Deimantas Narkevičius
Energy Lithuania, Super 8 film transferred to digital, colour, sound, 17 min, 2000
Courtesy of Collection 2 of Municipal Gallery Arsenal, Bialystok, Poland

“Instrumentalist, production-oriented society was an actual realisation of the avantgarde visions of the early 20th century.”, says one of Lithuania’s most eminent film artists Deimantas Narkevičius, speaking about his Energy Lithuania, a work that looks at the history of an energy plant situated in a town between Vilnius and Kaunas—two of the largest cities in the country—that, in the second half of last century, was “undergoing vastly more radical changes than the artworks of the period would ever allow you to sense.” [1]

But it is not possible to separate the history of the Elektrėnai Complex from the town of Elektrėnai itself: founded in 1962 to provide for the plant’s future workers. Built from scratch, it’s been described as a city with no historical buildings. But what was once not historical, has gained history on it’s own. Now all of the buildings there seem out of date: their Ice Palace, seen at the beginning of the film, was Lithuania’s first indoor winter sports arena, and home arena of Elektrėnai’s own ice hockey team: SC Energija – built owing to the efforts to the power plant’s director.

“At the very beginning we hear my voice, and then comes the voiceover of the person who is the founder of the city and the power plant.”, said Narkevičius speaking on the occasion of his participation in Skulptur Projekte Münster in 2007, “The person in the plant is an engineer who used to work at Elektrėnai. He worked there when it was constructed and shortly after it was completed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He is still in charge there, even though I think he is more than eighty years old. … It is a model city, and we see the model at a point when it is no longer working; it looks like a film-set. The exemplary model as a promise for something in the future was literally a promise from the past, like the future in the past. I was in Elektrėnai before, just after leaving school when I was eighteen years old. You may think it’s personal, but it’s not. Elektrėnai was a collective experience.” [2]

Indeed, it’s a letter from the past sent not so far ago, and to a different future. The director of the plant, Pranas Noreika, passed away in 2021 at the age of 93. Since then, instead of being shut down, the facility in Elektrėnai became the largest source of electricity, capable of generating up to 25% of the nation’s power. Those are the results of people’s steadfast efforts that change the surroundings, the landscape, and rhythym of nature beyond what their creators would expect.

While things seem dated, Narkevičius’s work is neither nostalgic or revisionist. It is a palimpsest of messages, some of which are easily dismissed, others are difficult do ignore. “Nobody has ever experienced such joy as those who laid power lines.”, says the plant’s director. His words carry though decades, echoing the totalizing idea of bringing electricity to the towns in the Soviet Union that is long since changed. “Man is a creator by nature”, he says a while earlier, with self confidence that is almost terrifying. Are we? Creators of what exactly? Of terrors? Or dreams? Probably both. And of memories.

Krzysztof Kosciuczuk

[1] Deimantas Narkevičius, Energy Lithuania, film description.
[2] Deimantas Narkevičius in conversation with Krzysztof Kosciuczuk, ‘More Than a Mere Displacement’, in Working Title: Archive, vol. 1, Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, Magdalena Ziolkowska, Andrzej Leśniak eds.

Deimantas Narkevičius (b. 1964 in Utena, Lithuanian SSR, present-day Lithuania) works predominantly with film and video, combining historical footage, conversations, reenactments and found documents. His works has been shown at, amongst others, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Tate Modern, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He represented Lithuania at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, he also participated in the 50th Venice Biennale as well as Manifesta 2 (Luxembourg, 1998), and Manifesta 10 (St. Petersburg, 2014) and Skulptur Projekte Münster in 2007. In 2008 he has received the Vincent Award along with Francis Alÿs.