Team

Artists

Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė (b.1983, based in Vilnius) works as a filmmaker, theatre director and visual artist. In her creative practice, Barzdžiukaitė explores the gap between objective and imagined realities, while challenging an anthropocentric way of thinking in a playful way. Her recent full-length documentary film-essay Acid Forest was awarded at the Locarno International Film Festival among others, was shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Lincoln Center in NYC, American Film Institute festival in LA and many other events and venues for cinema and contemporary art. Sun & Sea is her latest collaboration in the medium of performance.

Vaiva Grainytė‘s (b. 1984, based in Lithuania) text-based practice shifts between genres, interdisciplinary theatre works and publications. As a writer, playwright, and poet she takes action as an observant anthropologist: challenged by Grainyte's poetic interpretation, mundane social issues take on a paradoxical and defamiliarised nature. Her book of essays Beijing Diaries (2012) and the poetry collection Gorilla’s Archives (2019) were nominated for the Book of the Year awards, and included in the top twelve listings of the most creative books in Lithuania. Her oeuvre has been translated into over 10 languages. Her bilingual, cross-genre novel, Roses and Potatoes (2022), playfully and phantasmagorically deconstructs the stereotypical concept of happiness embedded in contemporary culture.

Lina Lapelytė’s (b.1984 in Lithuania) performance-based practice is rooted in music and flirts with pop culture, gender stereotypes and nostalgia. Her works engage trained and untrained performers often in an act of singing that takes the form of a collective and affective event questioning vulnerability and silencing. She had solo shows at FRAC, Nantes; Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; Rupert, Vilnius. Her works have been exhibited or performed at the 13th Kaunas biennial, Haus der Kunst, Munich; Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels; Tai Kwun, HK; Glasgow International; Riga Biennial - RIBOCA2; Lithuanian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale; Cartier Foundation, Paris; CCA Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Baltic Triennial 13, Tallinn; Moderna Museet, Malmö; FIAC, Paris; Hayward touring show, UK; Serpentine, London.

In their collaborative practice, the artists pay special attention to the relationship between documentary and fiction, reality and poetry as well as the overlap of theatre, music and the visual arts. Their opera-performance Sun & Sea is the second collaboration for the three artists. The work was most recently presented as Sun & Sea (Marina), representing Lithuania at the 58th Contemporary Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, where it was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Their previous work, the contemporary opera Have a Good Day! for 10 cashiers, supermarket sounds and piano, premiered in 2013 and is touring worldwide.

Curator

Lucia Pietroiusti (b. 1985, Rome) is Head of Ecologies at Serpentine, London. As a curator, Pietroiusti works at the intersection of art, ecology and systems, usually outside of the gallery space. She was the founder of Serpentine’s General Ecology project (2018-ongoing) and the curator of Sun & Sea (Lithuanian Pavilion, 2019 Venice Biennale and 2019-2024 tour), 8th Biennale Gherdeïna (with Filipa Ramos), Back to Earth (Serpentine, 2020-ongoing) and The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish (2018-ongoing, also with Filipa Ramos). Recent publications include More-than-Human (2020, with Andrés Jaque and Marina Otero Verzier) and Microhabitable (2023, with Fernando García-Dory).

Libretto translation (Lithuanian to English)

Rimas Uzgiris is a poet and translator, author of North of Paradise (Kelsay Books), Tarp (Poemstranslated into Lithuanian, shortlisted for poetry book of the year 2020), translator of the libretto by Vaiva Grainytė for Sun and Sea (winner of the Venice Biennale Golden Lion Award 2019), and translator of five poetry collections published in the US and UK. Uzgiris holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, and an MFA in creative writing. Recipient of a Fulbright Grant, a NEA Translation Fellowship, he teaches at Vilnius University.

Singing Performers

Svetlana Bagdonaitė, Evaldas Alekna, Aliona Alymova, Teresė Andrijauskaitė, Milda Andrijauskaitė-Bakanauskienė, Arūnas Arlauskas, Marco Cisco, Sebastian de la Cour, Gbija Damanskytė, Justina Damanskytė, Nabila Dandara, Saulė Dovydėnaitė, Auksė Dovydėnaitė, Daniel Monteagudo Garcia, Claudia Graziadei, Sandro Hähnel, Elisabeth Holmer, Lucas Lopes Pereira, Artūras Miknaitis, Yates Norton, Eglė Paškevičienė, Vytautas Pastarnokas, Salomėja Petronytė, Kalliopi Petrou, Ieva Skorubskaitė, Elisabetta Trevenzuoli, Annapaola Trevenzuoli.

Performers

Raminta Barzdžiukienė, Vincentas Korba, Ona Lapelienė, Jeronimas Petraitis, Juozas Petraitis, Mantas Petraitis, Pranas Petraitis, Matteo Giacomo Pietroiusti Watt, Jonas Statkevičius.

Live soundtrack

Salomėja Petronytė

Sound Engineers

Romuald Chaloin Galiauskas
Tautvydas Navikas

Producer (Tour)

Aušra Simanavičiūtė (until September 2023)
Caroline Smith (from June 2023)

Production Manager / Stage Manager

Erika Urbelevič

Technical Directors

Lique Van Gerven, Dovydas Korba

Communication

Lina Vaitiekūnaitė
Jogintė Bučinskaitė

Visual identity

Goda Budvytytė

Founding Producer

Neon Realism

Co-Producers

Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts
Akademie Schloss Solitude
Goethe-Institut
JCDecaux
Münchner Kammerspiele
National Gallery of Art, Vilnius
Staatsschauspiel Dresden
The Momentary, Arkansas

Commissioner (Sun & Sea (Marina), Venice, 2019)

Rasa Antanavičiūtė

Founding Patrons (Sun & Sea (Marina), Venice, 2019)

Lithuanian Council for Culture
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania
Laurenz Foundation, Basel
Vilnius City Municipality

Catalogue & vinyl concept and design

Åbäke

Translators

Austėja Banytė
Emilija Ferdmanaitė

Web Development

Asger Behncke Jacobsen

Catalogue and vinyl press

Grafiche Veneziane
MaleFatte
Vinyl Plant

Towel and bag design

MUKU

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