By word of mouth

“If we do not change our consciousness, we cannot change our actions or demand change from others” – bell hooks, Talking Back.

Language is inextricably linked to our consciousness. Encoded in our language(s) are the dominant ways of being and thinking; norms of expressions and gestures; limits to understanding and imagination. This programme invites us to reflect on how these codes restrain us and, in turn, asks how we can play around (or with) them, reshape the words to work for us and find resistance in the pauses.

Opening with the limits of language, Daryna Mamaisur’s film Smoke of the Fire (2023) observes displacement and the ruptures of communication that occur when a speaker is moving in between native and learnt languages. Building on a similar sense of internal dualities, Anastasia Sosunova’s video Coders (2022) investigates the practice of coding — especially prominent in the Soviet times — to heal addictions. The power of words (and ideologies) on our minds and bodies unfold. Facing the end of censorship in independent Lithuania and searching for identity and belonging as a result, Goda Palekaitė’s moving image work I Write While Disappearing (2021) creates a multigenerational dialogue between the artist and prominent Western feminist thinkers. Building further on the feminist thread, the programme closes with Margaret Salmon’s Mm (2017). Intertwining verite footage of a motorcycle race with a playful linguistic investigation, the film observes the relationship between words, meanings, gendered bodies, rituals and gestures.

This event is ticketed on a pay what you can scale. Half of the money collected through the tickets will be donated in equal parts to charities supporting people affected by the war in Ukraine & the genocide in Palestine.

The project is funded by Lithuanian Council for Culture.

Curated by Julija Šilytė & Milda Valiulytė.

Collective Dreaming

Collective Dreaming is a research and events programme that weaves together Scottish, Ukrainian and Lithuanian moving images and thoughts in search of connection and collective liberation. In solidarity against all forms of colonial violence, the programme aims to question imperial, capitalist, and patriarchal systems of power to make sense of our current reality. In this context, we look at art as a method to open ourselves up to new possibilities of thinking, hoping, dreaming and collaborating.