Portals

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Portalai; Ekologinis menas; Architektūrinė statyba; Portals; Ecological art; Architectural construction.

ENEverything in a building is a portal, not just the portals. An architectural construction is a portal through which I can experience something that isn’t me, with or without some empirical guarantee that something that isn’t me actually exists. A work of art is thus on the side of reality, albeit in a magical and strange way. In particular, humans now require portals into non-human things, through which we might start to care for them differently: generally this is what is called ecological art, though it is only just beginning to understand itself. The Baltic states are portals to geological and ecological realities that they do not completely control, and that are not nicely behaved components of national or international machinery. Ecological art about Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania must therefore be thought of as portals to portals. These portals will in turn allow us to glimpse something basic and profound about what things are in general, because to be a thing at all is to be a portal. A portal is a place where past and future meet without touching. Baltic art is therefore a place where political concerns meet ecological ones, and where both of these concerns meet ontological ones. So how is it that everything is a portal? [...]. [Extract, p. 13]