The contemporary city festival Audra has been shaping Kaunas’ cultural map for four years now, and this time its art program reveals new spaces and unexpected connections. We talk with the head of the art program, Tautvydas Urbelis, about the city’s transformation, interpretations of Čiurlionis, and the synergies of food.
The festival aims to rewrite the city’s cultural map. You have been the head of the festival’s art program since 2023. Have you already noticed any changes, and can the festival become a means for long-term urban transformation?
Yes, I believe the festival has truly been reshaping this map since its very beginning. Real changes are visible: audience interest is growing, and most importantly, a strong belief is emerging that Kaunas can host a world-class festival. A large festival in a small city makes it possible to achieve real change. Spaces also play an important role here: the Pergalė factory, the Šilainiai gardens at the 8th fort of the Kaunas Fortress, and more. As the program’s geography expands, several spaces have opened up that had previously been inaccessible or have not been viewed as a venue for art and culture. I have no doubt that the city is full of potential, and we are trying to activate it.
One of the most engaging innovations in the arts program is the effort to become an incubator. We have outlined two paths. The first involves projects initiated by the festival. This year, it’s The Citizen’s Sandwich, which reflects this year’s context and functions within the festival, but one of its goals is independence. I want it, over time, to operate autonomously, as a kind of satellite of the festival. The second path involves the arts program’s investments in existing initiatives in the city. This year, we partnered with the NGO Kultūros dirbtuvė, which works in the Šilainiai gardens and throughout the 8th Fort. We provide financial support to their activities, integrate them into the festival, but also allow them plenty of independence. Our goal is to host an engaging program while also innovating and contributing to positive changes in the city.
Let’s introduce the program’s structure to the readers.
The basic structure consists of an exhibition and performances. This year, we are collaborating with the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, which provided the premises of the Kaunas Picture Gallery. The performance program is dynamic, activating different spaces. Performances will also take place in the Bank of Lithuania building. I am very glad about this cross-sector partnership; I want to see art not only in galleries, but also in abandoned factories and banks!
The projects Citizen’s Sandwich and Edible City respond to this year’s context, which is food. Each year, the context dictates not only the content but also the form in which that content might be presented. For example, Citizen’s Sandwich takes the shape of a pop-up café, while Edible City is a community placemaking initiative. From an organizational perspective, there is no shortage of complexity, but we are making every effort to ensure that the audience’s experience is clear, comprehensible, and engaging.
Every year, the Audra festival invites audiences to explore different themes. This year, the festival is accompanied by the concept “Higher”, expanded by the slogan: Rise higher – see more. It is related to the interpretation of Čiurlionis’ work. When looking for themes, do you rely more on intuition, a sense of current affairs, or do you methodically structure a thematic framework from the very beginning?
For me, the important question is, what is the theme in the first place? While working in the smaller institution, Rupert, the themes were clearly expressed and easier to manage. Over time, the Audra festival’s art program became too large to operate within the context of a single theme. That’s when the idea arose to replace the theme with a context. The context –this year it is food – seems to me a very broad term. Food as context is made up of a cloud of keywords, from which curators select what seems to them the most interesting and relevant. Context allows the festival to operate broadly while still having a clear focus.
This year, there was an additional element – the museum’s invitation to collaborate. Although the institution gave us freedom and did not require us to explore Čiurlionis or draw on his work, we ourselves found it interesting. Working with the museum encouraged us to ask what this could bring not only this year but also in a more strategic perspective. I see this year’s slogan as a kind of encouragement. At first, it was directed at us – to look at what lies beyond the boundaries we have strategically and conceptually drawn for a contemporary city festival. Over time, that slogan turned to the viewer – we invite you to look around, at the places you did not plan on checking out. If you come to a rave, go see an exhibition, or listen to a talk about urban gardening. This is one of the most enjoyable aspects of curating such a festival. When audiences intertwine, people discover unexpected things or at least step out of their comfort zone for a while.
What points of convergence will be seen between Čiurlionis and contemporary artists in this year’s exhibition?
I’d like to answer this question by stepping back a little. When I began working with a large-scale festival, it became clear that many of the usual curatorial strategies in the art field don’t work here. This pushed me to think about the atmosphere of the event, its vibe – certain social threads formed by online culture, unsanctioned togetherness, liminal states that bring together very different groups of people. Why do we collectively understand what memes mean? What makes us dance together with hundreds of strangers? How does this mechanism of shared experience and exchange work? One could describe it as a collectively felt pleasure of uncertainty.
The vibe works in Čiurlionis’ case as well. But my first step was structural: to identify certain contexts in which Čiurlionis operated and to examine how contemporary artists engage with them. The following emerged: visual music and synesthesia; nature, folklore, mythology; futurism and the cosmos. These contexts, and especially the tensions between them, struck me as a good starting point and also as a kind of filter for how to begin selecting artists and how to communicate this logic to other curators. After that, it’s all about vibes. There’s no way to explain it – you have to experience it.
What values guide you in shaping the art program of the Audra festival?
Several things are important to me: first, the ability to work across different contexts and the modality of a work. I want to work with artists who see their work not as fixed, but as a changing body. It’s important that the artist can respond actively and propose their own spatial scenarios. Another value follows from this: drive and active participation in modernity. I want to bring together people who participate directly and authentically in the turmoil of this world, and who do so passionately.
The exhibition will open up previously unseen spaces of the Kaunas Picture Gallery. Spatial hierarchy is being abandoned.
I’m glad that my vision aligned with the architects’ vision from the very beginning. We were dealing with a well-known, history-filled space that we could open up, step beyond, enter usually inaccessible areas of the building, and propose a possible scenario for this gallery – at least for the duration of the exhibition. Speaking of hierarchy, for me, it has become a natural process to integrate works into nonstandard locations, to discover spatial cues, and to work within the scenography they create. I have never worked in a white cube space; I am used to asking where an exhibition begins and ends, how it functions infrastructurally, and how different institutions fit together.
Eve Stainton’s performance “Impact Driver”. Photo by Brian Hartley.
This year’s festival features international names. Is the festival and the city ready for a program of this level?
I have no doubt that Kaunas is ready for anything. The change we started is already being felt throughout the city. One kind of litmus test was the moment in 2023 when I invited the Young Boy Dancing Group to Kaunas with a provocative performance. At the time, there were many discussions, concerns, and questions about how people would react. But my position was that if there are no clear indicators suggesting that the performance should not be shown, and there is simply uncertainty, we must present it. My personal ambition and desire is always to take a step beyond the boundaries of safe territory.
This year’s surprise is a creative food synergy. How did the idea of including food in the art program come about? What can audiences expect from these experiences?
The audience can expect to eat well [laughs]. After all, exhibition openings need good food. And it has to be good local food. Ultimately, what is a festival historically? It’s a feast. And a feast is inseparable from food, indulgence, and excess. Philosophically speaking, it’s an overflow of ordinary reality. We find ourselves somewhere we didn’t expect to be – both dance moments and truly good artworks allow us to experience abundance, an overflow that can also be felt while tasting really good food. It’s not just about overeating – it’s more about venturing into uncharted territories.
