Sun & Sea, delicious apocalypse

There is a murmur at one of the entrances to the

, just behind the government headquarters in Santiago de

.

Afternoon falls this Friday in January, but the heat does not subside even in this access basement, protected from the sun and in which wine circulates among journalists and people from the field of trans-Andean culture, who will attend the premiere of

.

Sun & Sea at the Venice Biennale presentation in 2019. Photo by Andrej Vasilenko, courtesy of the author and artists.

The Lithuanian production that won the Golden Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale has just been presented at the Sydney Festival in Australia and, when it has completed its performances on this side of the mountain range, it will arrive at the Colón Fábrica where it can

seen

.

Someone from the organization has come to clarify that

and that

along the catwalks that surround the stage.

.

It is then that surprise and bewilderment seize the public.

Although the words opera, performance and installation circulate almost interchangeably in the chronicles that have been written about this

since it burst into the

national pavilion at the

what happens on stage always manages to slip between the limits of genres and classifications.

Under there (no matter where it was presented, it is always under there), some twenty vacationers

.

An elderly couple argue here, a girl laments over there, a few families with children play paddle tennis or have a snack, some twins chat and a male couple miss each other while a dog sniffs through the sand.

Banal situations,

, which are reborn every summer day across the planet, indifferent to the drama of a collapse, which is not a promise but a present.

For this reason,

: there are solo and choral pieces composed by Lina Lapelytė that follow one another performed by lyrical singers, but there is no orchestra that sustains them but a soundtrack of electronic music, at times relaxing like the swaying of the waves of the sea and, at times, disturbing.

Sun & Sea at the Venice Biennale presentation in 2019. Photo by Andrej Vasilenko, courtesy of the author and artists.

Neither the concept of

nor that of

are enough because they seem to cover only a part of what happens: the work

(while the public sessions

), but it is never the same since the performers they are not people with acting training but extras who are sunbathing and playing cards one day and eating cookies or reading a book the next.

.

But they all leave with the same disturbing feeling.

“Deliberately, we use two concepts to refer to our work:

.

But the latter we use almost in an ironic sense because we are aware that when people hear that word, they expect highly trained voices and great drama and

, as one critic said,

, ”he tells

​​Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, the director of the production and part of the creative trio that is touring the world with this proposal.

At the same underground entrance and while the work is playing inside the cultural center, his partner, the composer Lina Lapelytė, adds in this regard: “This idea of ​​juxtaposing everyday nothingness and opera, which in people's heads is a very elevated, it was an interesting area to explore.

As contemporary creators that we are, it is important

or a context because what interests us is contemporary themes”.

Lina Lapelyte, Rugile Barzdžiukaite and Vaiva Grainyte.

Pictured by Andrej Vasilenko.

Photo courtesy of the author and artists.

From super to heating

The director and the composer are joined by the playwright and writer Vaiva Grainytė, who did not travel to Chile, but will participate days after this note by email.

and for this reason, this is not their first artistic collaboration.

All three grew up in Kaunas, the second most populous city in Lithuania after Vilnius and

.

The first to meet were the musician Lina and the writer Vaiva, who created an experimental group that was later joined by the actress and director Rugilė.

It was then that they thought it was a good idea

.

Sun & Sea at the Venice Biennale presentation in 2019. Photo by Andrej Vasilenko, courtesy of the author and artists.

Have a Good Day!

was born of that will.

The

was led by a group of supermarket cashiers and explored the consumerism that feeds the tireless wheel of the system while job insecurity and exploitation spread like an invisible but oppressive cloak.

For them,

between that look at capitalism and the way in which Sun & Sea reflects on environmental collapse: "It is a kind of extension of that criticism, but with an angle on climate change," confirms

. Grainytė, who wrote the script.

The three say that the figure that best defines them is not so much that of a trio as that of

.

“For us, creation arises from a space of listening and respect for the other.

This makes the processes longer, more tiring, agreements and conclusions are difficult, but we start from an idea, from an intuition, and from there we walk together”, Rugilé explained years ago.

Because it took them a decade to try again.

Sun & Sea

operates on two levels.

In the first, the one that is visible, is a

populated by bathing suits in pastel tones, serene and lazy movements that reveal the drowsiness of the heat of the beach.

Vacationers come and go to the sea (a sea invisible to the viewer although the performers leave the frame and return drenched after a non-existent dip), turn the pages of a magazine or listen to music while they talk, apply sunscreen or reflect.

Here everything is usual, and it is also beautiful, serene, banal.

There is a

.

Who doesn't miss a few days at the beach?

However, the

has been sown: the communion of lyrics and music focuses on especially revealing aspects of everyday nothingness.

A mother boasts of the hollow tourism she practices: “My son is eight and a half years old /And he has already swum in the Black,/Yellow,/White, /Red, /Mediterranean, /Aegean Sea... /He has already visited two great oceans of the world, / and the rest we will visit this year!

Sun & Sea at the Venice Biennale presentation in 2019. Photo by Andrej Vasilenko, courtesy of the author and artists.

A man describes his

: “I really don't feel like I can afford / to relax, / because my co-workers / will look down on me.

/ They will say that I do not have willpower.

/And I will become a loser /before my very eyes.”

The “Mermaid Aria” observes “Acid waves, / White foam, / Rock the boats full of canned food, tourists, fruits and weapons”.

The “Song of Admiration” observes “Rosy dresses flutter: /Jellyfish dance in pairs /With emerald bags, /Red bottles and caps”.

The twins yearn for a 3D printer to replace everything that is irretrievably extinct: “3D corals don't go away!

/3D animals don't lose their horns!

/3D food costs nothing!

I am immortal in 3D!"

Sister beach.

Marine rituals homogenize.

Also the banality from which we ignore (we know but pretend we don't) the collapse, which is not a threat but is inexorably conditioning us right now.

And

and pleasant.

That, which

portrays with charm and beauty, is the most disturbing aspect of the proposal.

Sun & Sea at the presentation in Vilnius, 2021. Photo by Evgenia Levin, courtesy of the artists.

–How did this unique work come to be part of the Venice Art Biennale?

–

: Originally, the play premiered at the Vilnius International Theater Festival with enthusiasm from the audience.

While preparing for the Venice Biennale, we came up with the durational concept.

Presenting ourselves at the Venice Biennale was a kind of ambitious bet and a willingness to try different contexts.

to represent Lithuania in 2019.

–

: Someone said that

because, on the one hand, we didn't have enough budget, but also we weren't super well-known.

Still, it turned out to be a good risk.

–

: Perhaps the reason may also be that many of us, as young creators,

, which in the 60s and 70s proposed interdisciplinarity and the meeting of materials and languages ​​from very different fields because what counts is not so much the language chosen as an idea of ​​art as a whole.

That movement was, I think, also in the minds of the curators who choose the projects that are presented in the open call.

That was what happened in our case.

–The first version of

is from 2017. How did this idea come about and what has changed since then?

–

: The initial starting point was the desire to collaborate together.

Rugile shared her vision of the singing bathers, watched from above.

It took us between four and five years to reflect on the central message of the work, that is, on what these people could be singing and what sense it makes.

, naturally.

I was reading literature related to the climate crisis, catastrophes, nature, extinction, food miles, and trying to translate that knowledge into mundane ideas.

The play premiered in Lithuanian.

For Venice the English translation was made (in the hands of the American Lithuanian poet Rimas Uzgiris), and the score was rewrote.

, but we have gender-fluid characters, and each role is tailored to the person singing it.

Consequently, we think about the context and try to incorporate small political gestures or make some adaptation.

For example,

who sang some lines in Arabic about thirst and lack of water (the lines are present in the script).

, and the same verses about water in the indigenous language added a message to the piece.

Sun & Sea at the presentation in Vilnius, 2021. Photo by Evgenia Levin, courtesy of the artists.

–How is the cast of Sun & Sea

formed

for this world tour?

–

: The singers travel with us but the rest of the characters that you see on the beach are local people.

who we just ask not to act but to do the things they usually do on the beach.

These ideas were actually arising from the circumstances of their own creation: at some point, we were working on the play while our children were young and suddenly they were mingling on the beach with the singers, something that was very natural.

When we were chosen to go to Venice, we found ourselves with a really big space and we wondered how to occupy it.

It was then that we realized that the fact that

it could become a feature of the play and that's what we've been doing ever since.

–The most important theaters in the world know how to put on an opera, but few are prepared to move tons of sand and scaffolding.

What were the biggest challenges in staging?

–

: In principle, we need to arrange

in a room and that is a big challenge.

–

: For example, one of the most splendid spaces we came to was the Teatro Argentina in Largo di Torre Argentina square in Rome, which is one of the oldest theaters in that city (it was founded in 1732) and in which

for the presentation of

.

In other places, like here in Santiago with the walkways that connect the floors of the cultural center, we are happy to find

more simply to our proposal.

Rugile Barzdziukaite, Lina Lapelyte and Vaiva Grinyte in Venice.

Photo by Rasa Antanaviciute.

–Drones generalized a point of view that human beings hardly had access to.

Why did you choose to cancel the seats and develop that perspective, from above and in motion, for the public?

–

: We think more of a

than a drone, but the idea is to focus on the human being from an anthropological point of view or from an anthropological curiosity and observing them from above, with a certain

, allows us to detect those patterns of social behavior that are repeated continuously.

–

: This point of view is challenging not only for the audience but also for the performers who have to sing lying down, in bathing suits or even wet.

It's easy to find good professionals, but it's less easy to find

.

So they need to want to challenge themselves to put on a leotard and lie down on the sand.

–Climate change appears associated with floods, droughts or fires.

What can a beach inhabited by carefree vacationers say about environmental collapse?

–

: That despite all the havoc that is taking place,

.

The beach is like a beautiful sunny

of amnesia and indifference.

Sun & Sea at the Venice Biennale presentation in 2019. Photo by Andrej Vasilenko, courtesy of the author and artists.

–In

, there is a permanent dichotomy between the feeling of catastrophe that the songs announce and the placid, summer atmosphere of the scene.

What is the effect that this resource seeks?

–

: Allow melancholy/sadness to enter through the back door and feel or experience it as

as a direct blow to the face.

–

: Certainly,

because we are dealing with a very difficult topic.

This is our point of view.

We worked a lot on the conceptual discussions on how to construct the dramaturgy, Vaiva developed scientific research and translated that knowledge into the language of poetry and songs, with an interesting dose of humor as well.

But always the axis was not to be neither didactic nor moralizing.

–

: I think that Vaiva's style of referring to things that are very important, but from this ironic perspective is what makes our works also explore that edge where the audience doesn't know whether to laugh or

.

That is very powerful.

Sun & Sea at the Venice Biennale presentation in 2019. Photo by Andrej Vasilenko, courtesy of the author and artists.

–What can art do to build a true ecological conscience?

–

: It can educate, allow us to feel and see things from

and build communities.

–

: Well, we never wanted to do ecological or activism work.

Perhaps it could be said like this: we want our work

.

–

: I think what art can do is

.

I would say that the most important thing is that a work of art is accessible, because it often happens that art is enclosed in an artistic bubble and people don't get there.

So I think in our case we consciously tried to make the work really accessible and allow us to talk about some topics.

For us, the success of

is very comforting because it means that

, can access it and, hopefully, it can awaken in them some emotions that allow them to take action or rethink later. .

–There is an increasingly strong link between art, feminism and ecology.

Would you say that

is a work that interacts with feminism?

–

: Totally.

Perhaps not just because of the fact that three of us were born in female bodies, but also because of

: truly collaborative, non-hierarchical, surrounded by care and attention.

These last qualities are far from patriarchal structures.

–

: We don't label our work as feminist, but of course we live our feminism and I think that when you take care of others, when you take care of nature and care about the planet, that is also being an ecologist.

That is

.

BASICS

Rugile Barzdžiukaite, pictured by Andrej Vasilenko.

Photo courtesy of the author and artists

Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė

Vilnius, 1983.

Director Filmmaker, theater director and visual artist.

In her creative practice, she explores the gap between imagined and objective realities, while playfully challenging an anthropocentric way of thinking.

His recent feature documentary-essay Acid Forest was awarded at the Locarno International Film Festival and screened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Lincoln Center in New York, the American Film Institute festival in Los Angeles among other venues.

Sun & Sea is her latest collaboration in the field of performance.

Vaiva Grainyte, pictured by Andrej Vasilenko.

Photo courtesy of the author and artists

Vaiva Grainytė

Lithuania, 1984. Playwright

Her textual practice moves between genres, interdisciplinary plays and publications.

As a writer, playwright, and poet, she acts as an observant anthropologist.

Her book of essays

(2012) and poetry collection

(2019) were nominated for Book of the Year awards, and included in the top 12 lists of Lithuania's most creative books.

Her work has been translated into more than 10 languages.

Her bilingual, transgender novel,

(2022), playfully and ghostly deconstructs the stereotypical concept of happiness that is ingrained in contemporary culture.

Lina Lapelyte, portrayed by Andrej Vasilenko.

Photo courtesy of the author and artists

Lina Lapelytė

Vilnius, 1984. Composer

​Her performance practice is based on music and flirts with pop culture, gender stereotypes and nostalgia.

Her works involve trained and untrained performers, often in one act singing across a wide range of genres including mainstream music and opera.

Her works were presented at the Cartier Foundation in Paris, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art;

RIBOCA2 - Riga Biennale;

Tai Kwun, Hong Kong;

Glasgow International;

Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels;

Kaunas Biennale, Lithuania;

Pompeii Commitment and Castello di Rivoli, Italy.

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