Post ars photo performances: material for research or a work of art?

ENThe avant-garde artists’ group Post Ars (Aleksas Andriuškevičius, Robertas Antinis, Česlovas Lukenskas and Gintaras Zinkevičius) introduced new forms of expression into the Lithuanian art scene in the early 1990s: body art, performance, installation, object art, happening and land art. In 1991, the group created a collection of 156 photographs presenting its actions and performances of 1989–1990. It covers a wide spectrum of ideas: a play on the understanding of space and time, metamorphoses of the body, the rhythm of everyday things and cosmogonist rituals. The photo collection has been treated as documentation of actions and only recently has their value as works of art been recognised. The paper argues that the four artists have created unique performative photography and have intuitively captured the essence of theoretical debates on the relationship between performance art and photography. Now these photographs revive the atmosphere of the beginning of a new era in the Baltics and the enthusiasm of young art creating yet-unseen forms, and pushing through political boundaries.