Oceangate (2024)

Introducing the first audio work created especially for the Artnews.lt audio magazine - OceanGate (2024) by Žygimantas Kudirka

Instructions: the piece uses surround sound, so you are welcome to listen through headphones.

The work is based on the 2023 expedition of the submarine Titan to inspect the Titanic's wreck.

As we know, the crew of the Titan suffered the fate of the Titanic's passengers. However, in this sound work, the whole sequence of events is turned backwards.

Deep at the bottom of the ocean, human beings are formed from individual tissues, enveloped by the submarine's shell like an incubator, and brought to the surface.

The crew, born in the depths of the waters, are plucked from the cocoon by the technical staff. Out of the cocoon, five new millionaires step into life. It is a science fiction story about life emerging out of the water, it vividly tells the story of the Titan expedition, based on true facts but in other way around.

The work is not only interesting for its manipulation of documentary material, but also is thought-provoking. Turning a real event backwards creates a new, mystical and philosophical narrative.

This concept allows us to rethink the beginning of life, death, regeneration and humanity's relationship with nature. A glimpse into the mysteries of life and a rethinking of our place in the world.

Concept, lyrics, voiceover, sound design by Žygimantas Kudirka
Recording, mastering, mastering: Rugilė Norbutaitė
Sound studio: Start FM

Listen here: Zygimantas Kudirka - OceanGate (2024)

The Very Very Very Last Supper (2023)

Original Author and Director: Žygimantas Kudirka
Assistant Director: Rokas Lažaunykas
Composer: Lubomir Grzelak
Lighting Designer: Eugenijus Sabaliauskas
Costume Designer: Elena Marija Veleckaitė
Sound Engineer: Simonas Sadauskas
Video Operators: Adomas Gustainis, Rokas Valiauga
Light Operators: Jonas Kairys, Vykintas Šorys
Producer: Agnė Pulokaitė
Cast: Vainius Sodeika, Augustė Šimulynaitė, Adrija Čepaitė, Dainius Gavenonis, Algirdas Gradauskas, Miglė Polikevičiūtė, Monika Bičiūnaitė, Gediminas Rimeika

This piece is about human indifference in the face of an apocalypse. The play, "The Very Very Very Last Supper" consists of fragmented narratives set in different parts of the world and spanning nearly half a century.

The piece consists of eight dinners. Each dinner takes us further into the future, revealing the gradual changes of a fading planet. During each scene, the focus is on a single table in a restaurant where people eat and chat casually. Meanwhile, climatic cataclysms are occurring around them, which the diners indifferently discuss, share passive philosophical or poetic insights, manage to laugh insensitively about, or simply ignore.

In essence, the play aims to create a thought-provoking and immersive experience that explores themes of climate change, human indifference, and the future of our planet.

The play was written during the "Futures that Will Never Happen" residency for five playwrights at: the National Drama Centre (Madrid), KVS Theatre (Brussels), Maxim Gorky Theatre (Berlin), and the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre (Vilnius).

Readings of the play took place at the VERSMĖ 2023 festival.

Quote from the review:
“It's been a while since a Lithuanian playwright has produced a work for the Lithuanian stage that so clearly captures the sense of emptiness and meaninglessness experienced by the modern Western individual, and the future of contemporary playwriting.”
7md

Total alienation (2023)

Video for 3 screens, black water swimming pool, audio.
Duration: 33 mins.
(Dark room needed)

It is a three-channel video piece based on a seemingly absurd premise that has
become a classic in science fiction: in the near future, people who are disillusioned with their lives or have unfulfilled fantasies may be offered a full-body transplant by large corporations.

This idea is developed into a multifaceted, tragicomic drama through a kaleidoscopic journey through stock footage and youtube videos. It not only asks questions about the relationship between the body and technology that we may not be ready to answer today, but also suggests that these answers may already be answered for us by the technologies that accompany us in our everyday lives.

Telling stories in different voices, the installation Total alienation is a fever dream from the future that says more about the present. It is a guilty pleasure, inviting the viewer into a kind of techno-contract: at the beginning as a voyeuristic observer, and at the end as the main character of the story.

Texts and concepts:
Žygimantas Kudirka

Voiceovers:
Elena Marija Veleckaitė
Matas Sergijus Šatūnas
Žygimantas Kudirka

Soundtrack and mastering:
Matas Sergijus Šatūnas

Video and sound editing:
Žygimantas Kudirka

Exhibition architecture:
Dominykas Daunys

Installation:
Ervinas Fakūra

Programming:
Pavel Volgin

Already premiered in:

Demoloftas

Meduza gallery

Kaunas artist house

In the Studio - Slam Messiah: Žygimantas Kudirka - BBC World Service (2022)

In the Studio meets Lithuania’s leading spoken-word artist: Žygimantas Kudirka.

Žygimantas Kudirka is Lithuania’s leading spoken-word artist and agent provocateur. A prolific writer and creative artist, he has won Europe’s Best Slam Poet as well as multiple hip-hop awards, blending satire and social critique with dystopian and futurist themes.

Perhaps creativity – and social activism – runs in the family: one of his relatives, Vincas Kudirka, was a renowned Lithuanian poet who wrote the text and music of what would become the national anthem when the country regained independence in 1918.

Today, another Kudirka – who also goes by the alias MC Messiah – is shaking up the scene with a new libretto for the opera ‘Brave New Body’, teaming up with avant-garde composer Arturas Bumštejnas. Kudirka’s texts’ play with the idea of the human body as a machine – not without his trademark satire – and sets them to the sutartinė, an ancient polyphonic form found in Lithuania which has UNESCO status.

Is it possible to combine centuries-old traditional music with hyper-modern dystopian themes? Or is Žygimantas Kudirka just poking fun at the system? We sit in on rehearsals with the Lietuva Song and Dance Ensemble leading up to the opera’s premiere, commissioned by the Operomanija festival in Vilnius.

* Presented and co-produced by John Beauchamp.
* Produced by Bartosz Panek.
* A Free Range and Overcoat Media co-production for the BBC World Service

Publicity contact: CC2

Listen here: In the Studio - Slam Messiah: Žygimantas Kudirka - BBC World Service (2022)

Corporate dystopian / probiotic ecotopian opera Brave New Body (2022)

Brave New Body is a result of an unexpected collaboration between two eccentric artists – composer Arturas Bumšteinas and artist Žygimantas Kudirka.

Combining social criticism, science fiction and absurd genre, this corporate dystopia for voices addresses the ever-problematic relation of human being towards his/her body. Illusions rendered by diverse industries form unfounded expectations as to how we should look, while our presence on social networks results in an endless comparison of own body against numerous other bodies. Paradoxically, we often strive to be similar to non-existent, digitally altered body images.

Do not worry. Corporate dystopia will reveal a new technology allowing to transfer oneself into another body or the body of another. Hypnotic polyphonic sutartinės will serve a kind of anaesthetic while lying under the “beauty knife”, submerging into a dream invoked by deep sedation. You will see perhaps a vision, prophetic perhaps, where the humanity of the future finally finds a way to get rid of the ever unsatisfactory biological bodies and acquire “brave new” ones.

It seems to be the promised land where the souls soar free, acquiring any desired form. You have become a racing motorcycle and feel way sportier? You have turned into an air humidifier and your inner self is full of harmonious tranquillity? Having transformed into most unexpected things and gadgets the souls celebrate their liberation from the old body, singing sutartinės about their new being. At first glance – it is a never-ending feast celebrating brave new bodies. And yet, what was it that encouraged to get rid of that unique, nearly miraculous biological body capable of curing its wounds and grow broken bones together?

It is a vocal score written on the basis of the principles of authentic sutartinės, dedicated to constellations of performers narrating stories from the near future. Sutartinė represents an archaic model of social dynamics; it is interesting how that will work within the context of corporate aesthetics/ethics.
Composer Arturas Bumšteinas

The piece merges naïve human emotions and strict technical jargon, fascination with new body functions and the longing for fading memories of biological body. Sutartinės will lure you as digital songs of the sirens, they will lead you through smart forest as a GPS, but they will not show you the exit.
Scriptwriter Žygimantas Kudirka

Script, action: Žygimantas Kudirka
Music, action: Arturas Bumšteinas
Action assistant: Giedrė Kriaučionytė
Costumes: Juozas Valenta
Graphic design: Mindaugas Gavrilovas
VJ: Vytautas Narbutas
Lights: Julius Kuršis
Sound: Ignas Juzokas
Performers: Choir artists of state ensemble Lietuva
Conductor: Egidijus Kaveckas
Choirmaster: Algimantas Kriūnas
Producer: Operomanija

The Bear Next Door - BBC Radio 4 (2022)

Lithuanian spoken word artist Žygimantas Kudirka considers the strange and sobering history of his home nation, where surreal is beautiful - on BBC radio 4.

About the series:

Five cultural figures from the front line of Russia's border with Europe - Lithuania, Finland, Moldova, Latvia and Estonia - explore their national psyche in uncertain times.

Their words weave with sounds and encounters from their home city as they explore their country's history, ambitions and distinctive character in the 21st century.

Our essayists across the series include a rapper and contemporary artist, a former President, a celebrated art critic, a dystopian novelist, and a distinguished literary director.

Speakers featured are: Žygimantas Kudirka (Lithuania) - writer, artist and performer;

Emmi Itaranta (Finland) - novelist and commentator; author of the dystopian novel Memory Of Water;

Paula Erizanu (Moldova) - arts critic, political commentator and former Culture Editor of The Calvert Journal;

Nora Ikstena (Latvia) - literary director and author of the novel Soviet Milk about female experience in Soviet-occupied Latvia;

Toomas Hendrik Ilves (Estonia) - former Estonian president and writer on digital democracy.

Producer: John Beauchamp Executive Producer: Steven Rajam A Free Range and Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4

Listen here: Zygimantas Kudirka - The bear next door - BBC radio 4 (2022)

Alternate reality audio guides @ Paupys (2022)

Alternate Reality Audio Guides in Paupys are five interactive science fiction stories enriched with spatial soundtracks. You will experience them while walking along the routes provided, with headphones on.

It can be seen as an interactive radio play, a carefully pre-planned social engineering project, or an audio tool for augmented reality. A new way to experience nature and architecture. Like a new urban skin, it is transforming even a familiar landscape.

All you need is a pair of headphones and a smartphone with an internet connection. Quality headphones are recommended.

A voice in your headphones will tell the story and guide you through many turns in Paupys district - including inside office buildings, deep down underground parkings, main streets and nature trails, and even a cemetery up the hill. And you will play an important role in each story yourself.

You can go alone or with an unlimited number of companions.

Listen, observe, and trust the voice in your headphones. Did you get lost? Don't worry and try again. You may have missed a turn or overlooked a significant detail in your surroundings.

INSTRUCTIONS

Bring a smartphone with internet connection and headphones
Select a guide and find its starting point by clicking [location icon]
Press ▶ and trust the voice in your headphones

CREDITS

Concept, scenario and voice-over by Žygimantas Kudirka

Soundtracks: Miša Skalskis (1) Lubomir Grzelak (2) Gediminas Jakubka (3) Pijus Džiugas Meižis (4) DJ JM (5)

Website design: Shortnotice studio

LISTEN HERE:

https://paupiogidai.lt/

Žygimantas Kudirka & felicita – Who are you? (2021)

Who are you? is a multi-media holographic performance / installation created by Žygimantas Kudirka – Lithuanian writer, artist and performer and felicita – an Anglo-Polish electronic producer and multi-disciplinary artist, part of the label collective PC Music.

Using gallery space as a canvas for narrative, this interactive installation will stimulate visitors using immersive audio, binaural voice recordings, light solutions and multiple types of hand-crafted holograms.

It questions our human nature with a hope of building a lasting bond between different life forms, promoting interspecies communication. On the other hand, the creatures are seen just as mediators, helping us explore our own selves and our sexuality.

Premiered in Baltic Triennial 14: The Endless Frontier

Bless you (2020)

Zygimantas Kudirka’s audio guide “Bless you” is a walk in “Google Street View” with a narrator’s voice, Žygimantas’ own poem in the form of a virtual guide. The narrative is based on the foreign objects found inside the virtual realm and the accidental passers-by, whose faces the artificial intelligence software recognises and then hides. The voice in the background calls out these strangers and the viewer. The project was made in collaboration with Asta Ostrovskaja.

Funded by Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association (LeTMeKoo, LIAA)

Rubber coated furniture (2020)

5,5 m long multi-functional piece of furniture that may serve as a table, a bench, a shelf, a bar or a co-working space.
It follows the stretch of the windows to make one collect as much natural light as possible.
Has 9 integrated electricity sockets and a secret drawer inside.
It is all covered in non-slippery sexy rubber pattern that’s disturbingly nice-to-touch, made from recycled doormats.

Idea: Žygimantas Kudirka
Production: Werkstatt

Indivisions: non-reality tv (2020)

Holiday videos, phone footage and some secretly filmed material with a spy camera integrated into a pen turn into a stunning lo-fi psychedelic, D.I.Y. science fiction and fake reality session made by commision to be broadcasted in national television during the evening programme—just before going to sleep.

Watch here.

KEKS Alternate reality audio guide (2020)

Alternate reality audio guide in Ežerėlis

This alternate reality audio guide is an interactive story that can only be experienced while walking around the city of Ežerėlis with headphones on. It is an interactive sound performance, a new way to experience nature and architecture. Like a new skin of the city that changes even a well-known landscape. During the trip, you will learn the alternate, science fiction based history of Ežerėlis narrated by the author with some sound design that includes music, field recordings and voices of locals.

Commisioned by Kaunas—European Capital of Culture 2022

Listen here.

Readings for plants, animals and babies, and the future links of evolution (2019)

Solo performance by writer, artist and performer Zygimantas Kudirka that takes a hybrid form of poetry readings and a dj set enriched with live sound effects and performed in psycho-active ultraviolet light. The listeners are instantly transported into a sci-fi setting to hear some immersive poetry about light, animals, machines and sexuality that connects it all.

Programme includes:

Beach sketch - a nod to the Lithuanian pavilion in Venice biennial
Interactive poem which has intoxicating effect on ones body
Lynguistic techno: performing 8000 years of word transformations
Empathetic answers for scam and phishing emails
Glimpse into the most personal, intimate and sensual
It will be pretty dark. All tears will be discrete.
Roller coaster of emotions, sounds and glycerol fume.

Early versions and excerpts performed in:
Panke, Berlin, Germany
Freeword centre, London, UK
Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway
Kim?, Riga, Latvia
CAC, Vilnius, Lithuania
XIII Baltic Triennial, Vilnius, Lithuania
58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy

Traffic jam radio (2019)

Objectum Sexuality, 2019
≈ 40 min immersive installation inside a modified car

In the beginning there was a music video, Vilniaus Energija—Autopilot Car which was then transformed by Žygimantas Kudirka and team into an immersive installation.

Kudirka’s music video tells you a twisted-futuristic-story about an autonomous, d-r-i-v-e-r-l-e-s-s car that kidnaps a hitchhiker. Once you enter the car and take the passenger seat, you become the hitchhiker yourself. Implicated in the same fate, within minutes you might experience Stockholm syndrome, and—while searching for direction—could eventually fall in love with your abductor, Kudirka’s robotic work. What are the possibilities of attraction? How is it possible to end up marrying a machine?

The car is capable of sensing the exhibition environment, and that which belongs to the zone outside it is quickly absorbed into a parallel universe where the sexuality of non-living things directs the plot.

Inside the work, you will experience things moving with ambiguity, because the car’s interior is surrounded by projection mapping and sparkling screens. The audio play takes the genre of a radio broadcast that expands into a dystopian universe of self-driving songs, video, and the installation itself. As Kudirka says, that is literally the edgiest a seated experience can get.

Objectum Sexuality’s team is composed of: Vytas Narbutas (technical engineer), Antanas Dubra (automobile tuning / design), Adas Gecevicius (sound engineer), and UAB Madstone (3D graphics).

Listen to it here

Xtrrnal memory (2019)

Extrrnal memory is a constantly changing reading performance based on notes collected throughout a year before the exact performance date. It acts as an external memory drive for the artist—helping to remember things in detail, not a single day is skipped.

The content is totally transparent and sincere. It contains personal notes, social network messages, headlines of articles read, quotes from movies seen, names of places visited, impact of artworks absorbed, records of jokes told, professions of people met, recipes of food eaten and references to global political events that gave a context to it all.

Repeating events such as orgasms, intoxications or breakdowns will be acoustically illustrated by live sound effects, becoming sort of a rhythm of personal statistics.

The performance contains a substantial characteristic of a memory—its limitation. During later performances some things will diminish forever, some new things will replace them.

It also acts as a personal tool to keep awareness everyday, a routine to make notes every day and a little helper to try to remember things happening to you which, because of unreliable nature of memory, are on the brink of extinction.

Created for the Symposium on the fluidity of humor and absurdity during the residency in Nida Art Colony.

Talking to ghosts (2018)

Talking to ghosts: Unsent answers to untrue emails

For quite a while I’ve been collecting those emails. The ones that you can firstly recognize by their broken grammar. The ones that you were waiting for all your life with no substantial reason to get them. The ones that tell you miraculous stories with only single thing lacking in them—and that’s your participation.

These scam letters would otherwise be left to rot in the darkest corner of a spam folder of a mail box. Even the fact that I started collecting them wouldn’t neceserally save them from oblivion—I had no clear purpose starting doing that. But one day I got the other email—a regular one—from Laura Kaminskaitė, asking a contribution to her upcoming book Ghost Bag. That’s when the points got connected and all this collection of scam emails found its use.

The piece Talking to ghosts consists of a number of empathetic answers to scam and phishing emails. The answers to emails that not neceserraly were written by humans (they could easily be machine-generated), so at moments I felt like talking to ghosts. The answers I didn’t send (not to ruin my mailbox with a flood of other pieces to my collection), so the answers became ghosts themselves—not leaving the mailbox, but time to time materialising in a reading session or in a book about ghosts.

Intelligent wind (2018)

A poem about the ways of the wind.

Published in Artnews.lt side-by-side with the poem of CAConrad. Also published on the back cover of Lithuanian photography annual curated by Valentinas Klimašauskas.

Translated to English by Monika Kalinauskaitė.

This wind got intellect.
Unlocks the door when hands go shaky.
Combs your hair not through it.
Blows off those vampires of energy drinks.
This wind got intellect.
Picks your pockets because he’s not comfortable enough to ask.
This wind steams rice And passes you drinks.
If he downs a Margarita half, at least, goes down your throat and salt he blows off your face.
This wind got intellect.
Knows ways to remain invisible if caught, can always show his papers.
Helps himself to your cigarettes and hands them back if they’re the light ones.
This wind got intellect And needs no internet.
Once you ride the electric he never holds you back, pushing only forward.
A compliment, not a competitor.
A pissing ghost.
Scentless.
At least before a smoke.

State of grace (2018)

Žygimantas Kudirka video installation “State of Grace” (2018) featuring Jonas Vaitiekūnas “Gender-possessing Bed” (2018), a bed for the presentation of Žygimantas Kudirka’s video material shown sideways.

On the screen series of vertical videos are shown sideways to excite the state of grace. Visitors have to watch the content while lying on a side.

Part of ‘Circus of Grace’ group exhibition at Antanas Mončys house-museum, Palanga

We are all from the future and will return to it again (2018)

520 x 220 cm neon wall-mounted installation. When it gets dark—light sensors switch on a neon sign in loft district in Vilnius.

The sentence glows in a white, heavenly colour—a sign of a future that is not unhuman and technocratic but rather utopian and even nostalgic.

Artist offers an alternative perspective that gives us roots in a future towards which we can cruise with hope.

Idea: Žygimantas Kudirka
Design: Ugnė Balčiūnaitė

Horror flicks in an abandoned supermarket (2017)

Enormous sized slug crawls on Chinese highway!
Huge bee wanders around small town of Kartena!

That was part of video installation: short horror flicks projected in an abandoned super-market that was opened first time after 25 years in the highway-side town called Kartena.

Material was filmed in small Lithuanian town of Kartena by the artist himself, during the experimental engineering camp eeKūlgrinda.

It’s a weird jungle out there! (2017)

A poem published in MAINTENANT: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art, Three Rooms Press, NY

It’s a weird jungle out there!

Orange turned into electromagnetic waves and goes at the light speed in all directions. Blackberry is not edible anymore. So as burberry. Windows became software, apples became hardware, in which case nature mort could be considered a hack! Playboys play only with playgirls. But gameboys play only with gameboys. If you have other preferences—do not forget—toys are us, so you can always play with yourself! Fox is television, but television is not a fox.
You can find jaguars in the amazon and at the same time you can’t.
Mustangs drink gasoline. Pumas absorb any liquid—especially coffee and blood. Bulls are liquid themselves. It’s a weird jungle out there! Caterpillars turned into metallic beasts instead of butterflies. Greyhounds run wild into more than 3700 destinations across North America. Camels are being set on fire all over the globe, but only kids get punished, adults get offered a treatment from pyromaniacal addiction. Lotus is an extremely rare plant, that can be found only in upper class villas together with grey gooses stuffed into glass containers. Oracles should possess some, since they became filthy rich when instead of telling fortune they started making a fortune out of clouds. But you are not so insignificant yourself!

You can wear the antarctica. You can wear the london fog. You can break open the ocean. You can rub the hawaiian tropics into your skin. You can shave your legs with venus, eat the guts of mars and turn saturn in any direction. Your mother is an advertising agency. Your brother is a laser printer. Your family is simpsons. You can move on top of giants and control the time with a help of titans. Of course you can, little man.

Puffy Grip Logic (2017)

Contributed some texts for an interactive choose-your-own-adventure type novel by Martin Kohout “Puffy grip logic” ( TLTRPreß, 2017), premiered during FOTOGRAF FESTIVAL, Prague, Czech Republic.

Alternate reality audio guides (2017)

Alternative reality audio guides that are experienced by moving in particular locations with headphones on.

These are not your common sightseeing tools. Like interchangeable smartphone skins—they put an alternative layer on the city. Layer of fiction that connects with physically existing objects and locations.

That was the work for the closing event of the Rupert Alternative Education programme.

The guides are uploaded to the clone of a tourism website (English translation tba): www.welcometolithuania.eu

Sexuality of language (2016)

Video work exploring the sexuality of language.
The list of most sexy english words arranged in specific order becomes a love poem read by a voice-bot with a stream of carefully selected visuals from Wikimedia commons.

Haikus for drivers (2016)

For the whole week artist
took over led traffic displays
with a number of driver-oriented texts such as:

“Through the front window you see the future.
Through the rear-view mirror you see the past.”

The symbol count restrictions
made them resemble new age digital haikus.

The scale of a project was huge: texts surrounded
the city with 50 km of digital wall of thoughts.

XXI a Kudirka (2016)

Zygimantas Kudirka first poetry book, XXI a. Kudirka (The Twenty-first Century Kudirka), is made up of interactive verses, literary remixes, internet poetry, and texts of unusual graphic forms and content.

Readers are encouraged to enrich and complement the experience of the book by exchanging emails with the literary personage, listening to a poem read by voicemail at the number provided or receiving a poem as an SMS message.

Design: Tadas Karpavičius
Publisher: Kitos knygos

The Race (2015)

A film by Robertas Narkus and Jokūbas Čižikas.

It takes place in a Lithuanian countryside, during the experimental engineering camp “eeKulgrinda” of summer 2015 in Kartena, where a drone is in pursuit of cars, objects and people.

The 24 uses of drone, fictional headlines and proverb remixes are made by  Žygimantas Kudirka and the soundtrack is by Adas Gecevičius 
Premiered on XII Baltic Triennial.

kurkudirka@gmail.com +37069657458