Kulturos barai
Eurozine
Kulturos barai
2011-01-14
Summary for Kulturos barai 12/2010
Virgilijus Cepaitis
Perhaps the time has come to reestablish Lithuanian-Polish relations?
Not so long ago, Polish the president presented the Lithuanian president with a catalogue of offences done to Polish people, containing several dozens paragraphs. It would be interesting to know how many paragraphs a Lithuanian equivalent of the same document would contain. But is there any need for such catalogues of offences? Should we discuss a future shared existence based on a list of real or imaginary sins?
Rita Repsiene
Sacred ideoteque, national narratives and freedom of choice
Imagination as an important element of self-expression and creativity is becoming extremely valuable because it can give new meaning to projections of nationalism. Europe studies narratives of big and small states that search for its own identities while trying not to destroy the myths of its origins.
Vasilijus Safronovas
Why does the Russian Orthodox Church need former east Prussian castles and churches?
As much as fifty former churches that belonged to various religious denominations in the territory of the Kaliningrad region were given to the Russian Orthodox Church in 2010. Safronovas discusses why the Russian Orthodox Church needs former castles and east Prussian churches.
Anna Karpenko
Aspects of social and cultural conflict
Why the symbolically meaningful decision to give heritage of the Kaliningrad region to the Russian Orthodox Church is dangerous,
and in what sense
One of the main lessons of the Soviet past in Kaliningrad is that the politics of identity based on the idea that the consciousness of new inhabitants can be changed at whim with the help of official interpretation of history has failed. A more recent past shows that when society does not support the state power, serious social discontent can surface, as happened last winter in Kaliningrad and Cherniakhovsk.
Skaidra Trilupaityte
News
The wave of building "historical" monuments and processes of reversed order indicate that public spaces more and more often become spaces of power. It is sad that issues that civic society usually raises and discusses in public debates in Vilnius most often depend on those who have political power (this power is acquired by business people who privatize public spaces).
Egle Wittig-Marcinkeviciute
A nation's cultural heritage, or its choice?
Discussion of sculptures of Green Bridge. Wittig-Marcinkeviciute thinks the problem of whether to erect or pull down a monument is more than mere decision making. Society has not come to consensus regarding the very principles for proposals of this kind. What principles should influence municipal decisions? Aesthetic, political or cultural?
Almis Grybauskas
Exegi monumentum
Inner spaces are inevitably related to time. Places of memory can be found with the help of a key on the keyboard of time. When we stop at the castles or pyramids, aqueducts or villas, we also hear the music of time. However, this music is no longer inner, it is a music of common public time. Essay.
Helmutas Sabasevicius
From Coppélia to Olympia
On the eighty fifth Anniversary of Lithuanian Ballet, Léo Delibes Coppélia, by choreographer Kiril Simonov and set designer Mikhail Chemiakin.
Grazina Mareckaite
Confused outlook
No less than three plays, performed this autumn on the Lithuanian stage, were concerned with the country's history: there was a frost of Siberia on stage. However, only one of the three -- Antigone in Siberia directed by Jonas Jurasas (Kaunas Drama Theatre, dramatic composition by Ausra Marija Sluckaite) was a true reconsideration of the nation's wounds. The past in this play is related to the present, facts to mythology, documentary to poetry. An openly civic performance today in Lithuania is something unbelievable.
Ausra Marija Sluckaite-Jurasiene
The street of Archangel
J. Gorecki sent letters from Paris to the Lithuanian Soviet Writers' Union in 1959 concerning the handing over of the legacy of Adam Mickiewicz to Lithuania (See, Kulturos barai, 10/2010). this is continued by another author with historical and cultural reminiscences and meetings with the great-grandson of two great poets -- Adam Mickiewicz and Antonius Gorecki, Roman Gorecki-Mickiewicz who moved to Vilnius from Paris.
Ruta Gaidamaviciute
About day-dreams, inertia of traditions and aura of locality
An artist has a special intuition and power of insight, thus he or she is capable of sensing future changes earlier than other people. It is important to register the changes in the very community of artists. Each artist interprets the spirit of the new age in his own way, but there are common tendencies as well. Musicologist Ruta Gaidamaviciute arranged this virtual round table discussion joined by composers of older and middle generations.
Herkus Kuncius
A sketch on Georgian grapes in blossom
Kuncius speaks about Lithuanian days held this October in Georgia: "And then at the very peak of the festival I had a feeling as if there was no Russian-Georgian war, there are no refugees, nor poverty, no victims of conflict or tragic losses... And the grey atmosphere that engulfed Avenue Shota Rustavelli when I was there in the morning had left for ever..."
Ramune Marcinkeviciute
"We saw on TV how death was approaching"
Impressions from Tbilisi International Theatre Festival. This festival presented Georgian theatre for the second time. Only carefully selected stage productions were shown. Marcinkeviciute's insights are accompanied by an interview with the popular Georgian writer and dramaturge of Tbilisi Margianashvilli Drama Theatre, who speaks about why literature about the Russian-Georgian war of 2008 is so popular in the country.
Almantas Samalavicius
Moderate shining of Japanese culture
Notes on the seventy sixth conference of PEN International. Samalavicius describes the legacy of traditional Japanese architecture in Tokyo and Kyoto and shares his impressions from his literary trip to Kyoto.
Stasys Gostautas
Mario Vargas Llosa -- writer and politician
"I have known Mario Vargas Llosa for many years, however, I never thought (and he also perhaps) that he would be awarded the Nobel prize, especially after he moved from the Left to the Right. Llosa defended intellectuals and dissidents, Lithuanians among them, during the Soviet era and openly criticized the Soviet regime, especially when he was president of PEN International."
Rima Ciceniene
The history of the manuscript and ancient book from the Great Duchy of Lithuania by Vladas Drema
Ciceniene wrote this incomplete study in 1944-1945, when she worked in the museum of Belarus in Vilnius. After revision of the collected documents, it is true to say this handwritten document represents the first history of the manuscript and ancient book art in the Great Duchy in Lithuania.
Daniel Miller
On the post-city
As the ideological frenzy of modernism gives way to "content management systems", and as global megacities render the urban grid and its certainties obsolete, societies of discipline become societies of control. Daniel Miller cracks open the password protected "post-city".
Dalia Leinarte
New intimacy against alienation and aggression
British sociologist Anthony Giddens admits that "pure relationships" are closely connected to the environment of a developed democracy, and are thus not easy to implement where democracy is absent. This is a good occasion to turn to the correspondence of Aleksandra Kasuba, a Lithuanian-American artist, and Algirdas Julien Greimas, a Lithuanian-born French semiotician. I wish to show that their relationship is as close as, or even identical to, the one described by Giddens.
Ernestas Vasiliauskas
An unknown historical source of Joniskis from the eighteenth century
While researching Swedish archives (the War Archive and the archive of the War Museum in Stockholm) a map of Joniskis made in 1703 unexpectedly turned up (its author unknown). This is the oldest known image of the city so far.