{"id":487,"date":"2024-09-23T10:25:18","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T07:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/?p=487"},"modified":"2024-09-23T12:42:12","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T09:42:12","slug":"performance-date-with-an-octopus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/performance-date-with-an-octopus\/","title":{"rendered":"Performance Date with an Octopus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Date with an Octopus is an interdisciplinary audiovisual installation that expands the universe of the novel Fungal Dream by Gabija Gru\u0161ait\u0117. Visitors are not only observers, but also participants. In the first part, the audience is invited to lie down, make themselves comfortable, relax and explore their body and consciousness. The blurred boundary between the inner human world and the external world is explored in relation to the Pacific octopus, which is both a concrete physical object\/subject as it is a symbol and a fantasy. The visit to the art space is completed by the second part \u2013 an objects` installation (eight plastic replicas of\u00a0<\/span>Octopus Vulgaris<\/span><\/i>\u00a0dishes) that invites visitors to reflect the experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

The octopus holds in its embrace the entirety of Gabija Gru\u0161ait\u0117\u2019s \u2018Fungal Dream\u2019. True, it exists on the visual plane of the book, staying to some extent in the shadows. The lights here are directed elsewhere \u2013 to the text. We therefore initially catch the octopus just out of the corner of our eye and immediately forget it. Just as we forget people who aren\u2019t like us. We don\u2019t notice what isn\u2019t on our usual horizon, what we don\u2019t know, what we cannot or do not want to make a direct and meaningful connection with.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, the octopus is definitely here \u2013 everywhere. Or rather, she, the woman octopus. Her tiny but clear black silhouette is nestled in the blue cover, which recalls the rippling of the ocean on a cloudy day. Her eight tentacles, like thick seaweed, like long strands of hair trailing in the water, envelop the novel both on the book\u2019s first and last pages, and in a specially designed bookmark\u00a0 Moreover, the silhouette that appears on the cover is repeated to mark each chapter of the book. And, even if the octopus is not to be found in the novel\u2019s narrative \u2013 in the words arranged into sentences, paragraphs and chapters \u2013 like all non-human animals, she exists outside our verbal language.<\/span><\/p>\n

Close your eyes.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The octopus is a mollusc with eight limbs and no shell. There are about 300 known species. Together with squid, cuttlefish and nautiloids, they fall within the class\u00a0<\/span>Cephalopoda<\/span><\/i>. Viewed from a human perspective, it is a very strange animal, with an extremely plastic and flexible body; limbs studded with tentacles, with each limb having its own brain, and capable of functioning autonomously; and skin which can instantly change colour to mimic the sandy seabed or rocks. Although these animals have unique brains unlike any other animal we know of, they are also known to be highly intelligent creatures, capable of opening jars, finding exits to mazes and using tools. They are also thought to develop a complex inner life.<\/span><\/p>\n

In evolutionary terms, the common ancestor of humans and octopuses was probably some strange fish-like worm with two eyes and a mouth which lived hundreds of millions of years ago. \u2018If we want to study the intelligence of aliens,\u2019 observes Peter Godfrey-Smith, an Australian philosopher and writer who studies animal minds, \u2018octopuses are the closest thing we have.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

But Gabija\u2019s installation doesn\u2019t feature an octopus \u2013 that is, a woman octopus \u2013 herself. There are only images of her: a hypnotic video which captures a cephalopod that lived in the aquarium of the Maritime Museum in Copenhagen, and eight plastic replicas of\u00a0<\/span>Octopus vulgaris<\/span><\/i>\u00a0dishes, which the artist ordered in various restaurants around the world, so as to grieve for her deceased adopted octopus in such an unusual way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her encounter with the octopus happened earlier, leaving a rippling trace in time, like in dark water, that encapsulates the multifaceted nature of human beings: gentle and cruel, caring and predatory.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Open your eyes.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In his legendary science fiction novel \u2018Soliaris\u2019, the Polish writer Stanis\u0142aw Lem tells the story of a mysterious animal living on a distant planet \u2013 a vast ocean that defies human understanding. \u2018We don\u2019t need other worlds,\u2019 he writes, \u2018we need a mirror. We don\u2019t know what to do with other worlds. This one is enough, we are already choking on it.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps this date to which we are invited is not really with an octopus at all, but with ourselves. With all the unknown, autonomously operating parts of ourselves that live in dark waters. This installation, the date,\u00a0 is like another side \u2013 the reverse side of the verbal language \u2013 of Gabija Gru\u0161ait\u0117\u2019s book \u2018Fungal Dream\u2019, which once experienced and comprehended, will help us finally establish a direct and meaningful connection with all the parts of that strange animal who we are.<\/span><\/p>\n

Neringa Bumblien\u0117<\/span>
\n<\/span>Vilnius, 2024<\/span><\/p>\n

GABIJA GRU\u0160AIT\u0116
\nDate with an Octopus<\/p>\n

Video \u2013 Ronaldas Buo\u017eis
\nSound \u2013 Jonas Dr\u0117ma<\/span>
\nVoice \u2013 Gabija Gru\u0161ait\u0117 (Lithuanian), Aaron Wolf | Revenant Audio LLC. (English)<\/span>
\nTranslation \u2013 Jeremy Hill<\/span>
\nDesign \u2013 Aurelija Slap\u0161yt\u0117<\/span>
\nCuratorial text \u2013 Neringa Bumblien\u0117<\/span>
\nEditor \u2013 \u016ala Ambrasait\u0117<\/span>
\nCommunications \u2013 Ieva Koncevi\u010di\u016bt\u0117<\/span>
\nProducers \u2013 Laura Vagon\u0117, Justas Janauskas<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Date with an Octopus is an interdisciplinary audiovisual installation that expands the universe of the novel Fungal Dream by Gabija Gru\u0161ait\u0117. Visitors are not only observers, but also participants. In the first part, the audience is invited to lie down, make themselves comfortable, relax and explore their body and consciousness. The blurred boundary between the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":43,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":518,"href":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions\/518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabijagrusaite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}