July 2020 NAC launches the Nightlife Events Programme – a series of collaborative events played out at local bars, clubs, and other friendly institutions in Nida, scattered throughout the summer. Recognising the need for long-lasting cooperations between the hard-working contemporary art and residency institutions in Lithuania, NAC has invited some of them – Autarkia, CAC, DAR, Kaunas Artists House, Lokomotif, and Rupert – to visit NAC and Nida this summer, bringing along friends and stories to tell thus contributing to the programme based on the principle of exchange, gathering and becoming part of NAC and Nida’s public life.
Despite everyone possessing some preference or idea of their own regarding nightlife, it remains something that escapes a singular definition. A transgression, a culture, an institution, an industry – or a time for dancing and laughing bodies to come together, for a poem to slip through, or for an unusual action to originate and commence. For us, the team of NAC, nightlife is something that happens after hours and usually beyond the walls of our house, in Zuikio daržas or any other site which adds layers to our experience: context, action, history, fantasy. Something that we would now like to merge and let seep into our own house, exploring and experiencing a reciprocal relationship with our friends and the spaces and communities of Neringa.
We are also using this opportunity to form and fortify an alliance of residencies and other cultural institutions in Lithuania, all of them engaged in artistic production and facilitation. Adjacent to this year’s Nightlife Residency programme between NAC and the Beijing-based I:Project Space and The Neighbourhood, the Nightlife Events Programme will also feature a daytime schedule of NAC Library Talks, examining the necessities and challenges of such partnerships. Meanwhile, the performances, film screenings, readings, dinners, and parties organized by our collaborators in various well-known locations around Nida use the giving of space as a way to go to places we would go to anyways. And is that not how we all become entangled in celebrations and parties?
NAC Nightlife Events Programme will take place in July–September 2020 at assorted venues in Nida: Faksas, Thomas Mann House, Zuikio daržas, and NAC itself. We are looking forward to seeing you there both after dark and during the day, hoping that together we can branch the collective definition of nightlife into an even wider multitude than it is.
Nightlife Events Programme schedule for 23–26 July:
23 July 8 pm: Druskininkai Art Residency at Thomas Mann House with Agnès M
24 July 9 pm: Kaunas Artists’ House Reading Room event at Thomas Mann House with Insomnia Salon | Gone with the Wind
25 July 6 pm: Autarkia and Delta Mityba at NAC with The Forgotten Path Dinner
26 July: NAC Library Talks with DAR, KAH, Rupert, Kintai and NAC on residencies in Lithuania, their roles, positions and strategies
26 July 9 pm: Rupert at Zuikio daržas with Pijus Džiugas Meižis’ Geographical States
The project is co-funded by Lithuanian Council for Culture.