Gerda Paliušytė
Gerda Paliušytė. Film “Nevermore”, 2020. Photo Vytautas Katkuss
Gerda Paliušytė (born 1987) is a filmmaker and curator. In her films, Paliušytė explores often-controversial historical and pop culture phenomena and characters, including their relationship with social reality, as well as how they intervene at a specific location or time period. She is interested in the temporality of collectiveness, the desire for touch, and agreements reached in silence. Most of her work makes use of various documentary practices, including docufiction.
Paliušytė’s works include ‘The Road Movie’ (2015), a documentary commissioned by the XII Baltic Triennial which follows the visit of the band ONYX in Vilnius, and the film ‘A Desire for Things to Work’ (2016) – a nocturnal journey of a camera through the streets of Amsterdam which also uses the voices of phone sex workers. Her latest film ‘Nevermore’ (2020) explores the legend of American writer Edgar Alan Poe and his legacy in Baltimore. In the film based on the academic research project ‘The Wired Pessimism: Baltimore, Blackness, and Utopian Imagination’, another journey takes place through the urban and social layers of the city, in which seemingly distant gothic stories and poems acquire new meanings, coming to symbolize power, solidarity, and identity. Paliušytė’s photography series ‘For Cecil’ (2018-2020) was showcased in a solo exhibition at the Prospekto Gallery in Vilnius as well as in the author’s personal publication which is due to come out in autumn, 2020.
Gerda Paliušytė is also an active curator and researcher. In 2012-2015, together with Inesa Brašiškė, she initiated and curated The Gardens – an exhibition space established in the Vilnius Planetarium, which is dedicated to the presentation and dissemination of Lithuanian contemporary art. She is currently one of the founders and curators of the Montos Tattoo exhibition space.