Imaginary archive

The exhibition reveals the multivocal narrative of women who worked in Kaunas Textile Factories. It is a polyphonic narrative containing people’s stories, and memoirs surrounded by the soundscape of artist Ugne Makselytė. Although most of the textile factories in Kaunas no longer exist, their interiors, the sounds of their machines, the smells they emitted, and the vapours of the chemicals used to dye the fabrics remained in the imagination of the women who worked there, in their dreams, in their memories, as a background. In it, the women’s lives, careers, and relationships in the working collective are intertwined, intertwined, or interrupted, just as they are today, but in a different way.

It is safe to say that most of the workers in the textile factories worked in harmful conditions – the sounds of looms, the fumes of various chemicals, not always careful work with dangerous machinery – the memories of this are pretty faded but still vivid, but the memories of the work collective, the working and personal relationships of the workers, the joint celebrations, the anniversaries, are more vivid. The sound narrative and the composition of the conversations made together with the sound artist Ugne Makselyte is a fiction, like radio theatre, a 55-minute play about work and feelings towards work, machines, and materials.

For the stories we are thankful to:  Janina Gobužienė, Elė Šliužaitė, Bronė Valienė, Bronė Jastromskienė, Agnė Mackė, Aldona Laucaitytė, Irena Rinkšelienė, Aušrutė Juškevičienė

Soundscape by Ugnė Makselytė and Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė

Technician – Karolis Lasys

Curator and artist – Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė 

Also, thanks to: Vytautas, Aldona, Žilvinas R., Virginija J., Kaunas Artists’ House

Organiser – platform “Mažosios istorijos”