'The Diagnosis is naïvety': Artūras Raila's journey into the woods

ENIt is perhaps impossible to fully separate Artūras Raila from the historical events that shaped Lithuania in the past halfcentury. Born in a small village in 1962 when the country's art scene was in the midst of a 'thaw', or relaxation from the dictates of socialist realism (and also the year that Fluxus 'invaded' Lithuania via musicologist Vytautas Landsbergis's correspondence with George Maciunas), Raila would finish his studies in sculpture in the capital's fine arts academy in 1989. Two years later, the Soviet system collapsed. What followed was a period of uncertainty, not merely for Raila, but for society at large. Old vocabularies and systems of knowledge had been discarded; a new language had yet to emerge. There was a sense of searching in Lithuania, as well as in the other countries that had formed the Eastern bloc. Out of the collapse came a florid period of experimentation and speculation.