Critique of Pure Image - Between Fake and Quotation

The Exhibition

Curated by Dimitrina Sevova

Mirjam Wirz

Free West Copy East Trade – Shifts in the Flow of Information

(photo installation, 2004-2005),

Auto Portraits – Collective and Alternative Initiatives In Vilnius At This Moment

(photo installation, 2004-2005) and

Daily Conversations – Recorded

(compilation of video interviews, 2005)

Mirjam Wirz was born in Switzerland in 1973. She studied photography at the University of Art and Design Zurich. After graduating in 2001, she moved to Vilnius, Lithuania, where she has since been based, and where she created, together with Augustinas Beinaravicius, the project Involved, intended to create spaces for social encounters, “platforms for communicating, interpreting and archiving experiences.”

Cultural raw materials circulate in different ways and directions inside liberal market economies

Free West Copy East Trade – Shifts in the Flow of Information

Lithuania is a threshold country, shifting from an economy of production to one of consumption. It is a country vehemently headed toward a liberal market economy. However there are many places, people and objects that point to the ambiguities within the present economic system of exchange. For instance, copies of legal programs and music devices, activated as illegal cultural products, circulate in economic gaps that do not synchronize fully with the system. Shadow / Black markets as hidden shortcuts toward desire: In the streets of Lithuanian towns one can see material evidence of a living standard that is yet to come. This future is on display but does not exist, as there is no access to it.

Free West Copy East Trade / Shifts in the Flow of Information

Project about ambiguities within the present economic system of exchange in Lithuania. It deals with copies of legal programs and music devices which are activated as illegal cultural products and circulate in economic gaps which do not synchronize fully with the system.

Auto Portraits

A series of photos and interviews about collaborative and alternative initiatives in contemporary Vilnius. Starting with four people working in collaborative cultural and artistic projects, each photographed in their car, interviewed about their work, each subject led me to the next. The project will cease only when a loop emerges.

Daily Conversations, Recorded

A series of filmed conversations commissioned by Vilnius Contemporary Art Center TV. Daily Conversations, Recorded grew out of the earlier Auto Portraits project and other collaborations. Each series of interviews takes place over four consecutive days, and each day has a specific theme.