Almantas Samalavicius
Greenery in a cage of concrete
Green spaces are vanishing from Lithuanian cities and the process has been triggered by urban development. Vilnius is the dominating centre that receives the bulk of all financial funding. Through this it attracts ever more people and has become an increasingly expensive place to live. Developers are only interested in profits, and they intend to grab all property they can get their hands on. Former public areas are becoming building grounds. Tauras Hill – one of the most picturesque places in the capital of Lithuania – is the most vivid example of this race for financial profit.

Dainius Babilas
The Forts of Kaunas Fortress: the causes of attraction and dangers of neglect
This year a shell exploded under the feet of a young girl. This gruesome incident demonstrated that Kaunas' fortifications are a dangerous place. We must reassess whether these are safe places for visitors – local or foreign. Are we presenting our culture in the best way? It is unacceptable that the state authorities take no responsibility for the tragic accident in Kaunas fortress and we should not stop pressurising them to do so.

Algirdas Grigaravicius
When will we understand? A letter to the Editors
The historian claims that the state commission on the millennium of Lithuania's existence is even larger than the council for the defence of state. In this way, people's free initiative has been institutionalised. Over the last decade, many blanks in Lithuanian history have been filled in, because the commission funded the publication of more than 300 books on the topics. But much more needs to be done. Many historical sources remain undocumented, leaving further blanks that need to be filled in.

Audrius Dauksa
About culture, growth and psychosis
Everything has become mixed in our culture. All publicly condemned vices – egotism, greed and vanity, are at the same time held up as values. Meanwhile, the freedom of the individual resulted in manifestations of strange human fantasies and wishes. By focusing attention on fragments only, our culture lost its feeling of unity. It lacks prospects, and instead of giving spiritual support it has become a vision of ephemeris. One can "heal" economy or politics, but who knows how one heals a culture that is taken over by psychotic fantasies?

Ramune Marcinkeviciute
I was Hamlet
The opus magnum of Shakespeare is a special artistic and personal challenge to any theatre director. Before he started to direct the play, Oskaras Korsunovas said that staging Hamlet means responsibility. Even sceptics will find it difficult to deny the obvious: mastery and a natural feel for theatre is necessary. No other of Lithuania's theatre directors have managed to take the audience so far in the mechanism that is called theatre.

Ausra Martisiute-Linartiene
Versme 08': The SSGG of National Playwriting
The fourth festival organized by Lithuania's National Drama Theatre took place in November. Eleven plays were staged by the theatres Vilnius, Klaipeda, Siauliai, Panevezys and Alytus. Thus Versme provides an overall picture of Lithuanian national drama and demonstrates both strong and weak points.

Kestutis Sapoka
They cloned me
A review of the exhibition of Egle Kuckaite's works in the gallery Kaire-desine. Egle Kuckaite, a Grand-Prix winner at the Prague biennial is one of the most interesting contemporary graphic artists in Lithuania.

Helmutas Sabasevicius
Exhibition as play
Theatrical visions of Dalia Mataitiene. The retrospective exhibition of Dalia Mataitiene held at the Lithuanian Theatre, Music and Film Museum has become a special event in the history of theatre and visual arts. It provided a better understanding of the individuality that made her devote her life to the theatrical arts.

Dreams and imagination do not really like timetables
Art critic Ramute Rachleviciute interviews painter Zygimantas Augustinas. She asks whether there is still any space for painting and drawing in the era of postindustrial media.

Kristina Stanciene
What clocks show
About the exhibition "Entrance: Language and space at the borders". This exhibition is one among five Lithuanian-French projects based on the works from the collection Frac Grand Est (The Regional collections of Eastern France) – they also provide space for dialogue between artists of both countries.

Aleksandra Aleksandraviciute
About mythological ancestors
Review of an exhibition of Jurga Sarapova's work.

Almis Grybauskas
In the centre or nowhere
Essay on Chech literature.

Ula Tornau
Discussions about architecture beyond buildings
An overview of the eleventh Venice Architecture Biennial Out There: Architecture Beyond Building.

Zecharia Plavin
To touch the truth
As essay by the renown Israeli pianist, playwright, philosopher and writer written as a letter to his former Vilnius teacher, musicologist Edmundas Gedgaudas.

Matt McGuire
Shaking the hand of history
Literary perspectives: Northern Ireland. While the Northern Irish literary tradition is closely bound up with the experience of sectarian violence, contemporary Northern Irish poets and prose writers defy the assumption that "the troubles" are all there is to the country's literature.

Laima Kalediene
Faithful knight of Lithuanianness
About the distinguished Lithuanian linguist Aloyzas Vidugiris.

Tomas Balkelis
The legacy of DP camps: Lithuanian war exiles in the West in 1944-1945
After WWII, among more than a million displaced persons (DP), 60 000 Lithuanians were found in Western Europe. The author of an article researches how the life in DP camps affected their political, social and cultural life. He insists that the DP camp was a typical Total Institution (Erwing Goffman, Asylums, 1962). It upheld a total hierarchical structure and limited social contacts with the outside world. The elite of the camps aimed to maintain a "moral face" and to form a homogeneous national community.

Vytautas Berenis
Vincas Kudirka – lonely man of will
This year we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vincas Kudirka. His idealism and faithfulness to ideals makes him one of the heroic personalities of national movements of the nineteenth century. We can call Kudirka a lonely figure, by describing him according to Nietzsche "a man of will" destroying the old and creating new in order to open up for the real meaning of life.

Vita Gruodyte
About Jonas Aleksa, magic and other things
Conductor Jonas Aleksa already belongs to "the emotional history of our nation" – the history that includes the importance of his sheer existence. Now among other Lithuanian artists – the poet, painter, set designer, composer, we also have the conductor.

Nothing can replace books (6)
The continuation of the cycle focused on the production of publishing house Obuolys.

Krescencija Surkute
Sybarities in frigidarium
Ironical essay on Lithuania's cultural and political life.

Published 2009-01-12