BEHIND THE SCENES WITH AN ART CURATOR

She has a kind of soft intensity and very regal looks. When Juste was confirmed for the position of Lithuanian cultural attaché in Great Britain I thought it was a perfect occupation for this restless and always on the go, stubborn and exceptionally friendly human being. “It is similar to religion, or cult” - she says about being an art curator. A warm, open-hearted, and beautiful person with a brilliant mind. We were emailing back and forth our lockdown realities, when Juste Kostikovaite was almost done with her tenure and ready to full speed on to new projects & we know where she is going!! >

Alicja Bielawska project Soft Ground with Kristina Aglaja Skaldina, curated by Juste in Vilnius (2016).

Anastasia Sosunova, Agents (2020), still. Commission by Roots to Routes (that Juste is part of) from Manifesta 13's Parallel program.

New Juste’s sneakers that make her happy during the lockdown, besides her iPhone, family, friends and raspberry ice-cream in Kennington Park. That’s how she rolls. Comfortable shoes to run around the world to catch art events everyplace.

She has just started her work as the Head of the Department of New History Expositions at the Lithuanian National Museum.

Brunette or blonde, with her hypnotic gaze, she sucks you in and puts a spellbind on you. “This picture with black pseudo dog-fur coat is already very old one, I think it's from 2016 February, "&editions" party in Vilnius after the lecture on collecting at the Contemporary Art Centre that I co-organised with Ruta Radusyte. It was super cold.”

Juste before the opening of Pirouette performance curated by Roots to Routes from Manifesta 13 Parallel programme.

Painting by Merike Estna, one of Juste’s favorite artists.

“While London was basking in 16 degrees celsius this February we were trodding on some roads from Tate Modern towards Elephant & Castle. Sort of hiding from the police so they don't catch us for illegal congregation of more than 2 households or something like that. Musician Anton Lukoszevieze showed us this former church now called Henry Wood house after BBC Proms founder. They made a recording studio here now instead of the church. #repurposingchurches.”

Another Roots to Routes project called Insula. By Maarja Tonisson and Dovydas Strimaitis, that took place in Marseille in 2020. // Photo: Aurelien Meimaris

> Juste, describe yourself in three words, please -

Restless, uprooted, and sea-loving!

> What is a cultural attaché? What that person is doing? How do you spend your days in the office? -

I ended my tenure in October 2020, which feels like ages ago. Usually it's juggling meetings, running around organising events, dealing with networks. Nothing really super special than any other management, the only difference being that in our work we are exposed to many different cultural spheres and fields at once: contemporary art, literature, contemporary dance, poetry, illustration, media and communications, films, etc. The most fascinating part of this work is meeting and getting to know the creators that work in these fields, all the creative forces that stand behind what we call cultural production. It's a truly soul-nurturing part of the work.

> How was your lockdown? Have you achieved interesting - new - disruptive goals? Will art created in 2020 - 2021 reflect what people were thinking and how they were feeling during Covid-19? Do you already see this happening?

I haven't achieved many things, and especially not the ones I made a list for sometime at the end of March or beginning of April 2020. Did't learn a new language, nor I got super fit. Started watching some online courses - then ditched them. Ah, but I managed to cook pierogi stuffed with carrots, thanks to my dear friend inviting me to the Saturday zoom cooking party. I was just trying to stay sane and enjoy every day. My biggest lockdown adventure unfolded during March - November 2020. I was lucky to be collaborating with two curators - Merilin Talumaa and Maija Rudovska - and working with a bunch of remarkable artists for our project Roots to Routes in Marseille that was also part of Manifesta 13 Paralell programme. With the blessing of some kind of anti Covid-19 Gods we somehow managed to go forward with our program and fully develop and show it from the end of August 2020 till the total lockdown in France that started on the 1st of November or so when we have just started deinstalling our two exhibitions.

Our main supporter Baltic Culture Fund has trusted us to implement and develop this international art project in the midst of pandemics. We also turned to remote producing, digital commissions, masks as art merchandise and so on.

Other than that, as I’ve said, I can’t speak about achieving a lot during lockdown. Just recently I have started the Yoga GLO online courses which I begin to enjoy. Back to good old yoga, like fifteen years ago. Just now it’s packaged in a slick Californian accent and youthful body presence.

> What are the trends - tendencies - future of the art? More AI or digital things? Like Brain Opera? What do you like or don’t like about it?

I am not sure about Brain Opera’s as I have not seen the project but Marvin Minsky’s philosophy of the mind is at the core of it, right?

The trends - I really don’t know what trends there will be. On one hand, it will have more digital mediation, but on the other - it will need to replace or replenish and feed the need to (re)connect and grow empathy.

Last summer we invited two artists who never met each other before to produce a piece. A dancer Dovydas Strimaitis and an artist Maarja Tonnisson created a piece called Insula in Marseille. Strangely, Insula also is a place in our brain: “(....) where people sense love and hate, gratitude and resentment, self-confidence and embarrassment, trust and distrust, empathy and contempt, approval and disdain, pride and humiliation, truthfulness and deception, atonement and guilt. People who are better at reading these sensations — a quickened heart beat, a flushed face, slow breathing — score higher on psychological tests of empathy, researchers have found. The second major modification to the insula is a type of cell found in only humans, great apes, whales and possibly elephants, Dr. Allman said. Humans have by far the greatest number of these cells, which are called VENs, short for Von Economo neurons, (....) they are in the catbird seat for turning feelings and emotions into actions and intentions. (...) " - the extract from the NYT article from 2007.

> Where do you get your news from?

I am a sucker for The Guardian. Other than that - like everyone, I guess. I get news from social media feed: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
In addition, I check Lithuanian websites, from DELFI.LT to 15min.lt and others. AND I call my mom every other day and she also gives me a wrap up of “her version of the news.”

> Where do you get your up-and-coming art highlights?

LOL, are we speaking of 2023 already? I mean what can we even plan for the end of 2021? Of course, I really want to see Venice Architecture Biennale in summer and then get to Berlin to see the group show at Hamburger Bahnhof in April where my friend Merike Estna is participating, and then maybe go to Art Basel in September. But the "post-pandemics" EU plan seems too flimsy for us to plan something concrete in terms of travelling to art shows when we speak in the beginning of 2021.

Sometimes I get the news when talking to artists and curators - but mostly because we are friends, without a purpose to extract news or something. So occasionally I know what’s coming up even before it’s announced. It's always nice to have a bit of insider information.

On social media I am following some of the arts organisations that I like, writers or critics - and if something interesting catches my eye and I don’t forget to watch it online then I do. I really do not have any system to it. Frieze.com, Artforum, e-flux, artnews.lt, Echo Gone Wrong are the usual suspects as well. I also follow accounts that are projecting something dark but somehow manage to lift me up like Eartheater, knowunpleasures, an account of Oliver Basciano and Roberta Smith. On Twitter I love Erica Scourti.

> What do you need as a person to be an art curator — cultural attaché?

Here I am still clinging to the somewhat romantic notion that any profession that keeps you awake at night and can induce one to talk about it's subjects for hours on end is less of a craft but more of an obsession. I have no idea what feeds that obsession, perhaps an attraction to being around artists and thinkers. In the pre-lockdown situations I felt that contemporary art field is fuelled by a thirst for the almost spiritual recognition of the bridge between the reality and fiction. That feeling of thirst sometimes is similar to religion or cult members. Sometimes that feeling might be expressed in very philosophical and cryptic art languages, and some art bodies, especially big museums or art funding bodies, aim to respond to the audiences and turn from the definition of high arts to creativity. Creativity is much more open and invites everyone to experiment and co-invent new aesthetic languages.

> Is it true that the art world is way more cruel than the fashion world?

I have never been an insider in the fashion world, but from the outset it seems that it could be more unfair than the art world. But who am I to judge anyways? I can see that art and fashion now mingles more than ever - or it always mingles and the aesthetics simply changed hands? This year Elsa Schiaparelli fashion house borrows from its own old collaborations with surrealists, Dior turned to Renaissance and Baroque art for its spring summer 2021 campaign, so there is always the reference to the reference to the reference. Maybe one could say that the dialogue between art and fashion even intensified during Covid pandemics, or at least I notice more of that.

Perhaps fashion is more cruel as it feeds off the art in a way. Art also feeds off fashion but fashion gets all the dollars without needing such huge armies of unpaid art workers, art students, volunteers, interns, academics, writers, critics, application writers, mediators like artworld does. As a consumerist world, all openly up for sale, the fashion world, even striving for the sustainable processes is still more free to be more direct. Its premise is that all pieces are made for sale, without the goal of being an eye-opening society altering art piece. Or to bridge the connection between the reality and fiction in such a way, that you get to know the reality better. Say, one of my most favourite artists Lawrence Abu Hamdan makes a sound-based work that both complicates and produces evidence, and one could argue, produces new kind of truths that do change or might change the lives of actual civilians? By experiencing such artworks we get drunk with the illusion that it does change lives. But... maybe - there is hope that we are not just intoxicated with art's promise, but in fact, passive and active agencies of art collide. Using contested sonic evidence in multiple legal trials an artist is engaging with what can be seen as aesthetics of making truth. In his piece Earshot Lawrence Abu Hamdan is telling the story how "in May 2014, Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank (Palestine) shot and killed two teenagers, Nadeem Nawara and Mohamad Abu Daher. The human rights organization Defence for Children International contacted Forensic Architecture, a Goldsmiths College-based agency that undertakes advanced architectural and media research. They worked with Abu Hamdan to investigate the incident. The case hinged upon an audio-ballistic analysis of the recorded gunshots to determine whether the soldiers had used rubber bullets, as they asserted, or broken the law by firing live ammunition at the two unarmed teenagers. A detailed acoustic analysis, for which Abu Hamdan used special techniques designed to visualize the sound frequencies, established that they had fired live rounds, and moreover had tried to disguise these fatal shots to make them sound as if they were rubber bullets. These visualizations later became the crucial piece of evidence that was picked up by the news channel CNN and other international news agencies, forcing Israel to renounce its original denial. The investigation was also presented before the U. S. Congress as an example of Israel’s contravention of the American-Israeli arms agreement. A little over a year after Abu Hamdan completed his report, he returns to the case of Abu Daher and Nawara in his exhibition Earshot. Expanding on the original body of evidence, he has created an installation encompassing sound, photographic prints, and a video to reflect more broadly on the aesthetics of evidence and the politics of sound and silence. The video, Rubber Coated Steel (....) acts as a tribunal for these serial killing sounds. The video tribunal does not preside over the voices of the victims but rather seeks to amplify their silence, fundamentally questioning the ways in which rights are being heard today."

> Do you see yourself as a happy person?

More of an optimistic one.

> What makes you happy? AND what are your five favorite material things right now? (i.e., hairbrush, notebook, a certain bookshop in London).

Friends. My mother. Sun & sea. Kindness. Silly, funny and beautiful things around.
Coffee shop-bistro in Kennington Park near my house. They sell really good coffee and real raspberry ice cream - saved my quarantine.
Painting by Merike Estna. My swimsuit and bike. Also, negative Covid test. Our merch mask from Roots to Routes project. New sneakers.
Old Falke socks that a friend gave to me. My iPhone.

> I know you are traveling despite the pandemia, but is there a place that isn't very accessible to you right now - and it’s on your post-Covid life list?

A place with no fear!

> Could you recommend the most interesting / essential cultural events this year in Europe (or in the world), that we should try to see?

Hmm, I guess nothing cultural will be essential before the biggest part of the European population will be vaccinated. But other than that: Baltic Triennial in Vilnius, opening in May 2021 (and ending 15th of August). And maybe try wonderful Timisoara, Romania for the 4th Encounters Biennial curated by Kasia Redsiz and Mihnea Mirzan. Ah, and, of course, if you come to Vilnius later in the year, do see the show on the legendary Marija Gimbutas at the House of Histories (Lithuanian National Museum).

> What would you say to your 20-year-old self? Something that you didn't know then -

I would just stare at myself. I was super thin then. I guess my 20-year-old self felt older than I feel now.

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more suggestions from JUNETHINGS:

> Marvin Lee Minsky on thinking in threes. On soul being just a process.

> The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind (Marvin Lee Minsky, 2006).

> The Society of Mind is both the title of a 1986 book and the name of a theory of natural intelligence as written and developed by Marvin Minsky.

> Carrot pierogi recipe.

> More of Lawrence Aby Hamdad art.

> Juste’s favorite places in Vilnius: “Senatoriù pasažas and El Mercado where they sell gluhwein in winter. The only semi-social spaces when everything is locked.”

> Her favorite lockdown places in London: “Kennington Park, Regents Park, Hampstead Heath, Hackney Marshes, Lee Valley, Wandle Trail, Dulwich Village. Also train stations that can take you to the seaside.”

> World’s first major institutional crypto-art exhibition.

> A good friend of Juste - Asha Schechter recommends Los Angeles art galleries to check out: Paul Soto, Chateau Shatto, Bel Ami, Kristina Kite, O-Town House, Parker Gallery, and New Low.