Deimantas Narkevicius: The Unanimous Life

Deimantas Narkevicius, The Dud Effect, 2008, 18mm transferred to HD video, colour, stereo sound, 15’40”, Courtesy gb agency, Paris; Jan Mot, Brussels; Barbara Weiss, Berlin

Kunsthalle Bern
Through December 6, 2009

By Oliver Kielmayer

After being shown at Reina Sofia in Madrid and Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, “The Unanimous Life,” Deimantas Narkevicius’ first retrospective curated by Chus Martínez, is currently on display at Kunsthalle Bern. The comprehensive selection of films by the Lithuanian artist starts with Europa, 54˚54′-25˚19′ from 1997 and ends with the most recent work The Dud Effect from 2008. The former is a simple documentation of a journey that Narkevicius made to the geographic center of Europe (which is in Lithuania); the latter is a complex film about a deserted Soviet base for nuclear rockets on Lithuanian territory. Narkevicius contacted people who used to work on these bases in order to learn about the technical background as well as the working routine there. Based on film material he shot on the deserted base, oral information from former employees and additional archive materials, he re-enacts the scenario of a historic R-14 rocket that is launched 30 years after the cold war has officially ended.

For Narkevicius, history is much more than a scholarly discipline that looks back on the past. It is a constant dynamic process that on the one hand is coined by revolutionary events, but on the other by a laziness and viscidity that ever so often makes things repeat themselves without being noticed. Once in the XX Century (2004) is another work that deals with such questions but unfortunately is missing in Bern: The film uses television footage of a Lenin statue being pulled from its pedestal, but is edited in such a way that it appears as if the statue is being re-erected in front of a cheering crowd. More than just a comment on the situation in Eastern Europe, the work presents the fine line between today’s future ideals and tomorrow’s potentially ugly reality.

The concept of history in Narkevicius’ works is always closely linked to individual stories and perceptions. However, the relevance of the subject is also emphasized when it comes to self-reflection about art in general. In Role of a Lifetime (2007), for example, the subjectivity both of reality and art is key in the statements of Peter Watkins, a British filmmaker living in Lithuania. Narkevicius’ concept of subjectivity and the relevance of individual history go far beyond any self-centered attitude that is present in so many other statements of contemporary art. In his films, he manages to assemble individual stories, historic facts and traditional contents in such a way that you get a much better and understandable picture of a situation than you would in any history book.

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