LT
In the first days of April, OPEN SODAS will blossom. The programme presents a new exhibition at Atletika Gallery, the film “El Padre Medico”, open artists’ studios and live sounds 
OPEN STUDIOS
[6PM–9PM]
○ Austėja Platūkytė and Biomaterial Library
○ Volungė
○ Design studio FORMA
○ Jūsų Grindys Mūsų Lubos
○ Rufcuts Studio
○ YAUYA Baltic Sauna
○ Ieva Rižė
○ Spongė
○ Dominykas Daunys
○ Architektūros fondas
○ Kristin Wiking
○ Aistė Laisvė Viršulytė
○ Erica Zhan
EVENTS:
5PM
Workshop “Hungry Gap” by Sean Roy Parker
Meeting point – SODAS 2123 yard
Duration – about 2 hours.
Spring is bursting and our stomach are rumbling. This time of year is traditionally one of scarcity in agriculture while vegetable and grain seedlings germinate to mark to start of the growing season. In the city plants begin poking through the concrete or blossoming on their own volition – the performance of municipal planning, pioneering perennials, or audacious aliens. Investing in intimacy with wild edibles is a necessary ramp into abundance. Join artist, writer and landworker Sean Roy Parker on an observational walk in which he will facilitate writing exercises to help kindle the connection with potential food sources in the urban environment.
6.30PM Screening of the film “El Padre Medico” and discussion with the film’s director Vytautas Puidokas and the film’s music composers Paulis Kilbauskas and Vygintas Kisevičius.
The discussion will be moderated by Ignė Smilingytė, film curator and co-founder of the film publishing company “Taip toliau”.
Alexander Ferdinand Bendoraitis (1919-1998) appeared in Western Amazonian jungle of Brazil in the early 1960s. Though a few decades back the place was inhabited just by indigenous tribes a grandiose railroad project gave start to the state of Rondonia. There, European aristocrat, missionary, philanthropist and a doctor Bendoraitis quickly became a local success. He established a boat-clinic network, first jungle radio, started the pacification of local indigenous tribes and built the most modern hospital in the Amazon. People would walk a thousand kilometers to be healed by the famous Padre Medico and his loyal supporters from Europe compared him to Mother Teresa.
6.30PM Evelina Šimkutė artist talk “Grounding”
Meeting point – SODAS 2123 yard
Duration – 30 min. plus time for your questions
Evelina is a regenerative placemaking practitioner. She is currently conducting an artist reasearch in SODAS 2123, trying to rethink and write down the methods she was applying in her 10 years of creative practice in Kaunas’ Šilainiai neighbourhood. In this talk she will introduce herself and share her first experiences in this place as well as answer any questions you might have.
>>There will be tea. Please bring your favourite cup.
Event: https://fb.me/e/7TMvWhJcS
7PM Opening of the exhibition “The Unloved” by Felicia Honkasalo and Sam Williams
“Atletika” gallery
In ‘The Unloved’, the figure of the ‘weed’ is animated through a combination of film, photography, collage, text and ephemera that sits somewhere in the cracks between museum herbarium, Gothic fantasy, childhood fable and amateur theatre.
According to Richard Mabey, Britain’s foremost nature writer, weeds – even many intrusive aliens – give something back. They green over the dereliction we have created. They move in to replace more sensitive plants that we have endangered. Their willingness to grow in the most hostile environments – a bombed city, a crack in a wall – means that they insinuate the idea of wild nature into places otherwise quite shorn of it. They are, in this sense, paradoxical. Although they follow and are dependent on human activities, their cussedness and refusal to play by our rules makes them subversive, and the very essence of wildness.
Event: https://fb.me/e/7omPWxiLR
7.30PM Open studios tour
Meeting point: 1st floor lobby
8PM“Stewarding” Book Launch with Sean Roy Parker
“Estafetė” bar
Stewarding – is a new publication from “Monitor Books” that brings together essays, conversations, annotations, and artist contributions on the often-invisible labour of care, maintenance, and holding space—for people, places, practices, and processes.
Stewarding asks: What does it mean to sustain something over time? How do we support each other in ways that resist urgency, extraction, or burnout? The publication is part field guide, part collective meditation—an invitation to think through slow, reciprocal, and improvisational approaches to living and working together.
8.30PM Performance “In failure I begin to speak“ by Erica Zhan
SODAS 2123 project space
“Existence is a piece of air that has the property of breathing. When did you first recognize the place of your being? I am amazed at its invisibility, between the banality of life’s norms and the urgency of rules. Triggering failure brings one into touch with the shape of the body and the texture of the system. Failure is the only crack I have a trace of when the daily geographic trajectory becomes a restricted loop. For this reason, I destroy safety, destroy obsession, destroy balance—leading to a fall, a break from the systemic loop. When failure occurs, it’s a moment where I can finally speak out freely.”
9PM UMIKO Kotori LIVE / Adomas Žudys Visual
SODAS 2123 Main Hall
www.umikokotori.com
www.zudys.lt
OPEN SODAS programme is free of charge and open to all visitors
The event is organized by SODAS 2123.
The activities of SODAS 2123 are financed by the Lithuanian Council of Culture and Vilnius City Municipality.
SODAS 2123 cultural centre is a self-governing community-based space, operated and curated by the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association. It brings together creators and researchers from different fields, with practices based on experimentation, developing unexpected formats, and responding to the latest cultural, social, geopolitical and ecological issues.
Design – Marek Voida
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
The event will be filmed and photographed. Videos and/or photographs taken during the event may be published and broadcast live on the Organiser’s social networks (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube), website, as well as other advertising or information dissemination media.