The Case of Donelaitis

ENThis is the story of an art project that unexpectedly turned into a practice-based PhD research project, and was defended as a fine art doctorate in Lithuania in 2015. I will present a very short, very compressed version of how this story unfolded, and what came out of this unplanned research. The story begins very prosaically, six or seven years ago, when a curator called me and said: ‘Could you do something for a show dedicated to Kristijonas Donelaitis' 300th anniversary?’ The idea of contributing to an exhibition on this Prussian-Lithuanian poet and Lutheran pastor sounded awful, I thought! it’s so boring and uninteresting, but the curator was a friend of mine and I wanted to help. After a few weeks full of doubt I started looking for inspiration. As it happens, I was in the middle of a creativity crisis, so doing the research to find inspiration for this boring project was a welcome escape!. [Extract, p. 84]