Nomeda Urbonas is a Lithuanian artist and educator who has a joint artistic practice, Urbonas Studio, with Gediminas Urbonas. Urbonas Studio is the interdisciplinary research program that advocates for the reclamation of public culture in the face of overwhelming privatization, stimulating cultural and political imagination as tools for social change. Often beginning with archival research, Urbonas Studio methodology unfolds complex participatory works investigating the urban environment, architectural developments, and cultural and technological heritage.
Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas have exhibited internationally including the Venice, San Paulo, Berlin, Moscow, Lyon, Gwangju Biennales and Manifesta and Documenta exhibitions. Their writings on the artistic research as a form of intervention to social and political crisis were published in the books “Devices for Action” by MACBA Press, Barcelona and “Villa Lituania” by Sternberg Press.
Projects
FOLK STONE POWER PLANT
2017
Folk Stone Power Plant is conceived as networked entity that connects the international team of scientists with the stone, the lamp post at the Market Place by the Town Hall in Folkestone (UK) with a specially developed outreach program organized through a workshop and a symposia (Future Energy Summit) to actively learn about physics and metaphysics of alternative energy.
ZOOETICS
2014-present
a research project that explores new ways to engage human knowledge – scientific methods and the infrastructure of institutions – and research with other forms of life, and to imagine designs, prototypes and interfaces for future interspecies ecologies.
RIVER RUNS
2012
a river laboratory/playground that explores how river (and water) as a public good operates to define our sense of belonging on an individual and collective scale.
http://www.vilma.cc/river/
HUSBY CHANNEL
2012
a workshop in networked cultures and participatory media to investigate democratic games in connection to citizenship, participation and urban development.
http://www.vilma.cc/husby
UTO-PIA
2011
a research project that works with experimental media and communication techniques to map heterotopias – spaces that are remote and simultaneously next to us.
http://www.vilma.cc/uto-pia
DISOBEDIENCE ARCHIVE. BOSTON CHAPTER
2011
a research and installation of Boston Chapter – an ongoing video archive of practices in art and activism co-curated with Marco Scotini.
http://disobedience.mit.edu/
SPLIT NIK
2010-2011
a media navigator and viewing device that looks back and forward at the same time, and investigates negotiations between two ideologies with the attempt to study forms of critique in writing, media and design.
http://www.vilma.cc/splitnik
GVS: GUGGENHIEM VISIBILITY STUDY
2008-2010
a project by the experimental pedagogy group conducting case studies, field trips, documentation and archive to research and underprop the planned Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Vilnius.
http://www.vilma.cc/2G/
VILLA LITUANIA
2007
a study of the mechanisms constructing the last occupied territory (of Lithuania) through a set of events featuring pigeon race, development of pavilion architecture, and recycling of political encounters. Project commissioned for Lithuanian pavilion at 52nd Biennale di Venezia 2007
http://villalituania.lt
PRO-TEST LAB
2005
a space and archive of various protest forms against the corporate privatization of public space; and a case study of destruction of Lietuva – a cinema theater – the largest pavilion type building of soviet modernist architecture in Lithuania.
http://nugu.lt/dossier/index.php?mid=220
PRO-TEST LAB ARCHIVE
2005 – ongoing
an archive of available forms of protest against the privatization of public space: actions, video performances, fashion collection, posters, props, installations.
http://nugu.lt/dossier/index.php?mid=270
DRUZBA
2003
[friendship], a project that is build as reading device of a psycho-geography of the oil network (Druzba – the biggest oil pipeline build by soviets) to study the flows and energies produced through disintegrating infrastructure of power.
http://nugu.lt/dossier/index.php?mid=224
RUTA REMAKE
2002 – 2010
a project (and instrument) that navigates through a study of social construction of the women voice, weaving layers of gender, technology, performance and fashion.
http://nugu.lt/dossier/index.php?mid=219
TRANSACTION
2000 – 2004
a project that traces a script of the victim through the history of media; inviting institution of psychiatrists, film and women intellectuals into a triangulating dialogue.
http://nugu.lt/dossier/index.php?mid=218
http://www.transaction.lt/
KARAOKE
2001
the performance of karaoke of ABBA` “Money Money Money”.
http://nugu.lt/dossier/index.php?mid=221
TVVV.PLOTAS
1998 – 1999
a TV project, that is developed as collaborative platform and production space for institutional critique on the National TV channel, merging tools of broadcast, net-cast and meetings in a physical space.
http://nugu.lt/dossier/index.php?mid=222
JUTEMPUS
Jutempus [interdisciplinary art programmes] is non-profit, artist-run initiative (NGO), that was founded in 1993 and re-organized in 1997.
http://www.vilma.cc/jutempus/
