Housekeeping in a Dangerous Time at Sapieha Palace

Curators: LInesa Brašiškė, Edgaras Gerasimovičius, Povilas Gumbis

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Housekeeping in a Dangerous Time looks into artistic practices that engage with  the contemporary forces shaping intergenerational ties and the distinctions between life stages.

With a nod to Bruce Cockburn’s 1984 song Lovers in a Dangerous Time, the exhibition is permeated by the question of the intergenerational contract. On the one hand, it considers the forms of care we owe to the generations leaving and entering the world amid deepening wars, demographic change, economic stagnation, and ecological crises. On the other, it focuses on the digital social spaces embedded in everyday life that foster widespread social infantilisation—spaces governed by algorithmic systems driven by consumerist imperatives, where the boundaries between maturity and immaturity increasingly blur.

The artists featured in the exhibition turn their attention to the role of everyday technologies in the self-formation of contemporary individuals – in the processes of identity formation and expression, and in relation to others. Along the way, they also explore notions of maturity as well as the societal expectations and infrastructures that define and sustain it.

Home, understood as both a physical space and a virtual environment, becomes a site where life narratives unravel and reassemble, relationships intertwine, fragments of popular culture converge, and streams of information flow incessantly.

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The exhibition is complemented and expanded by the Sound Room – a media library and meeting space curated by Vladas Dieninis and Benas Trakimas (‘Method, Sound & Silence’, SODAS 2123). It presents historical material from Lithuania’s underground, alternative music, and sound art scenes, including personal collections of records and publications, alongside works by contemporary musicians and sound artists.