Geistė Kinčinaitytė Lithuanian, b. 1991
Her image-making practice is defined by encounters with the eerie - something that can be described as stepping out of the comfort zone — whether of the self, human, habit, habitat, or milieu — and an alertness to a yet-to-be-identified presence. Kinčinaitytė’s visual practice is based on self-perception, exploring different environments and reflecting upon the concept of humanity as a whole.
“The Pool” (2020) is a video essay, loosely based on the short story of the same title. This work is the result of a collaboration with writer Elaine Tam, and experimental composers Simon Allen, Jan Hendrickse and Sandro Mussida. The culmination of a long-standing fascination with themes of hospitality, belonging and alienation, Kinčinaitytė uses image-making to draw out the mesmeric charge of naturally-occurring phenomena: bodies of water, barren lands and interior cavities.
Provenance
The Pool
1
A disappearance into the deeply set ravines
2
carved out by erosion over the last ten million years.
3
Perhaps vis shared the same quest:
4
a trembling body of water
5
to relieve this unprecedented
6
if not supernatural
7 heat.
8
These moments of complete solitude, exposed
9
to the harshest elements
10
remind me
11
that the natural world asserts itself in an omnipotent
12
alien apathy...
13
It manifests its ambivalence in all possible inter-worlds -
14
it belongs to all living beings and to none.
15
Only the sublime threat of annihilation
16
reminds us of our lowly place
17
in the ecosystem of something still more grand.
18
I had already once heard of it in my lifetime
19
in 2004.
20
The slip of tectonic plates
21
a colossal undersea landslide reverberating as earthquake
22
drawing water away from the coast.
23
It flexed before making a prophetic return
24
a deadly gush approaching the shore
25
extending itself
26
producing an unreality we can only use the imaginary of numbers to describe.
27
You see
28
the shore is divided in its very outline
29
there are effects of anchoring
30
collapsing at the edge
31
strategies of approaching
32
overflow...
33
That is why we look to the horizon in wait for another coming.
34
Take me away
35
deliver me to myself.
36
The oceanic,
37
lap me up, enfold me
38
roll me beneath you
39
then slink away.
40
Newly discovered footage had been released in the springtime of 2018
41
elucidating the mating ritual of Fanfish Seadevils.
42
The female Seadevil’s planet-like size
43
up to half-a-million times the weight of the male
44
makes for a cosmic landing when he engages her
45
in what is described as parasitic sex.
46
The tissues and circulatory systems of the two fuse,
47
and he feeds on nutrients received through her blood,
48
his face mostly dissolved
49
unable to free himself
50
he fertilises her eggs as she requires.
51
The Other
52
that to which my most basic sense of existence
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sense of Self
54
must cling
55
idles here between ancient rock.
56
It’s not speechlessness
57
not that which is still lacking words,
58
or a sort of ineffability that does not merit interest from language 59
but the most splendid of quietudes.
60
In it I sensed the latent possibility of infinite worlds
61
writhing beneath its skin.
62
These holes like dispossessed orifices
63 sinkholes
64
ever-extending like geological history
65
or the relentless passage of time.
66
To be with you...
67
What is it to have a knowledge with the other
68
and in the other
69
the other’s knowledge with-in me?
70
An impregnation of rumbling intensities, a valve
71 widening...
72
The breach of the Other —
73
a sublime pain
74
yet a most precious
75 transformative
76 gift.
77
What more are scenes of love
78
than a vomiting and excreting
79
in which the body attempts to escape from itself
through one of its organs? I thought, 80
of these excavation missions grinding us both down.
81
Ashes to ashes,
82
dust to dust.
83
How easily we confuse the cause of desire itself
84
for the object of desire as an end.
85
A certain red is also a fossil
86
drawn up from the depths of imaginary worlds.
87
The colour in my eye
88
is as old
89
as the song in my spine.
90
I follow the last wave’s recession
91
deeper — deeper — deeper
92
The drip ticks out the seconds
93
the source of a stream along which the minutes flow.
94
The image that captures
95
cannot contain you
96
within, your breast is a sea
97
that draws me to its bed.
