OFLUXO

Group show ‘Adero’ is one of the final chapters’ of a two year ‘Magic and Rituals’ research cycle by Rupert. Spanning through different spaces of a former sewing factory (now ‘Tech Zity Vilnius’), the show hosted new works by nine artists conceived during six months of the Alternative Education Programme. Influenced by the history and materiality of the building, works morphed into site-specific installations, evoking a variety of different dialogues with the space, its transformation and the ineffable.

The name of the exhibition – the Latin word adero carries three meanings: ‘I arrive’, ‘I attend’ and ‘I am present’. It is a word that transgresses the boundaries of everyday language and spills into the unknown. The three meanings, like flickering shrouds, reveal and obscure the six- month-long process they name. It is a spell that has yet to solidify itself into the future grimoires, now freely echoing in the vast, dim spaces of the old factory.

During the six months leading towards the exhibition, ‘I arrive’ was a form of trust, a gesture towards that unknown, an indication of being just the right amount passionate and unhinged to commit. ‘I attend’ was an extension of arriving—a seal of trust, the growth of friendships and an increasing number of shared social media stories. Finally ‘I am present’ meant being in the moment, occupying spaces and embracing their flows. It also meant becoming spectral — gathering and dissolving into pools of knowledge, leaving traces and exploring metaphors. Being present often took the shape of an ethereal labyrinth, where education morphed in the throbbing lights of the sensuous and the excessive. It moved and swayed, leaked and dripped, creating porous pathways into the future.

Like Anna Tsing* once invited us to follow matsutake mushrooms through the daunting ruins of a damaged world, we too invite you to follow the echoes and traces of Adero through the labyrinths of a crumbling factory in hope of finding ways to live in the precarity of the future.

*Tsing, Anna The Mushroom at the End of the World