Events Series: Queer Histories from the Baltic Region

Queer Histories from the Baltic Region is an events series presenting innovative research into queer cultures and artistic practices in the Baltic States, highlighting the rich history of gender and sexuality discourses in the region. It will ask how LGBTQI+ artists across the region have informed contemporary understandings of queer identity, exploring the role of visual cultures in the early expansion and dissemination of queer politics in these contexts.

The programme will be presented on 22 June at Auto Italia, London and on 24 August at the Edinburgh Art Festival.

The programme Queer Histories from the Baltic Region is led by Auto Italia (UK), Edinburgh Art Festival (UK), Editorial (Lithuania), Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art (Estonia), and Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (Latvia), and is generously supported by the Baltic Culture Fund, the Lithuanian Culture Institute and Culture Attaché in the UK, and The Estonian Embassy in London.

 

22 June 2024, 4–4:45 pm

Auto Italia, London 

In Conversation: Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė, Heinrich Sepp and Maggie Matić

Join us for an in-conversation event with Lithuanian artist, curator and researcher Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė and Estonian artist Heinrich Sepp. The conversation will be moderated by Maggie Matić, Director at Auto Italia.

Bagdžiūnaitė and Sepp will explore LGBTQIA+ activism and structural conditions for socially engaged work in the Baltic states. Participants will present their diverse community engagement practices, examining the extent to which activism is possible within the institutional frameworks of cultural organisations.

This event is part of our events programme Queer Histories from the Baltic Region initiated and led by Auto Italia (UK), Edinburgh Art Festival (UK), Editorial (Lithuania), Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art (Estonia), and Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (Latvia), and is generously supported by the Baltic Culture Fund, the Lithuanian Culture Institute and Culture Attaché in the UK, and The Estonian Embassy in London.

This event is free to attend, but registration is necessary. Please click the link here to book your ticket.

Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė is a Lithuanian artist, curator, and researcher specialising in people’s history, feminist and queer ethnography, and theory. Her work often delves into labour history, with a focus on women’s work stories from the Soviet era and the social and during economic changes in the 1990s. Recently, she co-curated the event series Obscene West. Naglis at Kaunas Artists’ House, examining shifts in sexualities in 1990s Lithuania. Agnė is also involved with the social centre EMMA and coordinates the Art Workers’ Labour Union, Lithuania’s first such union.

Heinrich Sepp is a Tallinn-based artist from Estonia, with a BA degree in film directing. Since 2017, they have been writing and performing under the alias Helgi Saldo, focusing on intersectional topics related to the LGBTQAI+ community. Since 2021, they have belonged to the pan-Baltic queer network Black Rose. Black Carnation. They currently host a monthly radio show, Homokringel.

 

22 June 2024, 5:30–6 pm

Auto Italia, London

Performance: Recital by Gregor Kulla

Join us for Recital, a performance by Estonian performance artist and oboist Gregor Kulla. Kulla’s works address the disparity between contemporary queer forms of performance and those dominant in classical performance and music, both broadly and in Estonia.

Kulla’s Recital will juxtapose their electronic music compositions with archive classical experimental music, which will be accompanied by their live oboe performance. Recital reflects on tantric practices and feminine power as depicted in different mythologies, narrated around the notion of rebirth and its connection to time, change and death. 

This event is part of our events programme Queer Histories from the Baltic Region initiated and led by Auto Italia (UK), Edinburgh Art Festival (UK), Editorial (Lithuania), Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art (Estonia), and Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (Latvia), and is generously supported by the Baltic Culture Fund, the Lithuanian Culture Institute and Culture Attaché in the UK, and The Estonian Embassy in London.

This event is free to attend, but registration is necessary. Please click the link here to book your ticket.

Gregor Kulla is a composer, performance artist, writer, critic and model born in Põlva, Estonia. Their work deals with gender studies, feminism, minority and queer cultures, drag culture and Eastern philosophies. They majored in composition at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater, and in oboe and composition at the Heino Eller Music School. They studied sustainable art creation at the EU School of Participation 2021 in Novi Sad, Serbia, and have trained with several prestigious composers, including Chaya Czernowin (US/Israel), Federico Favali (Italy), Slavomir Horinka (Czech Republic), amongst others. Kulla received the honorary title of Tartu Noor Kultuurikandja in 2020 and, in 2021, became a laureate of the cultural newspaper Sirp. They are a recipient of the annual prize of the literary magazine Värske Rõhk, the Esimese Sammu literary award and an Erkki-Sven Tüür Foundation scholarship. 

 

24 August 2024, 3–4 pm 

City Art Centre, Edinburgh

Off-site Performance: Lezbynai by Agnė Jokšė 

Join us at the Edinburgh Art Festival for a performance by Lithuanian artist Agnė Jokšė, whose work explores language normativity, autoethnography, reflections on intimacy and parallel histories.

Jokšė will perform their work Lezbynai, an erotic story about lesbian love against the background of Lazdynai, a district of Vilnius where the artist grew up. The residential houses of Lazdynai are reminiscent of a panopticon, situated in a way that allows everyone to watch each other, making any intimate gesture simultaneously private and public. In Jokšė’s story, this setting becomes a medium for spreading an unbridled sexual fantasy, which unfolds alongside the artist’s and their lovers’ relationships. It reveals the dynamism of the seemingly silent concrete walls of these buildings and the lives and thoughts of people living there.

This event is part of our events programme Queer Histories from the Baltic Region initiated and led by Auto Italia (UK) and international partners Edinburgh Art Festival (UK), Editorial (Lithuania), Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art (Estonia), and Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (Latvia), and is generously supported by the Baltic Culture Fund, the Lithuanian Culture Institute and Culture Attaché in the UK, and The Estonian Embassy in London.

The event is ticketed. You can book it by following the link here.

Agnė Jokšė (b. 1993) is an artist and writer currently based in Vilnius. Using the tools characteristic of autoethnography, Jokšė tells stories in which personal experiences and past events related to contemplations of love, intimacy, relationships and friendship intertwine with imaginative reflections. Jokšė works in mediums such as video and performative text, and investigates questions concerning parallel histories, compassion, entangled relations, queerness and language. Recent projects include a solo exhibition at Editorial, Vilnius, presentations at GIBCA, Gothenburg, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn, e-flux screening room, New York, CCA, Glasgow, Cell Project Space, London, Artists’ Film International, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Baltic Triennial 14. The artist’s work Dear Friend was granted the JCDecaux Award in 2019.

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