In Dėmės ir įbrėžimai, Deimantas Narkevičius examines the concept of memory using 8mm film recordings showing a little known performance of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar at the Vilnius Art Institute in former Soviet Lithuania in 1971. But what can be heard in the video installation instead of the rousing songs of the successful rock opera are merely the mechanical sounds of the instruments, scraping feet, static, as well as choppy electronic sounds and a nervous whirr. The image wanders across the screen as if it were search- ing for something—like the light cone of a flashlight that only exposes parts of an image. The fragmentary excerpts that overlap in the 3D view thus reconstruct a long forgotten memory that becomes spatial as a video installation in the exhibition. The contrast created by splitting apart the one-channel video into superimposed, stereoscopic image elements describes the vacillating relationship between the past and its recollection.
Only the subtitles appearing at a few points and the dancing bodies let one assume that the hosanna must have been played by the instruments and resonated through the room. »The slow, the suffering, the quick, the dead.« But the video itself is silent. A low, rustling sound effect becomes audible and disappears again, leaving an oppressive feeling behind, induced by the silent obscureness of incomplete rests in the collective memory of Lithuania. Scratched by the ravages of time and flickering, the film triggers associations of a modern utopia in which the students, as members of the alternative scene in Vilnius, performed and celebrated their alleged freedom: The mood is cheerful, people dance exuberantly, somebody strikes the piano keys—the keystroke resonates through the hall, but still no music. At the climax of the video, the music finally sets in, an electronic sound that pauses like a track that is quickly played and interrupted again. A melody can hardly be heard. The video ends just as abruptly as the sound began, leaving the audience puzzled after they became part of a memory of others for a few short minutes.

Miriam Klauke

Artist Statement
Film reel and its material qualities are inseparable from an image it carries. Digitally scanned file is twofold in its nature: it exists both as a visual image and as the surface of a chemically developed analogue film. Polarity between physical marks on celluloid and photographic image that it supports was an inspiration to create a stereoscopic sculptural illusion, titled Stains and Scratches. A freshly pressed double LP of rock opera «Jesus Christ Super Star» got through to the underground scene of Vilnius. Score of the opera was re-written by ear upon hearing the record. The musical was staged at the Vilnius Art Institute on 25th of December 1971. One more performance was played a few months later at the Engineering Institute. Both events were filmed on Super 8mm film. Digitalisation of this silent b&w footage, turning it into 3D projection is an attempt to imagine a time of conflicting gestures. Essential political aspirations mix up with raving youthful joy of self-expression in the period of informational regulation and stillness.

Deimantas Narkevičius