GONDII SYNDROME, 2014

The actual Gondii syndrome is a toxoplasmosis virus, causing the inflammation of the nervous system, impaired thinking or orientation and the change in behaviour. GONDII SYNDROME by the director Saulė Norkutė and experimental music collective AVaspo was a performance, a diagnostic algorithm with the actual causes and unpredictable consequences, duplicating itself in everyone. Not always people are aware of the illness. Some are aware about it, but show no desire to be treated. It comes as a parallel to the society that has no need to break the confining stereotypes and the hierarchic mindset. If there is the environment and the circumstances for the virus to spread, it does, and people get infected despite their gender, political views, sexual orientation or style.

Honest, subtle and wild poetic narrative of this performance talks about the post-modern human being. It focuses on the woman, who is imprisoned in her own archive of memories, events and experiences. At first sight her life appears to be precisely controlled and perfectly managed. But in reality it lacks some essential components: the passion, the drive and..the courage to love.

GONDII SYNDROME is an authentic performance of modern electronics, poetry and visuals. Director S. Norkutė and AVaspo collective used this performance to raise some really uncomfortable questions of contemporary sexuality and invite the audience to discuss the multilayerness of a man, explore the instilled truths of happiness, love and static identity and find the roots in the complexity of reality. What happens when these truths are no longer real? When emotions and sensations of the body lose touch with the acknowledged dogmas?

It is lost to the history who and when decided to divide the world into men’s and women’s, into black and white, weak and strong. This is why the collision between internal and social norms forces the creative team to ask – how do we establish our roles? Are we, as physical bodies and humans, just the battlefields with consciousness? How much does the world depend on us and how much of it are we able to change?

CREATIVE TEAM

Director: Saulė Norkutė
Playwright: Gabrielė Labanauskaitė
Music: Vladas Dieninis (AVASPO), Gediminas Žygus (AVASPO), Miša Skalskis, Donatas Tubutis
Scenography: Virginija Jusevičienė
Lighting designer: Simas Sirutavičius
Video artist: Otto Kylmälä
Designer: Greta Stančiauskaitė
Performers: Gabrielė Labanauskaitė (AVaspo), Beatričė Bukantytė, Goda Alsytė, Augustė Tomkutė

AVASPO COLLECTIVE

AVaspo was a band performing audio-visual poetry. It highly promoted and contributed to the development of the experimental music concept in Lithuania. This group had remained on stage from 2009 to 2016, all of band’s members were also active participants of the local and international art community. This talented audio-visual collective managed to translate the visions and dreams of its leader – poet and playwright, Gabrielė Labanauskaitė into the vivid flow of sounds and images. Magic of audio-visual technologies and professionalism helped to fuse the intriguing talents of the new generation composers, multi-instrumentalists and video artists.

AVASPO band

AVaspo stood for the modern poetry and put all the effort to popularize it both in Lithuania and Europe. As a band it had always been in transformation, constantly experimenting. The axis of the creative content was the mystic, psychedelic, philosophic and even grotesque lyrics of Gabriele Labanauskaite. It cultivated the improvisation and was complementedwith the sounds and visuals.

As in the Mayan calendar, the years gone by

Add up to zero

Signifying nothing more than an empty shell.

Our existence

Is equally insignificant

Or the same fulfillment –

Depends on how you look at it.

(poem “In the Mayan Calendar”)

AVaspo music did not receive much sympathy from the critics at first. Lithuanian music observer Goda Raibytė confessed that a listener of such music must be mature enough: “Taming the music of AVASPO equals to taming a wild beast – one has to do it carefully, with love and attention even to the slightest detail. Everything is important in this kind of music: it offers plenty of surprise, it does not have a plan to follow, but ensures an uncontrollable aesthetic experience….”

Eventually, AVaspo found its target audience and discovered the way to the very soul of it. In 2013 a band was awarded as “The Best Experimental Music Group of 2012” at the national level.

Members of AVaspo were always open to any kind of novelty and experiments. They even performed at the obscure locations: they employed the atypicality of any place to make it a puzzle, a teaser, a creative challenge. Their shows were known to balance on the edge of a performance and a concert. Shows playfully touched the topics of the interpersonal and public misunderstandings, war and peace, visual culture and the triumph of the mass media, love and tolerance. The band brought the variety of modern poetry forms to the spotlight, gathered the artists of different disciples to work together and established a relationship with the foreign artists. One of the most distinguished accomplishments of AVaspo was the primary idea and organization of the annual interdisciplinary art festival “TARP”.

ALBUMS

💿2013 3rd album CD “OCEAN IS BLEEDING”. New album tour in Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda and Šiauliai.

💿2010 2nd album “NIAGARA”. New album tour in Iceland, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Lithuania and a show at Contemporary Art Festival “Virus” in Šiauliai, Lithuania.

💿2009 1st album CD “THERE IS NO OCEAN”. New album show in Vilnius and at the International Experimental Music Festival “SKIF” in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

AWARDS

🏆2013 “The Best Experimental Music Band of 2012”, National Alternative Music Awards “T.E.T.E”, Vilnius, Lithuania.

PROJECTS

2016 Premiere of the poetry and dance performance TOWERS OF MELANCHOLY with the dance theatre “Airos” (director: Aira Naginevičiūtė) at the theatre “Menų spaustuvė” in Vilnius and the National Kaunas Drama theatre, Lithuania

Photography: tiketa.lt

2014 Premiere of poetry and music performance GONDII SYNDROME (director Saulė Norkutė) at Kirtimai Cultural Center, Vilnius, Lithuania

2013 Premiere of music and dance performance “Recycling Rituals” together with the International Interdisciplinary project at the culture bar “Kablys”, Culture Night Festival, Vilnius, Lithuania

2011 Performance/concert/art installation “De Solitude” with the director of experimental cinema Nicolas Perge and video artist Raphael Dupont at Culture Night Festival in Vilnius, Lithuania.

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🎧 Listen to all the AVaspo albums ➡ online!

Tag: underground culture

Gondii Syndrome