Live from Hamburger Bahnhof: Lina Lapelytė

0:02This is where I need to check if Lina is more Bergein or Berlin Philharmonic, but she'll tell you at the end of her nine months here. If I showed any of this to my grandmother, what would she make out of it? Nothing. It's a very small scale. It's like 10 and 10 and 10. Just multiply it 400 ,000.

0:24I am thrilled to be here with all of you this morning at the Hamburger Bahnhof on the cusp of Berlin Gallery Weekend. And the greatest thrill and honor is, of course, being here with Lina, who has imbued this 25 ,000 square foot epic space with the most poetic living artwork. So, Lina, thrilled to be here with you today. And if I can just ask you to describe for this audience and for our listeners, what those queuing up outside for the 10 a.m. opening might expect to see when they enter into We Make Years Out of Ours today. Well, I think the first thing they're going to experience is the smell, actually.

1:13So the first thing you experience is the smell of wood. And then when you enter the space, you see a space that's maybe a site of demolition, maybe the building site. And probably at some point later, the space will be filled with people, some of them watching, some of them building. The soundtrack is playing. The soundtrack of the playback that is actually accompanying performance songs that are happening four times a week. So we had that performance yesterday. While there was a beautiful smell of the 400 ,000 wooden blocks, there was also something quite Minecraft about the experience in terms of walking in to a very analog space that slowed you down in the context of a hall that in the 19th century was a train station where people used to rush.

2:09In the 20th century, we're encouraged to speed up even faster. Can you tell us about that dialogue you might have between the technological and the analog world? Well, that was actually an accidental connection. I tested this idea with my kids and they were like, oh, but this is like Minecraft. I was like, oh, of course. Of course, this is it. And then it actually, whenever I think about this image of like the screen being like analog, analog version of a game that is also for adults. And it's a bit like also, it's very primal. Like the material is very basic. It's like raw wood, you know, it's like nothing additional is in the space, just the wood.

2:52And we developed it together with Sam. Like it was so important that we, we keep it clean in what it is. And people were world building. So there was actual physical movement. So you kind of go back into your childhood as well, I think of like, just like scaled up a bit, because the blocks are bigger, as we as adults are a bit bigger. And then we have we have almost like a chance to rebuild, you know, like you go back to this primal thing, and then you build again, or you dismantle again, and then you build again and again. So there is there is something quite meditative about it, but also like about rethinking.

3:30And you've turned something that could be extractive into something very additive by bringing out a community of people who accompanied you on this work. And what you'll see when you see the performance is of course the beautiful sound of voices of a community that you engaged through an open call which said if you can sing and you like singing with people well then you're already very well suited to collaborate on this work. Can you tell me how you built that world of voices? how that chorus came together to help you go further than you could go yourself? So the invitation for performers was quite open.

4:06Like I didn't look for, I don't know, like professional singers that can deliver a score. Because the score was also written like while knowing who will perform it. And then we received like 600 applications, which was incredible. For how many spots? 24. 24. for so it was really like it was mind-blowing I I was I really did not expect that and and that also just shows what Berlin is like what what the capacity of like artistic voices there are and the call was open enough to really invite people from very different backgrounds not necessarily even performance backgrounds you know there were some friends of a friend who said oh yeah like I you know I'm a sailor and I'm just doing this because I like singing and so we kind of gathered together these very different people because it was important to to perhaps also have like a little picture of what Berlin is and it's made out of people as well you know like incredible people that come from all over the world so then we selected 24 and then they perform like in the groups of 12 and they will perform for the nine months, which is actually hard to imagine.

5:19It's the time of a baby. So we are kind of ready for being open for the space to evolve, for the performance to transform as well, and for them, for people to transform while doing it for so long. I'd love to turn to Berlin because you have taken this nine-month gestation and actually turned it into a moment where you bring your own family here and to live in Berlin. Tell us how you have chosen to live in Berlin, what Berlin means to you, has it been a welcoming city and what do you love about Berlin? Well, I mean, all of a sudden, like there were these beautiful coincidences that happened. So first I got a call from Sam to do this show and later on I received this Rebecca Juan fellowship in the DAD residency, which means I can suddenly, out of a sudden, I'm going to live in Berlin for a year.

6:14And so it was an extremely warm welcome for me. I must say, I lived in the rehearsal space for Ladass two months. So I was really in the museum. So I don't really know what Berlin is, but I feel that it's really an exciting place for me to be. And it's wonderful. You are, of course, a musician, a violinist, if I'm not mistaken. And here you are composing so far outside the concert hall. What is it like working with this symphony? And what are the rehearsals like? How is the composing around these 15 authors and poets that you have brought into the work? Can you tell us a bit about your process?

6:50Well, so I think for me, when I think about what music is, it is beyond sound. And when we talk about architecture, when we talk about performance, when we talk about the text, for me, this is all what music is. And so when people ask, oh, why did you turn away from music and you turned into visual arts? No, I didn't turn away from music, actually. I think music is everything. And the process was very rewarding for myself. I had this vision that I would love to look into the world of today from the perspective of poets. the last couple of works that I did I was like oh I'm not going to use language as such a tool for manipulation I don't want to deal with it anymore and like my last work called The Speech where I work with a hundred children they are just imitating animal sounds and it's for me it was a very like powerful experience to have these kids just like growling you know and I think this is how we all feel in today's world and but then I was like but poets have something to say about the situation and then I I had the chance to read a lot of poetry and of course it's like poetry for the for the last hundred years and there were a lot of words people went through and and you know and the poet can like in two sentences describe where we are so perfectly well and where we will will be as well so i was like i want to turn this into songs and then we kind of meditate together on where we are and maybe i don't know like maybe also bring some hope into humanity that you know if we even if everything is falling apart if we hold them to each other and we are able to to still be human, to still understand and to listen, maybe we can still bring this place to a better future.

9:01That's so poetic. I think of Gerhard Richter, art is the greatest form of hope. And yesterday, as I looked across the wooden blocks, there was a singer, Yuri, I believe her name was, and I felt like she looked into my soul. There was something that was so magnetic. Before we move away from the work, was there anything that surprised you yesterday for the first time seeing how people actually engage so closely with your cast, with nature and this epic architecture of a hundred year old building? what the work does is first of all people do know what to do they come into a space and they start building to my surprise i thought like people would be a bit like critical about this you know and they will ignore like this possibility but they don't also everyone somehow really calms down and i think that that's what i really wanted as well with this work to like really calm down listen be with each other and there are these moments of surprise people just go like oh where are we because you're surrounded by singing voices and harmonies and they're on the same level as you so there is no stage no no like extraordinary I don't know acrobatics or like virtuoso singing but but they're very close to you and and and I feel that everyone that's in the space, like the audience members, they are with us, like we're together.

10:30And that's a beautiful feeling. And I also feel that the audience feels the same. I definitely found myself in the audience with Maurizio Catalan and Udo Kittelman. And I thought, oh my goodness, this is such a beautiful feeling. That pilgrimage that you have to make to actually come here, you have to get off the phone, you have nine months, anybody listening, please make the trip. But there's something so intentional. I remember when I was running the Serpentine and we worked with Christo and it was such a success, the Mastaba in Hyde Park. And we said, please, can we keep it up for another couple of months?

11:00And Christo said, nope, it's like a tent that goes up in the desert. You either have to be there to see it or you don't. And this is the beauty of the ephemeral work. Do you feel like that pilgrimage is part of an act of resistance, showing up, being in the space, not just scrolling at it on your phone? it is a call to action but i think we are kind of maybe lacking a bit of like calm mindset i don't want to prescribe what people should or should not do i think we all choose i think if the work can inspire you to do something i am i am happy if the work can inspire to you to do nothing it's also i'm happy like just absorbing like i think if i was coming into the space, I would just sit in the corner somewhere and just watch others doing things, which is also a way of experiencing this.

11:57So yeah, I don't want to prescribe how people should behave. I think it's important that they calm down. I love that connection. Also, Aileen Miles, Etel Adnan, some of the authors that you quote, and the idea that every poem is an act of peace. So there's something incredibly poetic and unifying about it. I know that you do not look at your art through a gender lens, but because we are here, because Sam and Till have so radically given women the space through the Chanel Commission to occupy the space, and because Clara Hosnedlova last year did share with me that she found the space had an intensely male energy, I will just ask you if there's something about operating on such a big scale that you think particularly is appealing for women in this moment?

12:49Or is it just a human desire to want to create in the largest possible platform? Now when you said about the scale again, I was just thinking, actually, it's a very small scale. It's like 10 and 10 and 10. Just multiply it 400 ,000. And so I actually like the small scale. I love that. This really does manifest the scale of human ideation, creation, ambition. You heard it here first, but Lina LaPellita is just getting started. It's so beautiful how you are traveling your works around the world. But as I think about how universal some of these messages are, It brings me back to questioning whether there is anything specifically Lithuanian about the work as well.

13:41Well, I try to think beyond gender, beyond nationality. But of course, like as a body that can give birth and as a body that was born in specific country, I feel, yes, if I compose songs, I think I naturally go into specific methods of folk tradition in Lithuania. We talked about sutartines. Sutartines, yes. This is a specific genre where you combine different melodies and lines and texts together, and they come into a unity of harmony. And the translation of sutartines is agreement. and I think it's I only recently started to think of what it actually means, it's an agreement so you you put very different lines together that do not necessarily sound like they could come into one place and when they do come into one place they bring like this extraordinary harmony so yes but that's very intuitive you know I don't choose to like go okay I will cite Sotertines in here because I'm Lithuanian But here we are.

14:53We all now know a beautiful new Lithuanian folklore tradition. So I grew up with folk tradition, you know, when my grandmother would sing around the table. So it's like part of me, you know, so of course, like if I compose music, like I do blend. You were singing yesterday. I saw you. You were among the performers. Absolutely. That was very special. When I think about the first harmonic work of yours that came to my attention, it was 2013 it was not overtly forecloric because i think there were 10 cashiers oh yeah yeah and maybe you could just share with this group what that work was like because we all crowded around a screen to watch this video saying who is this lena what are these cashiers doing in this magnificent harmony with checkout beeps and areas about routine labor and interior life so for me actually that work was very like a transformative work in terms of what my practice was before I was trained as a violinist so I played classical violin and then I I turned into like electronic noise experimental music and at some point I was like but if I showed any of this to my grandmother what would she make out of it nothing like I was like nothing she can get out of that and then I was like I really I would wish that my work could speak to more than the people who who are like nerdy about sound and and this is how like I I started to look back into the song and and have a good day this work for 10 caches in the supermarket was like a transition for me to kind of to start using melody again and like using song and enjoy writing songs and this is a collaborative work i did with rugila berjukita and viva grenita with whom we later did the sun and sea performance the have a good day work is like an axis of of my practice where i really started to work with performers large group of performers also sing myself because that was the only way I could show them what I want and then suddenly I ended up singing which I was very shy before actually I really had to transition from from being mute to like opening my mouth and show people how to sing yeah and then we felt that Sun and Sea was actually like almost like a part two of have a good day because have a good day like it looks into a cashier as a metaphor of of a circle of buying and selling and which i think we all belong to and and for us it was important to to kind of have this metaphoric figure but to think of in into like capitalism at large and consumption as well and then when we did send and see we were like oh my god like we keep talking about consumption but now from the lens of climate change.

17:55So we'll get to Sun and Sea in a moment because it is such a pinnacle. It was the golden lion winner. But Hunky Bluff was one moment that happened before that. It was mischievous, it was subversive, it was queer. And I wonder if before we move to Sun and Sea, you tell us if there's any themes from Hunky Bluff that have also followed you in your journey. Yeah, Hunky Bluff was also like a very special moment. I was approached by Lucia Pietrojusti in London And when I was doing another work in the David Roberts Arts Foundation at that time, like they gave me the space for three days to do whatever I wanted.

18:30Like they said, OK, here's the space. Do your performative practice. And then Lucia came in and she was like, why don't you do like a Serpentine Pavilion commission? I was like, oh, my God, yes. I had this vision that I wanted to gather together a group of female voices that sound like men. Because I sang in the choir when I was a teenager. And there was this one singer. And she was always put into the mandrel because she had a lower voice. And it was considered a bit weird. And I was like, actually, it's not. It's amazing. Why are we supposed to speak high if we are females? you know, and sing.

19:14And why sopranos are so adored and like... So you subverted the castrati and the female voices into a mashup. Yeah, why the female tenor is considered like strange. And then I gathered together, I made an audition for women who have a particularly low voice. And I think it was really like a queer piece where then the pieces that were singing were the remixes of the arias that were originally written for castrati singers. so male voices that are very high, and then we turn them low, turn them into choirs, and it was performed by this group of very low-voiced women. It was an amazing moment at the 58th Venice Biennale, and I remember going to see your work at the Lithuanian Pavilion and finding it so extraordinary, and then coming back the next day after the whole Biennale was talking about this.

20:12And by that point, the queue was so long that I was never going to catch my flight the next day. And so someone snuck me in as one of the performers. And that was a very special moment where they were like, she's got a slot at three o 'clock and she has to perform now. And I felt so bad because half of Venice was there waiting to get into the Lithuanian pavilion. and what did everyone see when they walked into that Lithuanian pavilion because it was something that was so world-changing and that moment won you the golden lion at an extraordinarily young age. So please tell us, Sun and Sea. Well, so now you talk about the cues but I can see what I said to my performers when we were just opening the pavilion.

21:00We said, you have to learn for sing for one person and find the meaning in that because no one is ever going to find the Lithuanian pavilion in Venice that is hidden somewhere in Castello area in this military base that was never open for public. It was the first time they opened it up. So we were surrounded by soldiers all the time who were like, what is this group of people doing being naked all the time and singing like at 8 a.m. because the military people, they lived there as well. And then when we would do the warm-up they would go crazy. And then two days later to experience this queuing outside.

21:46And there was sand. You walked in. You were in a beach. You were looking up top. And then when you enter in when you enter the pavilion so in Venice you entered into this like abandoned inner courtyard of the military and then you would go into the building and then climb up the stairs and then look down where you see an enclosed beach and people singing and having a sunbath time. And they were singing these amazing personal tales and it's been shared across so many art writers as echo grief, but you have your own interpretation. Can you share with us what they were singing about? So we intentionally with Vaiva Granita who wrote the text we intentionally never used the word plastic in the piece but every single story that singers were delivering they were like personal stories but but they would go into into some like climate awareness perhaps so like i would say like ecology awareness at large like Like we said that the sort of the access area in the piece is this workaholic song where he sings that.

23:06Do you want to sing it for us? The chorus line is like exhaustion, exhaustion, exhaustion, exhaustion. It's like a mammoth, a non-existent creature gone extinct. And cyclopedias have it but in life. I think you'll never meet, and so on and so on. But he goes with this very low voice telling how exhausted he is and how he's too shy to tell to anyone and that how sometimes this exhaustion explodes. And we thought like this is a metaphor to the planet Earth, you know, like this exhausted planet that is being exhausted by the exhausted humans. so yeah that's so the little stories in in the in the libretto of the sun and sea they kind of i think they're non-linear there is no like a sort of scenario where you would get a story at large but it's it's it's it's a mosaic of of perspectives where maybe makes one think And you also turned some words into a title.

24:29And there was also a musical component to that. When the song came on last night, I could see the sparkle in your eyes. Can you tell us the title of this work, what it means to you? And do you start with the title? Do you end with the title? We make years out of hours. Where does that come from? When I received this invitation, I was like, okay, so I will be working in Germany, in Berlin. what is the German song that I know that kind of I relate to uh Jürgen Peppa and there's this Christina knows Jürgen Peppa there we go we have one nodding head in the audience yeah so this the soundtrack came into my mind and I was like what is that song that I I knew so well at certain points in my life I I need to listen back to it and then check what the lyrics are and then one line really struck me and it said like, wir machen Jahre aus Stunden.

25:21And I, oh yeah, this is the title for the show. And I don't know, I think it's a nice sort of, it really worked. It just really was a meaningful phrase that I felt it really fits this work. And yeah, that's the story. This is where I need to check if Lina is more Bergein or Berlin Philharmonic, but she'll tell you at the end of her nine months here. Maybe not just yet. It's a work in progress. Lena, I would love, because we are in our concluding moments together, it's been such fun, maybe to do a quick fire round and to ask you things that are mattering most and coming next. I'd love to hear what you're reading at the moment in terms of poetry.

26:06Of course, we know 15 poets' works have imbued this work. Ocean Vong, Etel Adnan. Maybe give us a moment of whose works have infused this Gesamtkunstwerk and also what you're reading at the moment? Also, I mean, all the parts that, the names that you mentioned and then many more, I had a lot of pleasure to like read a lot of poetry. Are there friends, prospective collaborators, desired collaborators? No, I think it's more like a, like a picture of the world through poetry i would say uh so like i i i don't personally know any of the of the poets actually i i do know a lot of parts of my life if you're listening but actually and i was also i was very keen to also like um have a line of ocean wong in the text because his latest book has a lithuanian woman in in it so i was i was really like um like you know it must be there must be something and um and and his line is very beautiful in in in the in in the text uh that we use and um yeah but i think poetry is a very special genre i think it's it's a very niche genre as well like um you know because poets mostly i think they write in their mother tongue and then for the poetry to kind of become like a worldwide you need to translate and then it becomes like almost like another work.

27:39And yeah, but what I read in terms of literature, I think the last book that I wrote was like Miranda's July. Oh, on all fours? All fours, yes. Okay, there we go. That's very charged. I think it really like gives a perspective of the world and our rigidness into how we look into things. I really love that book. What are you listening to at the moment? What would you like to be listening to at the moment? maybe live?

28:08As we know, Rosalia is coming to Berlin. I mean, and the entire... Do you think she's coming to the Hamburger Bahnhof? Because wouldn't it be great if Rosalia came to the Hamburger Bahnhof? Just putting it out there. We're here for the plot. I would love that. I mean, she's such a... Like, I discovered her like a few years back. And I was like, oh my God, how come I didn't know about her? She's like, I also like her personality a lot. So, I mean, like somehow this is all very connected. that we're all in Berlin, the Berhein, you know, like... La Ort choreography. Absolutely. I think we're manifesting.

28:42When the student is ready, the teacher comes. What are you curious about? What's drawing your attention now? Analog, digital? Oh, absolutely analog and connections, connections. I'm so interested in human nature, actually. I'm just exploring all the time and I'm just actually amazed like how much power we have. Yesterday I talked with someone who said, yeah, like, like he, I think he met like some guru or something and he said like, yeah, like we have everything in here. And I'm just actually, I think I'm just looking into the world and into the humans and I think we have it all. Like we just need to trust it and then it's just gonna happen.

29:29I am not a very pragmatic person. And things come together very intuitively, I would say. I learned also the piece of art, it dictates what it becomes later. And so I think I just keep learning and being open about things. Lina, that feels like a very beautiful place to rest this conversation. The doors are heaving with people waiting to come in. it's 9.59 here in Berlin, but composer, producer, dreamer, please never change. Thank you so much for giving Berlin this extraordinary gift. And thank you for allowing us at Chanel to accompany us on this journey. Thank you so much. Thank you.