Nature is able to survive the most terrible catastrophes — fires, floods, radiation, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis. Nature always manages to stay alive, it sprouts mosses and lichens, ascends from seeds hidden in the depths of the soil and continues to exist.

This is an exhibition about how to be alive in times when everything around us is ablaze.


Humankind is isolated from nature, does not feel a part of it, and in this separation it no longer remembers how to live through death, pain and change of contexts. We are cut off from the daylight — we can live and work during the day and at night, we are cut off from the cycles of nature: apples and pineapples are on our tables all year round, we are detached from the seasons under air conditioners set at eternal +23°C, and our Facebook pages are immortal and filled with happiness forever. But the knowledge that we, people, are a part of an ecosystem bigger than ourselves, is vanishing. Intuitively comprehending oneself as a part of nature, percepting the connection with the world of bacteria, fungi, animals and plants is lifesaving both for society and for the psyche of an individual human being.


During two plein-airs Belarusian artists have looked at nature not only as a landscape, but as a subject that has knowledge of surviving a catastrophe — both local and global, external and internal. Can we recall being a part of nature? Can we recollect how to survive the destruction, having our roots cut off from our land, and how to continue to exist where there seems to be no life?

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A dream.

The fear of being in the space of a stranger's old room, where there used to be life, the sheets are spread out and it smells of a person and their right to their property, but they will not return. The fear to disturb the inviolability. The lamp and the night thicken. The feeling of the spirit magnifies, to hear and to see, to hear and to feel someone else’s body and life in one’s body, autumn and withering outside the window, the same death, the same life as in the rooms, because of old age, but also because of things.

Winter and snow and distant light in the house, the candle enhances everything, makes it a burden, the want to escape this space.

It's awfully scary, scary to feel the life of this person, it's scary to break into it, I'm terrified of being watched by this spirit, dreading touch and inhale. I want the person to keep their rooms and sheets, all their heritage, chests and boxes, translucent curtains that once caught  a living morning light, an early quiet awakening, living trees in constant rebirth cycle outside the window.

Being in the darkness is frightening, everything is unfamiliar, everything obeys the spirit and the smell.

Are these things waiting for someone to come for them, or must they remain as they are, defy and hold memory, contain silent death in the curtains and cold blankets, in triangle pillows and embroidered pillowcases, in naive heritage through tapestries?

It is either death or memory, but it is silent and frozen, nature sees and knows, this is nature, even forgotten and having become too human.





All living and non-living things in the world are connected by invisible mechanisms hidden from humans. Mushrooms can form large colonies, become mediators, repeaters in communication between trees and plants, they can cure diseases and repel parasites.

Fungi, namely mould, became the main graphic material for creating the title work. The beauty of mould colonies resembles cosmos that will survive even a global catastrophe, then take care of the remnants of the world and lay the ground for a new one.

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At the cemetery of works of art (supervised by Juozas Laivys) the funeral and burial ritual of the Loss of the exhibition works by the artist Irina Sukhy, which happened back in 1996, took place. This event of the distant past has contributed to the disappearance of Irina as an artist and photographer from the field of art for two decades. The action that was taken during the plein air presents a point of shift in energy, minus-to-plus, a revival of the creative potential of the artist.

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We are in a state of zero, a perfect vibrational frequency with no attachments, dependencies, expectations, assessments, or judgments. We possess neither sound nor image. We are in a void with no boundaries. It is in the state of zero that light is born, natural light invisible to us. We get accustomed to the dark and, thanks to an insignificant source of light, we start to distinguish shades, details, nuances, and then movement, halftones and the full range of colour. Our ears begin clinging to individual, weak and invisible sounds, which eventually turn into the melody of wind, water, of rustling leaves, a birdsong. Stopping, accepting and being present in this state is the way to understand yourself as a part of nature.

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We are living in a time of yet another numbness, the impossibility of creating something new, a crisis of overproduction — the overproduction of things, meanings and power. This artwork is not intended to be a new statement, if it is even possible to create one at present, it is rather an attempt to build new connections within the cultural landscape.

The first laboratory work in physics lessons at school is boiling water. It is absurdly simple and obvious, yet necessary. It is high time we returned to laboratory work within the plane of meanings. And these are the first attempts to do laboratory work on the formation of a new cultural landscape from the present circumstances that exist whether we see them or not.

The combination of natural and semiotic landscape allows us to construct and demonstrate functional connections between the main objects. This is a game, an attempt to reassemble the narrative from several planes and different cultural codes. Each viewer can add connections, create their own meanings and enlive the landscape with the perspective of their own.

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She always knew. She gave me life. She created me. An infinite number of mutations, cell divisions, adaptations, love and violence, billions of signs and an infinite number of technological and natural algorithms. And I am swimming in a warm substrate, in my mother’s body. I can already see and feel everything. This is my first and most terrifying knowledge. Close your eyes and immerse yourself in warm water, on a sunny and bright day. This is how I see the world through my eyelids. The muffled sound of a Heart beating and the noises of the outside world that I don't even know yet. I take infinite pleasure in swimming in the warmth, in this Unconditionality and flawlessness. In this pink glowing haze, I see a black spot, an expanding clot of dark slime moving towards me and filling the entire space within the pink heat. Touching and devouring me, the black Substance creeps inside as fear and terror. The black slime of despair. That's how a black seed of fear has appeared in me.





Once upon a time, in a past life, my grandmother told me a legend about the Black River. One day, when I was almost asleep, she approached the bed and, without turning on the light, started whispering in a low voice. For all of us ever born there comes a time to cross the Black River. This river has thick and viscous black water, sticky and cold. Everyone tries crossing this river since they know that everything they have always been looking for can be found on the other bank. But only a few manage to cross it. I asked why people can't cross it and what happens to them if they don't. Grandma came out of the darkness and I saw her face. Her lips did not part, but I heard her speaking. You know, my dear, in each of us there is a black seed, a child of the Black River. And if you multiply the black drops, the river will swallow you up and you will become one with it. We come into this world with black drops in our souls. These are drops of pain, hopelessness, despair and fear of our ancestors. "Granny, but why do they leave their black tears in their children?" I asked and woke up.






My friend and I are having a walk in the forest after the rain. The sun is shining, and our feet are drowning in wet moss. Sounds and life around us. We are going together, I need support and help. We go through the portal and approach the stone. I've chosen it for my practice. It is something between self-sacrifice and a healing and exorcism ritual at once. I trust all of you and I am no longer afraid of this world. I feel the warmth of my friend and the sun. My body lies on the stone, on the skin of the river of black slime. I'm cold. The stone absorbs heat. My body has stiffened and started shaking. My friend and the forest are healing my soul and body. The stone has absorbed the black streams. I have sacrificed the black slime, the purulent extrudate of fear, pain and loneliness.

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Modern people are separated from nature. They can feel a connection with it, they can tame and conquer it, colonise it, but they cannot unite with it. We have become a separate part of a whole that we cannot feel, detect or acknowledge. We are living in a time of anthropocentric values. This series of photographs is a story of delving deeper and discovering the wild, intrinsic human part that is still a part of the great world of nature.

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Nature grants us with the experience of freedom, liberation from the systems inevitably created by human presence. A school notebook, a textbook, and a desk present a space of limitations and rules. We are looking for our own ways to exist and express ourselves within it. Can we transform the rules, engage in a dialogue with them? Finding freedom within ourselves is the task marked with an asterisk.

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The surroundings of Lake Balduk, dense forests and boggy swamps are the main characters of the video, which flashes before our eyes against the background of the passage from the play «The Ridge», read by three different voices. This complex text could be painful in other circumstances. But being combined with nature it seems to get soaked into space and lose its «poison/toxicity» for the audience. It becomes a part of a larger ecosystem in which everything can be experienced, survived and left as soil, which forest needs to grow.

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It seems to us that nature is something permanent, immeasurable and unchanging, the basis of life that cannot be cancelled or destroyed. At the same time, especially today, it is nature that is becoming a vulnerable part of our world, fragile and unstable, but still vital for us as a foundation.

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Classical music is often associated with various natural phenomena. Many composers wrote their pieces inspired by the seasons, the sounds of the ocean or forest, birdsongs and animal sounds. However, playing music in concert halls designed to create perfect acoustics devoid of any live noise seems to wrap the sound up in plastic, depriving it of contact and connection with the wild/living part of the world.

This recording presents an improvisation based on the interaction with the place (Lake Akuniok (Belarusian for ‘perch’) created in several stages. First, it was recorded in the studio and reproduced at the lake with the help of digital equipment. Then it was re-recorded with the sounds of the place itself that gave the impulse, became the audience and eventually the co-author of the sound.

The acoustic instruments were recorded in nature, on a lake surrounded by forest. The sound sources were distributed around the shores of the lake and recorded from a boat in the centre of it, which allows us to hear how the sound spreads across the water. The recording was made with acoustic microphones that pick up sound coming from all directions at 360 degrees and alternative means of sound recording such as hydrophones.

The sound installation is exhibited using quadrasound, which makes it possible to immerse the audience in the sound of the natural atmosphere, sounds recorded underwater and the way the sound spreads across the water, bouncing off the wall of forest around the lake.

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We are living in a time of yet another numbness, the impossibility of creating something new, a crisis of overproduction — the overproduction of things, meanings and power. This artwork is not intended to be a new statement, if it is even possible to create one at present, it is rather an attempt to build new connections within the cultural landscape.

The first laboratory work in physics lessons at school is boiling water. It is absurdly simple and obvious, yet necessary. It is high time we returned to laboratory work within the plane of meanings. And these are the first attempts to do laboratory work on the formation of a new cultural landscape from the existing circumstances that exist whether we see them or not.

The combination of natural and semiotic landscape allows us to construct and demonstrate functional connections between the main objects. This is a game, an attempt to reassemble the narrative from several planes and different cultural codes. Each viewer can add connections, create their own meanings and enlive the landscape with the perspective of their own.

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Nature ran wet hands through my city's noisy and anxious body. It undressed me, laid me down on the ground, immersed me in silence, embraced me with water. Exhale — it pulled out the wires from me, inhale — took the bitterness out of my breath. Exhale — it hid the cosmos under my eyelids, inhale — hugged my face with its hands and licked me with fire. Exhale — it plunged me to the bottom of the lake, showed me the enormous essence of darkness, inhale — pushed me to the surface as a bubble, kissed me by the sun.

It gave me peace, dissolved the bustle, instilled joy in me. All disputes (social, metaphysical, existential and political) fade and lose their meaning. Wild, deep, and quiet remains forever.

Nature knows better.

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Poems by Dmitri Strotsev are read by Paulina Vitushchanka and Andrei Khadanovich. Translated into Lithuanian by Paulina Vitushchanka, Tomas Milevicius, Tomas Chepaitis, translated into Belarusian by Andrei Khadanovich.

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