3022 and BRKNCRCTS invite you to join our pavilion, called Crooked Conference Hall, during the T-FACTOR festival in Aleksotas, Kaunas:

The city of the future, designed by humans or robots? 

Climate change, global migration, economic recession, war and other calamities pose us a challenge and ask for change. Efforts are there to address them, yet, due to the dominant technocratic approach , a lot of resources are thrown into finding technological solutions to polycrisis yet the people and communities affected are often left aside. 

Kaunas Aleksotas Innovation and Industry Park (KAIPP) construction is the embodiment of this sort of technocratic thinking. At the moment, KAIP functions as a non-space with empty lots that suggest possible potential futures that are inhabited by economically and politically driven minds racing for the next “big thing”; there’s no space for the experimental, the quirky, the creative and the unconventional. Machines exist as opaque tools for production and humans are their distant masters. 

Fermentation lets us look at this space from another angle. Bacteria work in tandem to create something new, unconventional, and exciting. Due to the inherent symbiosis of different organisms this creates an imaginary of a heterotopia - a future that teaches us patience, comradery, cooperation, and openness to the unexpected, the weird, the uncomfortable, the dangerous, challenging and the common. Looking from this angle, fermentation is an inherently creative, sustainable and reality-morphing process which lets us find new unexpected potentials for better futures. 

The Tsarist-time bunkers that exist in KAIPP are the antonym for the hyper-capitalist dystopia of space and positions of hierarchical power, as they defy simple functional definitions, yet are the foundations on which everything else stands. With the power of fermentation, we turn to these structures and imagine a temporary community centre in these spaces. Its goal is to reactivate alternative imaginaries of people and free their self-expression to envision a future that is not exclusionary or driven by power

All activities in the community centre are platforms to activate creative fermentations and media to find ourselves in. These bunkers will become an experimental territory which embodies the ideals of the New European Bauhaus: beauty, sustainability and commonness. This is a challenge to the current dominant hyper-capitalist imaginaries and their spatial practices; it’s a non-non-business centre which ferments the goals of the innovation park; it’s a crooked and warped conference hall whose damp insides, strong scents and historical walls become the catalyst for communities where they can play, experiment, create, and imagine future cities, where all traditional visions of a space are fermented into adynamic, flowing whole.

 We will create a cybernetic being of many faces, arms, legs, tails, brains, thoughts, screens, projectors, processors which will spread the bacteria of fermentation. The city of the future is here and now, it’s meant for all of us; our happiness in it is created by us.

One manifestation of this commonness is an Algorave - a melding of technology, performance, community action and democratic principles, that not only makes for a good party, but also is an invitation to perform yourself and learn from others. We want to invite you to become a part of this process of fermentation and throw down your best work live during the festival.

This is an international call for performers. If you're located in Lithuania, we'd love to invite you to come in person to the 6th Warehouse of the Central Artillery Warehouse Complex of Kaunas Fortress, if not, then we’d love if you could participate remotely, we'll arrange the details for participating after your submission. All action will be happening on the 7th of October.

Fill out the form below and we'll get in touch soon enough!

Deadline for the open call is the 1st of October, 11PM EEST.