Vampire Bedroom Stories

LECTURES ON THE WEATHER at Tranzit Bucharest, 2022

Curated by Anna Smolak

Vampires have not always been mythological creations – for centuries they were actual and tangible participants of our social fabric. Prosecuted by law, and by the superstitious, they suffered public executions and humiliations for millennia throughout civilisations – in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, in the Americas and later Central and Eastern Europe. Through the figure of a female vampire, contagious and eccentric muse of horror erotica, and folklore, Goda Palekaitė addresses the liminal stages of cultural existence. The performance invites the audience on a boat circulating in Lake Snagov around the island with the Snagov monastery, where Vlad Țepeș The Impaler (better known as Vlad Dracula) might have been buried.

Anthropomorphic trouble

GODA PALEKAITĖ & ADRIJANA GVOZDENOVIĆ 2021

Curated by Arts Catalyst in partnership with Delfina Foundation, performed at Whitechapel Gallery, London

Adopting the lens of the Earth as a historical figure and discursive being, the project addresses ecological challenges, deep time and geological formations, unearthing the troubled relationship between humans and the Earth. The longterm artistic research conducted in multiple locations over two years resulted in a performance, installation, video work and publication. Guided by artists, this performance aims to open the possibility to experience and discuss anthropomorphic troubles, as they share their research, stories and works. Looking at the transitional moments within the history of science and questioning the scientific museological display, the artists invite you to spend time with the bodies of stones, view a video from the fieldwork portraying non-human protagonists, and engage with the history of Earth in a tactile way – in other words, to exercise your gaze and touch for a different knowledge of landscape and time.  

Photo: Katarzyna Perlak

SOMNAMBULISM

EXHIBITION OF PERFORMANCES AT VILNIUS INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL SIRENOS 2020

Goda Palekaitė’s Somnambulism is a five-performance exhibition that takes place in the Bastion of the Vilnius Defensive Wall. Spectators are assigned visitors’ roles in this both archaeological and fictional museum while the performances themselves become artefacts. With the help of the map, visitors move around the Bastion, experiencing lunatism in various ways. The performances presented: Dictionary of Apocalypse, Biographic Disobedience, Advertising Anarchism II, Digestive System of Humanity and Lecture on Eternity. Somnambulism is created and realised in collaboration with artists and performers: Sina Seifee, Caterina Mora, Jonas Palekas, Monika Šaltytė, Denisas Kolomyckis, Agnė Matulevičiūtė, Adomas Palekas, Ugnė Šiaučiūnaitė, Ina Bartaitė, Kamilė Krasauskaitė, Andrius Šoblinskas, Gabija Vaikutytė, and Vilmantas Žumbys.

Photo: Dmitrij Matvejev and Dainius Putinas

DIGESTIVE SYSTEM OF HUMANITY

GODA PALEKAITĖ & JONAS PALEKAS 2019

Performed at Editorial in Vilnius, Centre Tour à Plomb in Brussels and Vilnius International Theatre Festival Sirenos

Performance Digestive System of Humanity is a collaboration between a sister and a brother, an artist and a chef. It talks about the hybridity of history and the agency of collective imagination by inviting the audience to become members of a ritualistic eating-reading group. The performance comprises a script with numerous characters written by G. Palekaitė and five meals prepared by J. Palekas. The characters include Ancient Greek poetess Sappho, Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, Karaite archaeologist and falsifier Avraham Firkovič, and many others whose existences questioned cultural clichés and political impositions. The themes make a collage of facts, thoughts, dreams and gossips, which reveal a thick arrangement of contemporary issues: from the politics of historical narratives to the legacy of post-orientalism, from our feminist ancestors to the promise of anarchism. In a simultaneously factual and fictional, precise and absurd conversation, we perform something in-between a theatrical rehearsal, a collective reading and a dinner at a friends’ house.

Photo: Laurynas Skeisgiela and Monika Jagusinskytė

how to infuriate a historian

VIRTUAL BODY INSTITUTION, Brussels, curated by a.pass 2019

In collaboration with Nicolas Galeazzi, Marialena Marouda, Adomas Palekas and Sina Seifee

For the End-Communications concluding her research at a.pass Goda Palekaitė write a script and directed a performance-conference where three historical characters, whose legacy she had been exploring, meet. The debate took place between a 19th century Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, the ancient Greek female poet Sappho and a controversial Jewish-Muslim writer and journalist Essad Bay. This semi-scripted debate manifest as a live discussion between three contemporary artists and researchers whom Palekaitė encountered within the context of a.pass: Nicolas Galeazzi, Marialena Marouda, and Sina Seifee. They embodied the characters, yet contributing with their own practice.

vodka salt

A.pass’ UNSETTLED STUDY (Curated by Vladimir Miller), performed at KANAL Centre Pompidou, Brussels 2019

The performance took shape as a personal encounter between a visitor, a historical character and artist Goda Palekaitė. Each member of the audience was invited, individually, to spend time behind a huge curtain – on the backstage of a group show of performances Unsettled Study and presented as part of the Performatik festival. A 20 meters long curtain was installed there to create a backstage for historical and political narratives and identities, in which the agency of the imagination is mobilised in processes of truth-making. Mixing her own biography with the historical characters’, raising the questions of anarchism, orientalism, and their legacy in the contemporary world, sharing vodka and salt all night, the artist explored the intimacy with history and with the audience. The space behind the curtain became a hideout from the busy public gaze of the festival goers, and unexpected drunk encounters took place.