The highly acclaimed Lithuania Pavilion will return to Germany, in a former Bauhaus swimming pool

The highly acclaimed work Sun & Sea (Marina), in other words the Golden Lion-winning Pavilion of Lithuania at the 2019 Venice Biennale, will come back to life in the spring of 2021 and thus offer those who missed it in Venice last year the chance to see the fake beach created by director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, playwright Vaiva Grainytė and composer Lina Lapelytė and with which the three Lithuanian artists won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation amid general enthusiasm. The Pavilion of Lithuania will be “rebuilt” in Germany, on the outskirts of Berlin, in an abandoned Bauhaus swimming pool. Making the announcement was the E-WERK Luckenwalde art center, organizer of the event, on its Facebook page.

E-WERK announced that the three artists’ performance-work will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy, and that a crowdfuding campaign will be launched to support the project. The project will be part of the Power Night 2021 event and will be curated by the young Roman curator, born in 1985, Lucia Pietroiusti, who had curated the Lithuania Pavilion at the 2019 Biennale and is currently curator of the General Ecology section at the Serpentine Galleries in London. Pietroiusti is also co-curator of E-WERK’s Power Night 2021 program.

In Venice, the work, which could be observed from above in a space near the Arsenale (viewers accessed a kind of balcony), caused quite a stir, both because of the themes it dealt with (the small problems of everyone’s daily life and the big problems of the planet: the focus of the work is precisely on ecology, climate change, and the sustainability of contemporary life on Earth) and because of the way the three artists had addressed them. In Berlin, in the former Bauhaus pool, the public will observe the work in exactly the same way. It is a project that fits very well with the center that organizes it: in fact, E-WERK Luckenwalde is a space created last year in a former coal-fired power plant, converted into a carbon-free building that has the bizarre goal of producing renewable energy through ... contemporary art. It is also an art center that, under the direction of Helen Turner and Pablo Wendel, offers exhibitions and events on the theme of sustainability.

The crowdfunding campaign will be used to finance the approximately 40 thousand euros needed to purchase the sand and beach equipment and to pay the salaries of the 28 actors who will perform the performance. The event will have free access (but for this reason tickets will be limited), and as in Venice, the audience will watch from above. Those who would like to learn more can visit the E-WERK Luckenwalde website.

Helen Turner and Pablo Wendel in the former Bauhaus pool that will host the re-enactment of the Lithuania Pavilion

The Pavilion of Lithuania at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Ph. Credit Andrei Vasilenko

The highly acclaimed Lithuania Pavilion will return to Germany, in a former Bauhaus swimming pool

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