Emilija Škarnulytė
MANIFOLD
“Something is distorting our world. Mountains pour out of an invisible slit, in a weirdly perfect mathematical symmetry. Antennae implode into the slit, as if their three-dimensional physical structure were being sucked into a lower dimension. Something is pulling and pushing space and time. But we can’t see it. We can’t point to it. It’s like being in an ocean. Everywhere we see ripples and distortions because of the water. But because the water is all around, we don’t quite see it.
A disturbing feeling: something gigantic is distorting space itself. Making us see differently. Pulling and pushing objects, gigantic objects: a radio telescope, a mountain range. A hyperobject: something so large, so distributed across spacetime, that we can’t point to it. Something that transcends our sense of dimension and world, and our categories such as “object” and “subject.”
We sense it anamorphically: as a distortion of everything else. As a lens.”
– Timothy Morton, “You Are Inside a Wormhole”
Emilija Škarnulytė (b. Vilnius, 1987) is based in Tromsø. Her films look into the cross sections of invisible structures, deep time, geo-traumas, identity and geological ungrounding processes. Škarnulytė holds a BA in sculpture from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Italy, and an MA from Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art. She is a founder of Polar Film Lab in Tromsø. Her films have been screened at the 15th International Venice Architecture Biennale (2016), SIART Bolivia International Art Biennial (2016), International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands, 2015), 31st Sao Paulo Biennial (2014), Whitechapel Gallery (UK, 2015), Contemporary Art Centre – CAC (Lithuania, 2015), Ballroom Marfa (USA, 2015), Pompidou Film Festival Hors Pistes (France, 2014) and International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (Germany, 2013) among others. Currently Škarnulytė is a resident at Künstlerhaus Bethanien artist-in-residence programme (OCA) http://www.bethanien.de/
