Emilija Skarnulyte
Visual artist & filmmaker
Lives and works nomadically
Still from Sunken Cities (2021)
Courtesy of the artist
Q&A
Most overwhelming fact you have found out during your researches?
I was exploring the perspective of an archaeologist 10,000 years from now, and working with deep time, the realm of very slow change. This led me to the realization that to find the extraordinary, the sci-fi scenarios, you do not need to look far, as they are just next to us.
In Sunken Cities, it is the remains of a lost city Baia in the Gulf of Naples. Under the waves, the hedonistic resort of Baia unfolds as the mermaid swims: the sunken hallways, strange scaffoldings, sculptural figures of destroyed empires, mosaics of the sea floor - Roman ruins taken by the sea owing to local volcanic activity.
In Burial, it is the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, currently undergoing the process of decommissioning. The project takes a geological approach – it reads things that compose this flat landscape as a stack of stratigraphic layers.
These sites that contain layers of time are all around us. To notice that, it is the way of looking that needs to be altered.
Still from Burial (2022)
Courtesy of the artist
Why have you chosen film as a medium for your artworks?
Many years ago, I was in a residency in South Korea. Somehow, I ended up in an industrial construction site, in a tunnel, with my HD CAMCORDER. I realized that there is no way out – I heard the sounds of the tunnel being locked for the night. When my reaction was not fear but creative impulses, coming from forces such as boredom, potentiality of absence – then I knew that’s what I want to do. The time was unlimited, in this suspense, I was filming until my battery went off. I found it was the best medium to measure time. Getting into secluded sites or extreme conditions, with my camera, is still the mode of operation today.
I had my bachelors in sculpture, and was always thinking about body in space. Walking into landscapes. So it is important for me that the viewer enters a landscape. I think about that sculpturally.
The camera came as a tool that can delve into duration, measuring timescales, and traveling in time. With the sculptural thinking, I began to sculpt in time.
Then the move to expanded cinema, sculpture and architecture of immersive film installations. The body enters a landscape, and travels further in time with film. Different scales of space and time become possible.
Hypoxia (2023), installation views from the Helsinki Biennale 2023
Photo: HAM-Helsinki Biennial-Kirsi Halkola
In one of your interviews you have stated that "Language of the future is programming". What is the language of today?
Access to information has always been limited. The statement was expressing a concern that in the future, this language might be the way in which access is restricted.
The language of today, that I choose to focus on, is storytelling. It is becoming more and more absent, and yet it’s still so rich.
Still from Burial (2022)
Courtesy of the artist
How do you implement in your artwork the connection to wider context of filming sites, such as local people, workers on site, history of the place?
In my works, it is usually a poetic meditation, an observation. Burial (my first feature length documentary) was shot in Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. In the film, I look at it from the perspective that transcends the human perception of time. What if we look from the perspective of a rock – what passes, and what remains? Or the perspective of Uranium, its experience, what is it?
By altering between various non-human points of view, it becomes possible to consider the perspectives of other creatures which are there to be explored.
Riparia (2023), installation views from a solo show
at Ferme-Asile (Sion, Switzerland).
Courtesy of the artist
Revolution...
Evolution
Adaptation
Mutation