The Lithuanian Culture Institute has published the new issue of the cultural journal * as a Journal – Escape As a Journal. The eighth issue of the bi-annual journal is inspired by Mikolojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. 

The guest editor of this issue is Edvardas Šumila, a philosopher, writer and curator of the Contemporary Art Centre, who is currently studying for his PhD at The New School for Social Research in New York. The magazine was designed by Vytautas Volbekas. 

According to Kotryna Lingienė, the magazine’s permanent editor, Escape As A Journal is the first issue in the magazine’s history to be inspired by one person. “This underlines not only the concept of the magazine, but also the universality of this personality. At the same time, it is logical that having started with research and reflections on the forest and the cosmos, wandering through the soundscapes of Lithuania and the world, feeling the flesh, memory and the Other, and bowing to poetry, we have arrived at Čiurlionis, in whose worlds all of these themes symbolically fit together,” said K. Lingienė. 

Escape with Čiurlionis 

According to E. Šumila, the title “Escape as a Journal” came about unexpectedly and gradually, but in the end it combined the aspect of escaping/breaking away from several different angles: “From the very beginning of the idea, it was clear that it would not be called Čiurlionis as a Journal, because then it would be locked into a representation of the artist – into another ‘framing’ of him. We are celebrating the anniversary of Čiurlionis, we have turned him into a kind of symbol, and in the field of art itself, it is impossible to bypass this figure, impossible to escape from him. The magazine tries to tap into this dynamic: the escape is not “from” but “with” Čiurlionis. In other words, the figure of Čiurlionis is a kind of unavoidable background through which identity, imagination and these strategies of “escape” are reflected upon. I want to liberate myself and make his presence in the magazine more ephemeral, structuring other artistic practices and texts, informing and rethinking them,” Šumila defined the relationship with the object of the issue. 

The text by Ben Eastham, art critic and editor-in-chief of e-flux, contextualises Čiurlionis within the broader field of art history, while questioning whether it is worth placing him in a particular period or current. Philosopher Chiara Bottici (USA) looks at Čiurlionis from the perspective of the concept of the imaginal, while Dmitry Nikulin (USA), analysing a line by Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, refers to Čiurlionis as an additional possibility of reading. These texts, as well as the essay by art critic and curator Valentinas Klimašauskas, testify to the artistic reality inspired by Čiurlionis’ ethos. 

The artist Goda Palekaitė has created a text work especially for this issue, spread in four parts throughout the magazine, which offers a speculative and alternative approach to certain aspects of Čiurlionis’ personality – his identity, his language, the medium with which he worked, his relationship with Sofia and history itself. 

Film researcher Lukas Brašiškis’ conversation with artist Deimantas Narkevičius not only touches upon an important cosmological area of creation, but also extends it to the angles of technological anxiety. The text also offers a glimpse into the first published photographs taken by Čiurlionis himself at the beginning of the 20th century, which accompany Narkevičius’ film Revisiting Solaris. 

The magazine is accompanied by strong iconographic material, which appears as small illustrations in the text, but becomes an album at the back of the publication, giving a qualitative insight into the images and visual texts used in it. 

Escape As a Journal also tells the stories of encountering and seeing the figure of Čiurlionis: one of them is the Japanese researcher Yumiko Nunokawa, who discovers Lithuania through Čiurlionis; her experience is linked to Jonas Mekas’ Memoirs of a Journey in Lithuania, which is also accompanied by Čiurlionis’ music. The voice of composer and musicologist Šarūnas Nakas becomes a critical rethinking of Čiurlionis and the most biographical part of the issue. 

The cover of Escape as a Journal features Donatas Jankauskas-Duonis’s “Marčiurlionis” (photography, 1999). According to Šumila, the artist, who uses sculpture, installations and various other media in his work, admits that the roots of his work lie in his relationship with the figure of M. K. Čiurlionis (this topic is explored in more detail in the interview by Asta Vaičiulytė published in the journal). 

Issue 9 – Between art, reality and performance 

From 2021, the English-language magazine * as a Journal, published by the Lithuanian Culture Institute, is dedicated to readers interested in culture worldwide. *as a Journal opens up a unique space for cultural collaboration, where Lithuanian and international creators, curators and researchers meet to reflect on topical themes, inviting them to look at them from unexpected perspectives. The name of the magazine changes with the topic. Readers have already been invited to explore the forest, the cosmos, soundscapes, the corporeal, memory, otherness, poetry. 

The ninth issue of * as a Journal is guest edited by Defne Ayas, currently based in Berlin and curator of the New York performance art biennale PERFORMA. Together with curator Job Piston, she is also programming this year’s Biennale’s performance programme “Lithuanian Pavilion without Borders”. The summer issue of the magazine will explore the relationship between art, reality and performance – how the latter shapes our understanding of politics and vice versa. 

The new issue is available in Lithuania at www.asajournal.lt and in the MO Museum bookshop. Abroad, the magazine is distributed by Public Knowledge Books, all outlets can be found at www.asajournal.lt.