Raimundas Malašauskas
Making Tea in a documenta Mug
In 2007 I’ve sent a following letter to a circle of people I wanted to receive a response from:
“I would like to invite you to participate in the speculative-imaginary project that will take the form of a special supplement of A Prior magazine (Brussels). What I would like to ask from you is very simple— please send me a brief proposal for the documenta exhibition in Kassel. Together with 19 other proposals, your idea will comprise an individual publication of 32 pages, black and white, 5000 copies, to be distributed for free at Art Brussels and documenta 12. It is scheduled to be released in mid-April of this year.
The deadline for your proposal is very close—it has to be received by March 15, yet there is a certain advantage to having this shortage of days to think. The time span that your proposal should address is rather indefinite. Any documenta—whether it is the first one in 1955 or the last one in 2002 or the 19th one in 2042 […]— is at your disposal. In classic Sci-Fi tradition, wherein time-travelling manipulations of the past may change the future (like the narratology of La Jetée or The Terminator), travelling in the future may also affect the past. Please feel free to navigate past or future extensively while changing the course of events that have passed and those to come. Moreover we do not have to stick to the linear notion of time. We can multiply documenta in parallel dimensions of time and alter it irreversibly (the content of this project is not going to be in any way negotiated or authorised by documenta authorities.) Please do not forget to acknowledge (or construct) the position in time, which your proposal is coming from. For instance, you can shoot your idea from the nineteenth century straight to the ʼ50s or come from the future to Okwui Enwezorʼs hands via today. To make things easier (and to save your time), together with Dexter Sinister who will design the publication, we have devised a special template for your proposal. It indicates both the temporal or historic position of the addressee as well as the sender. It is attached as a pdf file to my message. […]”
Malašauskas worked as one of the agents of dOCUMENTA(13), and curated oO, the pavilions of Lithuania and Cyprus in 55th Venice Biennale. Previous to this, he was curator of the Satellite exhibition series at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris in 2010-2011; a curator at Artists Space, New York in 2007 to 2009; and, visiting curator at California College of the Arts, San Francisco in 2007 to 2008.
From 1995 to 2006, Malašauskas worked at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, where he curated numerous exhibitions, including the IX Baltic Triennial, Black Market Worlds (2005). There, he also co-produced the first two seasons of the weekly television show CAC TV, an experimental merger of commercial television and contemporary art, which ran under the slogan: Every program is a pilot, every program is the final episode.
Among Malašauskas’ independently curated exhibitions are: Sculpture of the Space Age, David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2009); Into the Belly of a Dove, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2010); and, Repetition Island, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2010). He is also co-author of the libretto Cellar Door, an opera by Loris Gréaud produced by the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007). Paper Exhibition, a book of Malašauskas' selected writings, was published by Sternberg Press.
REFERENCES
[Exhibitions]
oO — Lithuanian Pavilion at the 55th International (2013)
BMW. The IX Baltic Triennial of International Art (2005)
Fusiform Gyrus (2013)
Into the Belly of a Dove (2010)
Sculpture of The Space Age (2009)
9ª Mercosur Biennial (2013, co-curated, titled as Space Curator)
[Publication]
100 Notes - 100 Thoughts: Raimundas Malašauskas (for 13 documenta):
[Videos]
