Artists
Academic Training Group (Giedrius Kumetaitis, Mindaugas Ratavicius, Simonas Tarvydas), Ilmars Blumbergs/Viesturs Kairišs, Eriks Bozis, Kai Kaljo, Ly Lestberg, Gintaras Makarevicius, Deimantas Narkevicius, Laila Pakalnina, Marko Raat, Arturas Raila, Egle Rakauskaite, Riga Dating Agency (Monika Pormale, Gints Gabrans), Ene-Liis Semper, Olegs Tillbergs, Jaan Toomik

In the post-1989 years, radical changes took place within the Baltic countries with regard to both the artistic positions and the general understanding of art. There emerged an active young art scene that reflected on the artistic ideas and manifestations from the west but at the same time developed its own new expressions. "Following the tyranny of the imposed privacy" (Helena Demakova) interest turned outward, to all realms of public life. In the process completely new and different tensions and conflicts, fears and expectations surfaced.

During the communist era the situation was not the same for all countries and regions. Thus very different artistic positions appeared in the post-communist period, since the individual countries had had access to western art at different times. "To be sure, fundamental paradigmatic changes have taken place in Eastern European art but the paradoxes remain." (Ants Juske in the exhibition catalogue). As Juske underscores, the immediate experience of a historical post-communism was, however, the best thing that could happen to Eastern European art. And what is just as important, the interest in has also stimulated the art of the affluent societies of the western world.

Ilmars Blumbergs/Viesturs Kairiss, "Riga's Magic Flute", 2001	Deimantas Narkevicius, "Energy Lithuania", 2000

ATG (Academic Training Group) (LT) works with the theme of (self-) representation, one of the motives of "post-Eastern discourse". The issue they deal with is the image of the "other" and the questionable production of national identities. In a slide installation they present stereotype images for the "others", stylized and also aggressive multiculturalism. With "Welcome"(1997), a doormat that is adorned with a text in warped English, they refer to their own eccentric situation from the pose of the "country bumpkin".

Ilmars Blumbergs/Viesturs Kairišs (LV), both film and theatre directors, showed their film "Magic Flute" (2001) for the first time at the Venice Biennial, 2001. In reserved, oppressing imagery, the film shows how the most destitute are buried in Riga – not in a cemetery but in a wooded area to which the dead are brought in a rickety delivery van. The film transforms this depressing situation into a moving scene full of pathos. Here in addition to parts of a stage set the entire choir of the Magic Flute performance of the Latvian National Opera appears in full, theatrical costume between the grave mounds. For the dead who were never able to come into contact with the opera, Mozart's music resounds as a dirge.

Eriks Bozis (LV) experiments with the possibilities of various perspectives and subjective and objective forms of perception in public space. In "Bench-Up, Bench-down" he shortens or lengthens the legs of park benches, an obstacle or relief, depending on the size of the persons using these benches. (park on Landhausplatz)

The videos of Kai Kaljo (EE) could be described in terms of "video poetry". In "A Loveletter to myself" (1998) she transforms her studio, a non-descript place, into a poetic room in which the easel, the windows, the cigarette smoke and the soap bubbles relate with the sunlight shining into the room in a reflecting interplay where the levels of reality are shifted. In the video "A Loser" (1997) she once again takes her studio as a stage on which she herself appears to draw an ironic-grotesque image of the position of the artist in society, with Kalio uses the techniques of sitcom in a manipulative way.

Ly Lestberg (EE) deals with sexual identities, especially where biological and social norms come into conflict with inner-psychic interpretation.
It is issues raised in gender discourse to which the artist seeks to direct attention in the series of photographs titled "Insomnia" (1999). The piece "What do you read, my Lord?" (1999/2000) tells a story without a place or time, in which princesses and soldiers appear whose sex seems to be determined by simple signs. But on closer scrutiny the identities seem to collapse.

Gintaras Makarevicius (LT) explores the relation between reality and illusion with a view to integrating the audience into his actionist dramaturgy. "For the Deconstruction of Attention" (1997) consists of a series of round mirrors that can be made to rotate by means of movement sensors and thus seem to trigger off the dissolution of the speculative identity of the onlookers (in the Lacanian sense).

Deimantas Narkevicius (LT) takes up the tradition of avantgarde culture where it clashes with everyday social discourses. He is interested in the perception of history and how it changes through ideological interpretations. His film "Energy Lithuania" (2000) narrates in broken melancholy imagery the electrification of Lithuania, the socialist project of the modernization of the Soviet Union, the failure of utopias and social upheavals as a result of which even the once privileged class of Russians have become a discriminated minority after 1989. In the 16 mm film "Europe 54o54'-25o19""(1997), the dolly shot begins in the centre of the city, traverses the town until it hits upon a mark beyond the periphery on open terrain, the "middle" or rather the geographical centre of Europe.

Laila Pakalnina (LV) also uses music of the magic flute in her documentary video "Papagena" (2001). On the street she plays Mozart's aria to passersby, old people, children, youth by means of headphones. The music cannot be heard by the people looking the video, yet is reflected in the expression on the face of the people listening to it.

Marko Raat (EE) shows in the video "For Aesthetic Reasons" (1999) the young Estonian art historian Andres Krug who goes to Denmark and – prompted by the director – turns to a number of institutions with the intention of getting a residence permit – for purely aesthetic reasons, as he emphasizes.

Arturas Raila (LT) The video "Under the Flag" (2000) consists of two parts. The first was created in Linz in October 1999 during the Austrian elections. Tourist matters are confronted with political contents. In addition to museum visits and street shots, images of political propaganda and statements of passersby on the outcome of the election are presented. In the second part the video which was produced in Austria is played to leaders of the Lithuanian National Worker's Union whose reactions and commentaries are filmed.

Eglé Rakauskaité (EE) works with socially and religiously coded bodies. In a country with a strong Catholic tradition and big social problems, its forms of expression are often rejected or suppressed and represented in the mythicized form of exalted affliction. Raskaukaité works with body-related materials such as, for instance, chocolate. "Chocolate Crucifixes" (1994 – 2000) is a spatial installation in which the walls have been clad with hundreds of crucifixes. The unorthodox material and the sweet odor intensify the impression of ephemerality.

The Riga Dating Agency (LV) is a collaborative project of Monika Pormale and Gints Gabrans, which focuses on interactivity and the simultaneous simulation of reality. In Latvian dailies they ran personals which were to enable people with serious intentions to meet foreign persons. The number of contacts and the responsibility felt by those involved revealed the living potential and the serious nature of this project as a successful model of 'social art'.

Ene-Liis Semper (EE) made herself the protagonist in her performative video works. In ritualized, actionist processes she exposes her body to situations whose ambivalence is based on the fact that the aggression taking place here seems to come from both the outside and the inside. In the installation "Licked Room" (2001), a sterile, completely white and brightly illuminated room clad with plastic, the artist can be seen on three video monitors as she 'works through' this room by licking its floors and walls centimeter for centimeter.

Oleg Tillbergs (LV) conceived the installation "Formula X" for a Zagreb factory wing that was shut down. In Innsbruck it will only be shown as a photographic documentation. He placed a Croatian war plane behind a partition of semi-transparent plastic which has been riddled with traces of the war that had taken place in Croatia several years before. From time to time dry ice was used to envelope this object in another layer of mystical fog.

Jaan Toomik (EE) links in the video "Father and Son" (1998) realistic imagery – a man is ice-skating naked on a lake – with the reinterpretation of Christian contents. The father (Toomik himself) represents the real, the unprotected, vulnerable body, while the son (Toomik's son) is only present as an invisible voice, like the Latin choral. Toomik transforms Christian symbolism by means of simple semiotic "mistakes".

The exhibition has travelled to Innsbruck from MSU / Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb); curated by Tihomir Milovac & Branka Stipancic.

Catalog
The Baltic Times.
Contemporary Art from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania /
Suvremena umjetnost Estonije, Latvije i Litve
Ed. Tihomir Milovac & Branca Stipancic, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb
Catalogue (Croatian/English)
Contributions by Tihomir Milovac & Branka Stipancic, Ants Juske, Solvita Krese, Lolita Jabloskiene, Liutauras Psibilskis/Anders Kreuger, Anders Härm, Raminta Jurenaite, Sirje Helme, Helena Demakova
156 p.
€ 15.-
ISBN 953-6043-29-7

Symposium
The Baltic Times. Contemporary Art from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
Saturday, April 13, 2002, 5 p.m.

Participants
Tihomir Milovac and Branka Stipancic, curators of the exhibition, MSU Zagreb, Croatia; Helena Demakova, art theorist and curator, Latvia; Sirje Helme, Center for Contemporary Arts, Tallinn, Estonia; Anders Kreuger, art theorist and curator from Lithuania; Annemarie Türk, KulturKontakt Austria, Wien; participating artists.

With kind support from KulturKontakt Austria