S T I  L L E D : t i l t / l i n g e r  / c o n c r e t e /

STILLED is a book-document extending out of the artist-in residence programme 2018 of the socially-engaged Šilainia-Project in Kaunas, Lithuania. The residency was an invite to work in and respond to the 1980s Soviet-built Šilainia neighbourhood and I proposed to explore the area as a choreographic work-site and to continue exploring body and place in relation to themes of (dis) orientation and presence.

STILLED follows on from the book-document, ASSEMBLED and also consists of three large folded pages containing photographic images, scores, drawings and texts. The reader is invited to navigate and turn, the pages themselves having no fixed up-down orientation. Please be in touch if you would like a copy.

Supported by Šilainia-Project

swimming pool = plaukymo baseinas

Staying in Šilainiai – I am struck by the stark contrast between outside and inside sensations. Gazing out over the beautiful stark crown-scape and below to the basketball pitch, playground, people, cars, children, dogs it is warm and quiet in the flat. It seems that everyone is quietly isolated and insulated in their flats. Outside there is a November emptiness – one day bright light and blue sky and another day grey and heavy. People work in the city centre of Kaunas on the other side of the river to Šilainiai neighbourhood. Here, there are primary and secondary schools, a market, supermarkets, a bakery, a pizzeria.

And I find a swimming pool. Like the kitchen table, the swimming pool is a familiar place. In this pool I swim lanes, note the bare slightly damaged concrete interior walls. School children line up on the edge, sitting and kicking legs rigorously on the whistle signal of a young instructor whilst the few of us, adults with no work to go to that day, calmly swim our lanes – our different rhythmic strokes punctuated with the whistle and children kicking and splashing.

I absorb the architectural lines, acoustics and communal atmosphere of the pool and then of the women’s changing room with girls’ chatter, lockers, showers, benches – a humid echo-ing room of women old and young. Places work into and are absorbed by skin of ears, eyes, body.