskis

A PhD Candidate at New York University in the Department of Cinema Studies, Brasiskis is writing a doctoral dissertation on spatial and material constituents of post-Soviet films of the 1990s and the 2000s. Brasiskis examines various aspects of contemporary Eastern European and World cinema, works on cinematic forms of reenactment, and archival appropriation and their implications for screen memories, researching the history of (re)presentation of the non-human in film, as well as exploring intersections of philosophy, cinema, and contemporary art. He has book chapters in Film and Philosophy (Vilnius University Press, 2013) and A Short Film History. From 1940’s till Nowadays (VKS Press, 2013).

Avi Lubin

Photo by Noa Yafe

Curator of HaMidrasha Gallery – Hayarkon 19 and head of theoretical studies of the Postgraduate Program of Fine Art at the Faculty of Arts – Hamidrasha, Beit Berl College, Israel, Lubin is a curator and writer, most recently having curated Aya Ben Ron’s exhibition for the Israeli Pavilion in the 58th Venice Biennale.

Philippe-Alain Michaud

Curator at the Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou in charge of the collection of films and Professor at ERG (Ecole de Recherche Graphique), Brussels, Michaud is the author of Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion (Zone Books, 2002 and Macula 2012), Le peuple des images (Desclée de Brouwer, 2004), Sur le film (Macula, 2016) and has written extensively on the relations between film and visual arts.

Francesco Urbano Ragazzi

Curatorial duo founded in Paris in 2007 and mainly based in Milan. In 2015 the team started The Internet Saga, a research platform on the narratives that characterize the age of connectivity. In this framework, the team has developed commissions for public and private institutions such as Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, VIII Bucharest Biennale, Maraya Art Center, CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research. The project that inaugurated The Internet Saga was a solo exhibition by filmmaker Jonas Mekas on the occasion of the 2015 Venice Biennale. Since that occasion, Francesco Urbano Ragazzi has established a deep collaboration with the Lithuanian artist and founder of the New American Cinema Group.

We’d like to thank The Marion Boulton Kippy Stroud Foundation and Teiger Foundation for making these conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive 🌈✨