2023 10 13 – 15. ART VILNIUS’23: MONTEVERDI COMES ALIVE

Art Vilnius’23, the fair for art lovers, will take place in Vilnius from 13 to 15 October. As every year, the Jonas Mekas Centre for Visual Arts presents an innovative audiovisual installation “Monteverdi Comes Alive” in the Project Space (Hall 4).

While researching the legacy of Jurgis Mačiūnas, we unexpectedly came across the outline of a device designed by Jurgis Mačiūnas to compose music in an automatic mode. By deciphering the texts and Jurgis’s surviving drawings, we have reconstructed the music generator that Jurgis created, which can be used to hear images, i.e. to hear what images sound like.

On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Vilnius, we are presenting to the public the audiovisual project Monteverdi Comes Alive (as we know, Mačiūnas was a big fan of Claudio Monteverdi). The most prominent exhibits of the Fluxus collection will be set to perfect music generated by Mačiūnas’ sound generator. This is a great way to rediscover Fluxus and its founder through innovative solutions and innovative tools.

The installation features items from the FLUXUS collection and their remixes – FLUXUS LETTERS by Mantas Kuginis, as well as recreated fragments of Claudio Monteverdi’s lost opera, with one of the vocal parts being performed by Jurgis Mačiūnas himself.