Intermissions: Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė

In their performance -lalia, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė conjure a legendary figure from Slavic folklore, the demonic Południca. Posing a metaphor for contemporary anxieties related to ecological and social unease, this work is a dynamic hybrid combination of physical presence, text, and video. As a lone performer haunts the Renaissance Society’s gallery space, she is simultaneously livestreamed in a cinema screening room, one floor below. This structure requires audience members to choose where to be at any moment. One can only grasp fragments of the live act and its virtual double, and never the performance as a whole.

Continually evolving as it is staged in new surroundings, Gawęda and Kulbokaitė’s -lalia takes a new form at the Renaissance Society, following past performances at the Lithuanian National Drama Theater in Vilnius, a cultural center in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and a traditional Stube at the Museo Civico in Bolzano, Italy featured in Pasolini’s 1971 Decameron, and most recently at the iconic Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, birthplace of the Dada Movement.

Curated by Karsten Lund.

DOROTA GAWĘDA (b. 1986 in Lublin, Poland) and EGLĖ KULBOKAITĖ (b. 1987 in Kaunas, Lithuania) are an artist duo based between Basel, Switzerland and Paris, France. They are the founders of Young Girl Reading Group (2013–2021). Their work spans performance, sculpture, painting, installation, and video. They have previously presented exhibitions or performances at Kunsthalle Basel; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Shedhalle, Zurich; Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna; Kunstverein Hamburg; Istituto Svizzero, Palermo and Milan; Kunstverein Leipzig; Fri Art – Kunsthalle Fribourg; Futura, Prague; Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Cell Project Space, London; and the 6th Athens Biennale, among other venues. They are recipients of CERN Collide 2022 and laureates of the Swiss Performance Art Award 2021.

Launched in 2017, Intermissions is an ongoing programming series devoted to performance and other inventive time- based works, staged in the Renaissance Society’s empty gallery in between exhibitions. This recurring platform features two artists every year, supporting a wide variety of live projects.