Open Studio

E14 Ittah Yoda

Ittah Yoda is an artist duo consisting of Kai Yoda and Virgile Ittah, living between Berlin, Paris, and Tokyo. Their practice combines traditional processes with digital technology as a vector for cross-cultural creative collaborations, with a focus on deep time, archaic heritages of humanity, and the collective unconscious. In this Open Studio podcast the artists reveal what influences them and why they find collaborations so crucial to their projects such as it was during their workshop with the participants of the Alternative Education Programme at Rupert — concluded in the exhibition No History of Its Own in the framework of Rupert at apiece, opened early August 2021.

E13 Tyler Matthew Oyer

In this episode, Tyler Matthew Oyer meditates on their recent music, which will premiere with a live performative show at the end of their two-month-long residency at Rupert. Oyer also elaborates on some of their inspiration and in relation to this, their recent sculptural-collaborative project Pyramid: A Work in Progress referenced the ouevre of iconic sculptor and installation artist Paul Thek known for his environments and ultimately a queer subjectivity.

E12 Julijonas Urbonas

On this Open Studio episode, we are talking to Julijonas Urbonas, the founder of the Lithuanian Space Agency, which currently presents its project Planet of People at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. 

Julijonas is an artist, designer, researcher, engineer, lecturer. He is the former Pro-Rector of arts at Vilnius Academy of Arts and the CEO of an amusement park in Klaipeda. For more than a decade, he has been working between critical design, amusement park engineering, performative architecture, choreography, kinetic art and sci-fi and has been developing various critical tools for negotiating gravity: from a killer roller coaster to an artificial planet made entirely of human bodies. As part of his research, he has coined the term  ‘gravitational aesthetics’, which involves manipulating gravity to create experiences that push the body and imagination to the extreme.

E11 Katja Aufleger

Katja Aufleger is a Berlin-based sculptor whose artwork functions as a metaphor or an analogy for talking about a variety of diverse yet interlinked topics, from personal relations to cosmic bodies, social critique and potentiality of a disaster. At the core of her artistic work lies a question of power relations, which function both as a creative and destructive force. Before all, Aufleger’s objects and installations work as a provocation for a viewer. Observing her masterfully-crafted artworks is a double-edged experience, as a beautiful form either directly or indirectly references a series of alternative potentialities, be it a possibility of explosion, chemical reaction, a visual experience of sound or other. This way her works become a multi-layered experience where the viewer’s consciousness and subconsciousness participate in the creative process.

E10 Alice Bucknell

In this episode, Alice Bucknell unfolds some of the notions and ideas recurring in her art and writing practice. The artist has disembarked from a background in visual anthropology towards storytelling and worldbuilding through her own practice and collaborations with other artists. Her recent projects draw connections between architecture, science fiction, non-human intelligence, magic, and hyper-ecology — all of which can be recognised in her newest video Swamp City, recently released in the Venice Architecture Biennale. Here, she elaborates on her methodology as artist and writer, and shares some details of her upcoming collaborative platform New Mystics, which was developed during her stay in Vilnius.

E09 Howard Melnyczuk

Howard Melnyczuk explores the relations between digital culture and power by seeking means of using the former to confront the latter. His conceptual artistic explorations problematize casual uses of technology, inquiring into the different ways we naturalize the impact that it has on our sense of privacy, world-views and identities. In doing so, he seeks “loopholes” in the neo-liberal digital environment, where the same technologies might be used for creating awareness and resistance against the underlying power structures. Howard’s means of artistic expression vary from photography to installation, to code, and present a critical re-appraisal of the new reality we are all subjected to.

E08 Anna Reutinger

Rupert’s resident, Anna Reutinger, offers insight into her sculpture/installation/performance practice — from the craft practices of her family to a study of neolithic, medieval and contemporary ornamentation of vernacular objects and a series of interviews with makers and historians in Lithuania and beyond. For this podcast episode, the artist suggests craft as an apotropaic force, in which the body, environment and material are given special attention and time. Her stay concluded with a solo-exhibition titled Stuck in the same muck at project space Editorial in Vilnius. 

E07 Vytenis Burokas

Vytenis Burokas can be called a conceptual artist who has recently consciously shifted towards a ‘material path’. His somewhat minimalist artistic expression is backed by a substantial body of thought, critique and storytelling. He draws equally from critical theory and classical literature, maneuvering between the ancient materialist philosophy, post-humanist critique and medieval scholasticism. Erudition becomes his artistic tool to debate collectivity, lived space, intellectual heritage and modernity, among many other crucial topics. Yet behind every project also lies a personal story, an alter ego, who adds a personal and even somewhat emotional quality to the author’s intellectual explorations.

E06 Sophie Hoyle

In this episode, Rupert's former resident, Sophie Hoyle, speaks to Yates Norton about their work on mental health, anxiety and trauma and how these topics are talked and thought about in Lithuania and other contexts. Sophie Hoyle opened Rupert's 2020 public programmes on care and interdependence with a screening at Editorial. At 20:45, Sophie speaks about alternative DIY sexual healthcare services; an example of this is Gynepunk collective (who offer workshops on using open-source gynaecological kits e.g. open-source microscope, a 3D printed speculum and a centrifuge). 

*This episode was recorded in the beginning of 2020. Sophie’s current personal pronouns are they / them. 

E05 Sean-Roy Parker

In this episode, Rupert’s artist-in-residence Sean-Roy Parker talks about his artistic practice, his approach to the social as an artistic strategy, why he initiates knowledge-based and skill-sharing activities and how he exercises alternative currencies.  

Sean-Roy Parker (United Kingdom) is an artist, environmentalist and community cook based in London. His work builds social frameworks inclusive of marginalised voices and alternative currencies like labour exchange to encourage practical, post-capitalist action using abundance and care. During his residency, Sean undertook ‘Slow Yield’, a research project about the lifecycle of materials, complexities of civic responsibility and tackling waste culture through collaborative problem-solving. Alongside scavenger walks, eco-sculpture and fermentation experiments, he was working on new text and sound work in the surrounding terrain. Sean-Roy Parker was an artist-in-residence at Rupert in August 2020.