Exhibition opening is on February 6th at 6:00 PM
I realized that whenever I tried to speak, to think or just to be with my thoughts, I’d only hear static noise in my mind. I would write, count, observe, go on a walk, stay at home, speak something simple and mundane, but it was always there – the static. Not tinnitus, not migraine, not the pressure in the scull, not accelerating plane, not driving up the hill, it was as sharp and rough as fluctuating voltages, an unwanted radio frequency, an interference, an atmospheric constant noise, I’d change my locations – and yet it was always there, hissing inwards. It started soon after the realization that all my stories, the charts I’ve been crafting to help myself understand better what was happening in my life, stories that I still hoped to be fiction – they turned out to be true, I mean painfully true. Shattering the very core, the nucleus of the heart, through its crevices tiny particles, like bubbles, started shooting away. The same heart started pulsating when it must have dissolved. I remember, there is this saying that when you hear static on TV or on a radio receiver you might be receiving a tiny fraction of the actual cosmic microwave background. Which made me think that the static I hear must be the remnant of the big bang. Not less.
Every prize in the lottery machine is unseen, each is an extremely positive gift, it is also very convenient and easy to receive it – by the randomness of movements you catch a styrofoam ball that has a number on it, you read the interpretation of your number and instantly get what you get, there are several extra jackpots out there.
Intuition,..spying mechanisms.., devination, radio and verbal articulation take lots of space in my static noise, aka in my mind. I believe that I’m more free when not bound by articulation or speaking. In my radio work, whether it’s radio art, teaching radio tech, building or playing theremin, I’m not free from the spectrum – deeply involved – in the circuit, in the radiation or my obsessive idea to defetishize my instruments. Radio, in a broad sense, gave me understanding of air, spontaneity, attention to personal electric potentials, to details and signs and a heightened intuitive awareness – communication has always been a physical struggle for me and I’ve been searching or creating ways to ease it.
Tata Frenkel is an artist and educator based in Vilnius. She investigates “unseen arts” — a term she coined to describe the totality of her artistic practice, encompassing drawings, radio and electroacoustic objects, performative narratives, as well as other forms of articulation and sonification.
In 2023, Frenkel participated in the group exhibition In Exchange for Ages at the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius as part of the JCDecaux Prize, where she was awarded the main prize. In 2024, she took part in the group exhibition Exit Elephantine at Tallinn Art Hall’s City gallery. That same year, while in residence at the Klaipėda Culture Communication Center, she presented a live concert for the radio program Grand Synth, titled Grand Synth: Frenkel Glöckner Doppler.
Curator: Edgaras Gerasimovičius
Graphic Design: Jonė Miškinytė
Communication: Giedrė Ivanova, Vėjas Anuškevičius
Education Program: Tata Frenkel, Laura Misiūnaitė, Goda Damaševičiūtė, Gerda Sokelytė
Translations: Emilija Ferdmanaitė
Editing: Dangė Vitkienė, Gemma Lloyd
Exhibition Installation Team: Jokūbas Čižikas, Antanas Dombrovskij