From: Phil Rowe (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Apr 13 2007 - 13:46:31 PDT
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From: email suppressed]
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 12:07 PM
To: email suppressed
Subject: FW: The City Council of Vilnius, Lithuania established the Jonas
Mekas Visual Arts Center
Looks like a field trip is in order!
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From: Maya Stendhal Gallery Mailing List
[mailto:email suppressed]
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 1:04 PM
To: email suppressed
Subject: The City Council of Vilnius, Lithuania established the Jonas Mekas
Visual Arts Center
<http://www.jonasmekas.com/mekas_center/image001.jpg>
Vilnius, Lithuania Avant-Garde's New Capital: New Art Center to Focus on
Jonas Mekas'
and George Maciunas' Work
New York/April 12, 2007 - The City Council of Vilnius, Lithuania established
the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center on February 19th. The new center will
exhibit collections by Jonas Mekas, the internationally renowned avant-garde
filmmaker, and George Maciunas (1931-1978), the impresario/creator of
Fluxus, a key art movement of the second part of the 20th century.
"New York City has always been home to the avant-garde and two of
its most influential figures have been Lithuanian. The international
resonance of the Fluxus world that they created will provide the impetus for
Vilnius to become the world's new center for the avant-garde," said Mayor
Arturas Zuokas.
Mayor Zuokas noted that Vilnius has been declared a European
Capital of Culture for 2009 and the founding of the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts
Center is the first step in preparation for the City's monumental role.
Jonas Mekas, renowned filmmaker and inventor of the Diarist Cinema,
continues to preserve a collective memoir where life and art are
inseparable. Mekas came to New York City in 1949 and quickly became a
prominent figure among the city's art scene. He founded Anthology Film
Archives, the Film-Makers' Cooperative, Film Culture magazine, and wrote
film reviews for the Village Voice from 1958 to 1978. Mekas' expansions upon
the qualities of intimacy, spontaneity, and supreme selectivity are crafted
through his distinctive discourses of time as the ordinary. Films focus on
friends and collaborators such as Hans Richter and Andy Warhol to reveal
deeply intimate portraits. Mekas masterfully extracts from thousands of
hours of film footage, giving rise to interpretations of life experienced
and life remembered.
Artist George Maciunas was the founder of the 1960's international
Fluxus movement. Fluxus deviated between the boundaries of art and non-art
through visions of artistic collaboration in music, performance, visual
arts, and literature. Its origins can be traced to Marcel Duchamp's use of
art beyond painting and John Cage's experimental music. Artists aimed to
weave their endeavors into the threads of society, thus blurring any
distinction between art and non-art, and art and life. Fluxus' rebellious
ideology and multicultural constitution has made it one of the most
influential philosophies in modern art. Louise Bourgeois, Vytautas
Landsbergis, Shigeko Kubota, Ken Friedman, Jon Hendricks, Larry Miller, and
Peter Moore were all part of the Fluxus family.
The Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center will also act as a premier
research and education institution where scholars and students directly
experience the most innovative works in avant-garde film history and Fluxus
art. Among its areas of interest is the creation of an extensive film
archive that holds all material pertinent to avant-garde cinema and a
comprehensive Film Library. An ambitious acquisition program is underway to
generate a collection that represents Fluxus' significant place in art
history. The center also anticipates the building of a Fluxus Research
Institute with resources and programs directed towards fostering progressive
discourses on Fluxus art. Through its activities, the center looks to a
future in which Lithuania is internationally recognized for its support of
the visual arts. The Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center has engaged support from
curators of art institutions and museums around the world, including Larry
Kardish of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Jerome Sans of the Baltic
Centre for Contemporary Art in London, Harry Stendhal of the Maya Stendhal
Gallery in New York, and Dominique Paini of the Centre Georges Pompidou in
Paris.
Contact Information: Kristijonas Kucinskas - Director of the Jonas
Mekas Visual Arts Center, Konstitucijos pr. 3, 09601 Vilnius, Lithuania Tel.
+370 612 18 251
Fax. +370 5 211 23 96 E-mail: email suppressed
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.