Opera performance »Sun & Sea (Marina)« by former fellows represents Lithuanian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale

During their fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, theatre and film director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, writer and poet Vaiva Grainytė, and composer and performance artist Lina Lapelytė have been working on a micro version of the collaborative work »Sun & Sea«, which was staged at Palermo Galerie, Stuttgart in 2016.
Specially adapted for La Biennale di Venezia this year, »Sun & Sea (Marina)« will be the first version of the opera piece in English. A varying cast of up to 20 participants and singers will transform the Lithuanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale into the stage of a durational installation/performance. The vernissage takes place on May 10, 2019 at 4 pm.

In their piece, the trio puts special attention on the relationship between documentaries and fiction, realism and poetry, as well as on the crossover of theatre, music and fine arts:

»›Sun & Sea (Marina)‹ takes place on an artificial beach composed through light, architecture and music. Vacationers in colourful bathing suits are lying next to each other on a sandy ground, while the audience observes them from above, as though from the point of view of the sun. In the heat of midday, characters begin telling their stories. Frivolous micro-stories slowly give rise to broader, more serious topics and grow into a global symphony, a universal human choir addressing planetary-scale, anthropogenic climate change. In the work, the physical finitude and fatigue of the human body becomes a metonym for an exhausted Earth. The setting—a crowded beach in summer—paints an image of laziness and lightness. In this context, the message follows suit: serious topics unfold easily, softly—like a pop song on the very last day on Earth.« – as the three artists describe the piece on their website.

The Lithuanian Pavilion’s Commissioners are Rasa Antanavičiūtė (Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania) and Jean-Baptiste Joly (founding director and former artistic director of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany). The Pavilion is being curated by Lucia Pietroiusti (Curator of General Ecology at Serpentine Galleries, London, UK) with the assistance of Caterina Avataneo (Independent Curator, London, UK).

The presentation will feature a special-edition vinyl catalogue designed by Åbäke.