2023 ~ Meditations#11 ~ Tautvydas Urbelis 

DAI invited curator, (ex)philosopher and strategist Tautvydas Urbelis to contribute to 'Meditations' at the occassion of  COOP SUMMIT 2023 when six study groups forged their research into an assemblage of happenings in Nida, Lithuania. 

Speculating a Semblance of Stoic Sensibility: A Meditation on COOP SUMMIT 2023

It was in the early morning of what was soon to be a hot and sunny day in mid-June. I woke up in Žeimiai Manor, an experimental space run by artists who have been transforming an old manor building as well as themselves, for over 20 years. It was the second day of sessions at the manor as part of Rupert’s Alternative Education Programme. I left the group in the safe hands of our coordinator Rugilė to embark on a 250-kilometre drive to Nida Art Colony (NAC), where the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) was having their COOP SUMMIT, an annual event recurring at changing locations.

I was given the mission of writing a Meditation, an intriguing format of writing akin to feedback but with an extra-chill flow; one I imagine can only be achieved in the serenity of Nida. When thinking about what “meditation” was, I was reminded of “the OG” of philosophical meditations, Marcus Aurelius, a key thinker in Stoicism. As I approached the port city of Klaipėda, a new BMW SUV overtook me on the highway. It was one of those cars with an unnecessarily inflated body, like a shining metal dumpling. I wondered what a Stoicist would think about this BMW. A key concept for Stoics was “Eudaimonia,” a form of good spirit achieved via a virtuous life. Is having a luxury vehicle a sign of a virtuous life, or the opposite? As my car rolled on the ferry connecting mainland Lithuania to the Curonian Spit (where NAC is located), I questioned what a virtuous life was in 2023. How can alternative modes of education form (or disrupt) the paths towards it?

The ferry ride took under 10 minutes. I reached the Spit, an enchanting and beloved place, now split in half. One half is Lithuanian, and one half is the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. It is thickly covered by gracious pine trees, spliced by a narrow road leading to its largest town, Nida. The whole area is a Unesco heritage site, not because of its natural surroundings, but due to persistent human efforts to combat natural erosion on the thin sandy strip. The Spit was originally a bare sand mass which was supposed to disperse into vast waters of the Baltic Sea and Curonian Lagoon, but humans decided to halt the process by planting trees everywhere. With the help of tree roots, the dune slowed down, allowing humans to settle.

As I arrived, I was greeted by the lively buzz of the lunch hour. The weather was great, so people were sitting, eating and chatting on the wide porches of NAC. The relaxed and vibrant atmosphere was palpable, decorated with a display of colourful outfits, a variety of stick-and-poke tattoos and nonconforming haircuts. I was greeted by Kaste, who was coordinating the buzz, and later introduced to Nikos and Gabriëlle, who lead the DAI into its daring experiments. During the lunch service, I met Tomek Pawłowski-Jarmołajew, a Polish artist-cum-cook, interpreting Eastern European classics. Tomek warned me that the food might lack salt, something that Eastern European or more precisely Soviet cuisine was notorious for. The culinary heritage of Eastern Europe was significantly damaged during 50 years of Soviet occupation, and I was curious how artistic interpretation could revive these nowadays neglected recipes. I grabbed my plate and additional salt and headed outside for the first of many conversations during my four days with the DAI.

After a warm introduction and quick rest in my stoic yet comfortable room at NAC, I headed to the COOP introduction at the parking lot near the Colony. As we walked towards the parking lot, I chatted with one of the participants. I soon found out that they were leaving the DAI after this confluence in Nida and would not graduate. They expressed they were happy to be a part of the programme but could not sustain their practice with the intense roaming offered by the institute. It was a difficult yet necessary decision, as sometimes education must fall short for practice to flourish. I took a deep breath of fresh summer air, filled with the rich scent of pine. I could not help but think about the work of Anna Tsing^[1] and Matsutake mushroom pickers in the US. I imagined them picking mushrooms in a similar pine forest, making deals, and forming alliances in the outskirts of salvage capitalism. What does it mean to decide to stop your education? More importantly, are educational systems ready to face these departures or even encourage them? Perhaps we should think less about development and more about the creative potential of disruptions and demise? The death of education? This flow of thought was paused by our arrival at the parking lot. A car full of passengers arrived in full volume, greeted by audience applause. After warm introductions, the cheerful audience was invited to walk back to Nida Art Colony, where the first group presented their collective work. At this point, the DAI did feel like a big, odd family that suddenly burst into presence in Nida, filling it with youthful energy and embodied colours. An energy that is not only reserved for students but also staff and tutors.

The first COOP group named Long Time No See: Forming a New Art Economy of the Commons, invited everyone to climb up to the NAC rooftop terrace to play a game called Cure for the Itch. It invited you to “multi-station crossings in a space of fracture and dissonance informed by a collaborative study on play and economics; their failures embraced while reflecting on (im)possibilities of gathering, on seeking answers in the endless forest.” The group posed questions whilst the audience could only answer “yes” or “no.” The response was indicated by either staying in your place or moving to the other side of the terrace. The questions often sneakily penetrated deep into the unconscious, playfully threatening to expose ill coping mechanisms or ideologies. After a few rounds and probably exhausted by the demand to choose, some participants tried to circumvent the rules by standing on a narrow passageway between two parts of the terrace. A move that likely relieved them from constant decision-making and introspection but obstructed the passageway making it harder for others to cross. I guessed this moment was one of many encounters that brought me to think about the complicated relationship between collective practices and individual decisions. As adrienne maree brown^[2] notices, often people enter collectives before working on themselves, without attempting to realise their trauma patterns, coping methods, repression and ways of healing. When such unprepared entry occurs, collective environments become emotional wastelands for personal frustrations, hurtful coping mechanisms, and straight-out trauma dumping. This is not to say that people’s playful attempts to transgress the game rules were somehow guilty of that, but rather it revealed networks of collective being and behaviour. After a few more rounds, we were invited to move to the downstairs terrace, where midday sparkles in glasses awaited everyone. Following a satirical video and more chatter, the first work was done.

I skimmed through my notes about lunch and could not find what it was. I did not have a photo or text entry, just a vague yet lively memory that it was delicious. Apologies to Tomek for not remembering what it was, but I am sure it was good! After lunch however, the study group titled, UNRAVELLING THE (UNDER-)DEVELOPMENT COMPLEX intrigued me with an invitation to Li Li Ko Ko Fəstival of 100 Centers. The group offered different routes to reach the festival space, allowing people to choose their own path. While walking, Nikos told a story about how a stray dog bit his leg somewhere in Greece. I imagined him stoically enduring the pain and receiving a rabies shot afterwards. The ghost of Marcus Aurelius nods with satisfaction. We did not encounter any stray dogs on our way and arrived at one of the locations of Li Li Ko Ko, a white sand dune surrounded by different shrubs and participants. Members of the group and some spectators played with improvised instruments. There was no particular tune or lead, just gentle vibrations traversing the warm and salty air. Not long after, we embarked on a walk accompanied by the sounds of wooden instruments and a strange feeling. We walked for a long time before we reached the main dune of Nida, where a sculpture of Jean-Paul Sartre^[3] had been erected a few years prior, based on a photo by legendary Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus.^[4] The original image also depicts Simone de Beauvoir however, her body never made the transition from a monumental photograph to bronze, harnessed by male desires and insecurities. The festival ended with homemade fermented ginger shots, a necessity for curious and hard-working minds trying to follow the path of “Eudaimonia” in Nida.

It later became clear on the final COOP day that things were not going smoothly for some members of this study group. I continued taking notes in the NAC library while they entered a heated discussion about communal effort, emotional labour, dedication (and lack of it) amongst many other things. I felt the complexities of collective experience through its persistent fissures and ruptures. I left the library soon after, so I did not hear the rest of their conversation or if they managed to reach a resolution. Sometimes when reading Marcus Aurelius it feels as if the experience of the world is a two-sided flatland—you are either in the chaos or out of it. The Stoics are obviously out of it, but I would much rather think about more messy, unfinished arrangements, like Kathleen Stewart‘s Weak Theory in an Unfinished World. The discussion seemed a necessary part of the unfinished world, filling gaps with passion and bumpy learning about each other. When I walked the streets of Nida with the group, I would not have known of this dynamic.

Once the walking festival came to an end, I took a narrow path leading down the dune towards the town with the hope I could grab an energy drink from the shop before catching the last presentation. On my way, I met three other participants. We had a lively chat about our desires to make money. We spoke about dedication to our work being recognised by dominant modes of evaluation and wealth distribution. This is something that I have thought about quite a lot in relation to alternative learning and education. We walked past idyllic wooden houses, now renovated and adapted to contemporary needs, and spoke about wanting to make quality things that pay well. Just a decade ago, this idea would be somewhat unacceptable in political and art activist circles, who would have dealt with the seemingly clear notion of “the alternative,” which somehow miraculously omitted the idea of money altogether. Nowadays, this appears to have changed, with new ways of relating to monetary systems emerging. I recall that dumpling-like shiny BMW and silently admit to myself that I would not mind driving one. Does that disqualify me from building alternatives? We were late for the last presentation, so committed to fast pace walking instead of pondering cash flows.

We made it to the last study group of the day, FOREST AS IMAGE AND INFRASTRUCTURE: Exploited, Assembled, Constructed, Protected, Cared for – Projections, Relations, Definitions – Forest Operational Images with their presentation COULD A SOUND PERSIST - UNDER SANDS - UNSEEN? This was a performance/rehearsal on the football pitch of Neringa, which defied conventional perceptions of grass-covered fields. Instead, it was a sand plain surrounded by a forest. The audience was invited to follow an elegant figure with a long gown, embodying what could be called a “modest forest drag.” Signature Neringa Forest Architecture benches offered comfort, while rolling mist turned the sand field into a mysterious playground where the bodies of two dancers slowly swayed. Soon more figures appeared and started to rake the field with their makeshift, spike less rakes.     A pause.

The rakers lined up and after a moment of suspense, two tails emerged from behind a wooden wall, jolting vigorously. Soon after, two devilish-looking creatures appeared. As they slowly crawled towards the audience, it reminded me that disturbances and reconfigurations of land do not merely provide habitat for humans or place in UNESCO, but also interfere with the subterranean and ineffable. It was no coincidence that on the way to Nida, one had to pass through The Hill of Witches, an outdoor museum dotted with folk sculptures of different mystic creatures, strongly suggesting that the world we inhabit is always shared. The presentation ended with a hectic and humorous dance and a re-emergence of the mysterious figure.

There was still a bit of time before dinner so I took a longer route towards NAC, passing by an old lighthouse. Invigorating tunes from the performances still echoed in my head, while a summery mist creeped past my ankles as I climbed a hill covered with lush moss and tall pine trees. With every step my feet sank into the thickness of moss, creating a sensation of simultaneously descending and levitating. I thought about Federico Campagna^[5] and Silvia Federici^[6] and their attempts to gently and cleverly harness the magical, spiritual and ineffable. Both come from worlds of political action and philosophical inquiry, showing how unexplainably we make sense of the world. Carried away by thoughts of the unexplainable, I suddenly found myself in front of the lighthouse. Towering more than 51 metres, the red and white striped structure wedged itself into the environment of earthy colours.

I was late for dinner. It was already dark as I dashed through the forest on the freshly paved path. The smell of old trees and fresh asphalt accompanied me until I reached Griuvėsiai, an abandoned but charming place next to the sea. The food was great, and so were the conversations that swayed between education, political activism and the future. It was no surprise that being surrounded by the seemingly permanent yet ever-changing environment, the topic of transformation became central. How do educational institutions adapt, foster or even initiate transformation? What if we think about how these institutions and initiatives foster stability and permanence in the midst of uncertainty without becoming rigid and stagnant? Jeff Bezos^[7], when asked what will change in 10 years, replied that the more important question to ask is: What will not change in 10 years? These are the things that one can build a business strategy around. Later, he rambled on about pretty evil corporate wisdom, but what could be learned from a modern-day tyrant like Bezos and his monster Amazon, is identifying tropes of meaning amidst speculative temptation ushered by incomprehensible information flows, algorithms, and distorted desires. I think Anna Tsing pointed to this when tracing the monetary desires and infrastructure of Southeast Asian mushroom pickers in Oregon. Instead of dismissing their semblance of capitalist structures, Tsing looked beyond that to community building practices that re-contextualised and re-structured (but not destroyed) capitalist logic.

Next to Griuvėsiai, there was a DJ playing at a summer pizzeria playfully called Rabbit’s Garden, where most of the participants of DAI ended up, but my evening had come to a close. On my way home I made a little detour towards the beach, but instead of calming myself with the sea’s rhythm, I stumbled upon another party blasting 4x4 techno beats. Once an exclusively tranquil and relaxing atmosphere in Nida, now attracts increasing numbers of party goers. Hedonistic humans once again are transforming the landscape and soundscape of the humble Spit. I pushed back against the second temptation of the night and headed back to NAC.

Marla, Tomek and their team served breakfast. I had seen far too many conflicting TikToks on whether one should or should not eat breakfast. Trying not to overthink any of that, I filled my plate with good Eastern European carbs, a cup of black coffee and got ready for the first presentation of the day titled, My mother composed me as I now compose her by the study group On Tradition - Future Ancestors 3: The Mother, The Archival and The Symbolic Order. The presentation took place in the gallery at NAC, decorated with different embroidered and painted fabrics. There was no doubt that softness and togetherness would find their way into this presentation. It began with an access manifesto that gently but clearly reminded us that the design of the world’s material and ideological infrastructures are attuned with impossible ideas of health, success, and ability. None of those “ideal” states really exist and what is left are burnouts, permanent downtimes and a world that seems less and less welcoming. I wondered if the fabric and slow, intimate choreography enacted by the group was the answer. Maybe the desire to receive an answer is a symptom of being slowly devoured by an unwelcoming world. At the end, the group gathered for a hug and for a moment I caught myself thinking that despite the scenography and choreography, this presentation felt like it had a single author and multiple performers. Later, when walking towards the next presentation I tried to ask one of the group members about the creative process and their time at Nida, but the conversion became oddly stuck. Holding and simultaneously speaking about space is never easy, or maybe my questions fell flat.

Next stop was Nida's Community House where the study group Curating Positions: A cut through the screen organised a conference called Evergreening the Cut [towards and beyond film's photosynthesis]. It meant to encourage “a celebration of imperfections and the recognition of the stories embedded in objects, more-than-human agents and their relations.” On many levels Nida itself is an ongoing exploration of imperfections. Looking from a very limited human perspective, imperfect natural conditions meant that the sandy Spit was meant to dissolve into the sea, but driven by their imperfect inability to let go, humans decided to plant trees all over the surface to halt the erosion. Are we getting the whole idea of “perfection” wrong?

Guided by these thoughts, I reached the venue where the conference began in a darkened room. It felt like a ritual or initiation that required intimate knowledge to fully grasp the references it was exploring. The atmosphere of lingering irony transferred from the physical room into the screen, where a well-crafted and clever mockumentary was quickly winning the sympathies of its audience. Filmed in different roaming pastures of the DAI, the protagonist of the film leaned into the lingo of community, togetherness, interdependence, and a myriad of other words and concepts that regularly occupy descriptions, leaflets, and statements. The dialogue and mise-en-scène felt witty and also paradoxical. Performers made fun of things they were in. It was not difficult to trace how the same concept of solidarity from the film would find its way into conversation at the dinner table. Where the irony would fade, the concept of hopeful seriousness would replace it. The final segment of the film followed a character ironically embodying someone “making things happen,” someone whose presence often became all too present in any given moment, a true main character. On the one hand, this hectic entrepreneurial vibe nested in the backdrop of a calm Nida, reminded me of the absurdities and paradoxes of hustle culture. On the other hand, in a less expressive way, the comedic character also reminded me about art’s recurring inability to “make it happen” beyond its own bubble. How do we transfer alluring ideas of “solidarity” or “togetherness” into the “real world” or at least different fields and sectors? What if the theoretical promise of care and interdependence fumbles when faced with the messiness and turmoil of the “real world,” one that lies beyond communal dinners and reading circles? But then maybe the whole idea of “the real world” is just a regurgitation of “realpolitik”—spreading the oppressor's narratives.

I tried to imagine what Kathleen Stewart or Anna Tsing would think of this conundrum of “the real world.” I did not think of stoics because at this point I was quite tired of their stiff attitude. At that moment, I could not really think of anything useful and the film was finished so I stepped outside from the Community house to the “real world” of Nida, feeling simultaneously amused and melancholic. Perhaps it was the slight drizzle extending the grey sky into my feelings or maybe it was the aftermath of irony when humour fades and you are left with a reality that the humour was distorting and obfuscating. In order not to fall too deep into ponderous melancholia, I could think of only one good solution—smoked fish—or should I say a succulent, freshly smoked fish that one can only get in Nida.

At the fish place, I met one of the participants and we sat to eat fish under the light melancholy of midsummer drizzle. The source of his melancholy was a bit different. I read it as a mixture of weariness, a fissure of expectations and coming to terms with one's needs. He arrived in the Netherlands from abroad, shifted discipline, and now wanted to dive into knowledge of a new field. As our fingers unapologetically got covered in oil while separating fish from its bones, a story unfolded where different modalities of education disjointed. Education, more than anything, teaches us how to learn. The knowledge comes later. Diving into a new field means not only new sets of knowledge and new ways of learning, but also the inevitable recognition that some things are out of sync and not working. This realisation seems to have an intense impact, reverberating through past memories and current experiences. In a most primitive form, it is a bland understanding that what one is experiencing is not working. However, in most cases the experiences are entangled with a variety of past experiences, important self-realisations and mis-projections. The question returns: How do educational institutions deal with such complex feelings, often manifesting themselves through antagonisms or gestures of withdrawal? They try to convince us that one action (e.g. departure) would not solve these complexities or a quasi-therapy manner, tell us to let go. By the time we were almost finished with the fish, none of that felt truly convincing. It only made sense to part ways when the fish that accidentally brought us together was finished.

The last presentation of the COOP Summit was NIGHTTIME SCREAMING/DAYTIME WHISPERING ~ A Creational Story in Four Acts by the study group Publishing Practices: Texturalities, Oralitures, Corpoliteracies. It was confronted by increasing rain and wind, reminiscent of a true Lithuanian summer in the midst of record-breaking heat waves. In many ways the stormy weather was a perfect backdrop for a tempestuous presentation that combined readings, chanting, fire, and movement of all sorts.

It was already late autumn in Lithuania when I was listening to AYA’s episode^[8] on NTS while trying to finish my prolonged textual meditation. In the middle of the episode, AYA exclaimed that it was their last episode of the year. I was slightly startled. It was a sudden reminder that the year was coming to an end. It seemed that just a few days ago I left Žeimiai Manor in the direction of Nida, leaving Rupert’s AEP participants to embark on this journey. I tried to remember how the last morning in Nida felt. It was definitely one of those mornings after a storm, filled with freshness and lingering coolness that gradually gave way to the sweltering temperature of an overheating planet. I decided to go for a walk, passing some of the presentation spaces, occupied by only the occasional flicker of early morning sun. I reached the main dune and stopped by a sign stating that they were “travelling dunes.” Due to the wind, the light sand of the dunes is capable of travelling 0.5-10 metres a year and if not for human effort, Nida’s dunes would have disappeared into the sea. Looking back, this perseverance is a truly remarkable attempt at preserving villages, lifestyles, and landscapes. The irony is that none of that really persevered. Nida and other villages are protected from the sand but are completely transformed by the changing world. The authentic household of a fisherman remains an ethnographic attraction, while the landscape is nothing like it was 100 years ago. The object was destroyed in order to preserve it, a very Baudrillardian twist on the long and harsh history of Nida. When the roaming academy from the Netherlands arrives, I wonder which phrase could be used to describe their presence? A force of protection; speaking of attentiveness; care and importance of locality; a force of destruction through ideas; methods alien to the local ways of living; something other or in-between. Maybe the idea of frontier data subjects explained by Mat Dryhurst, could help to position the DAI and other educational institutions in search for alternatives:

“In the cartographic process, there are some participants whose activity is more valuable than others. Namely, those individuals on the fringes whose activity expands the map—consider such people as data pioneers, or frontier data subjects. If you are reading this and active in the arts, you may know a few of them: the visual artist who repurposes imagery from another era to contextually frame an emergent sociopolitical issue, the musician who marries inspiration from disparate decades to create a new sound and look. Under advert-driven platform capitalism, every new niche combination of interests, concretized into a new category by sustained and growing activity, creates a potential new trade route to sell people stuff.” ^[9]

In this sense, particles of sand are ushered by the wind and rush into the unknown. People try to build fences and plant trees, and the DAI roaming academy falls into the same category of frontier data subjects. They are all pioneers driven by different intentions but often overlapping forces, trying to prefigure the future in accordance with their system of values and beliefs. If read on their own and out of context, this frontier data subjects’ potency would dilute and get lost in the solitude of different echo chambers. However, at their intersections, proximities and conflicts, they make up a rich fabric of reality that is more than a sum of its parts. Each presentation of the COOP was part of a wider mesh of education, self-actualization, political flows, subjective rhythms and endless other particles. Like the sand particles, they are ushered and hindered by a multitude of forces, some yet to be actualized.

The journey was about to finish, this text is almost over, and so was the year’s AEP edition. It is symbolic that two attempts to explore alternative learning overlapped, then separated and finally came back together under the chilly guises of mid-November winds.

Author: Tautvydas Urbelis 

Edits: Tara White. Photos: Baha Görkem Yalim.

^[1] Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is a Chinese-American anthropologist.

^[2] adrienne maree brown is a writer, activist and facilitator.

^[3] Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism.

^[4] https://photosaintgermain.com/en/editions/2024/parcours/hotel-la-louisiane-1er-etage

^[5] Federico Campagna is an Italian philosopher who wrote a book called Technic and Magic.

^[6] Silvia Federici is an Italian American scholar, teacher, and feminist activist who wrote a book called Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation.

^[7] Jeff Bezos is the founder and executive chairman of Amazon.

^[8] https://www.nts.live/shows/aya/episodes/aya-15th-november-2023

^[9] Mat Dryhurst is a British artist, musician, and technological researcher. 
https://matdryhurst.medium.com/dao-guilds-establishing-territory-e8ba64ae6f25