At the heart of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia lies an extraordinary encounter between art and science. The Pavilion of Lithuania showcases "Inflammation," an installation by the visionary artist duo Pakui Hardware, featuring the profound paintings of Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė. Curated by Valentinas Klimašauskas and João Laia along with the commissioner Arūnas Gelūnas, the architecture of the installation was created by an architectural duo Isora X Lozuraityte Studio. This installation invites visitors to explore the interconnectedness of human bodies, medicine, and the environment. Set against the stunning backdrop of the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, this thought-provoking exhibition challenges conventional boundaries and offers a glimpse into a world where art and science collide to reveal the hidden dimensions of our existence.

The focus of your subject matter has been on a speculative and observational biological ecosystem of our current world, especially the human species. I am eager to know why there is this need to unravel biology and bring attention to unnoticed and often forgotten mechanisms of bodies. As observed in your previous installations, it also highlights the current science with a political stance, bringing light upon various sincere areas of our medical and mass-consuming industry. What do you think one needs to be aware of with our ongoing scientific and biological experiences for our instinctive autonomy?

We had a feeling that biological - of human and non-human - nature has mostly been seen as a matter for instrumentalization: for increased efficiency, reproduction, technological enhancement, policing, and governance. Such a technocratic and teleological approach to bodies and their incredible biological arrangements did not leave much space for potentialities that were not aimed at some imaginary progress but towards a more sensitive and humble interconnectivity of actors and systems. Could we imagine the transformation of bodies or biological features or processes as either deliberately aimless or at least geared towards dissolving oppressive categories and frameworks? Such are the questions we try to reflect upon with our installations, or environments, for that matter, in which we inquire into the established notions that were so useful for exploiting everything around the white male body. Our installations might appear dystopian sometimes, but they only show a world ruled by technocratic ideology.

The Pavilion invites us to consider the intrinsic relationship between the human body and the societal structures that govern our lives, encouraging a dialogue about the ethical implications of medical and technological advancements.

Your studio is a reflection of the contemporary world, where mechanics and mysticism come together to create something powerful and empowering, which also runs with a subtle purpose. What makes you keep the natural and invisible world a part of your projects and artistic direction? What's the motivation?

Probably because the invisible, the mystical, and the mythical are born out of attempts to explain the (yet) unknown, the inexplicable. With today’s reality of extremely rapid technological advancement (which moves faster than any legal and ethical frameworks could be built around it), and ecological, political, and economic uncertainty, there is an immense space for the unknown, for speculations, for new myths, and paranoia. It is remarkable to watch how changes in the material world are shaping the invisible and vice versa.

Through the interplay of visible and invisible forces, Pakui Hardware crafts installations that invite viewers to confront the mysteries of existence, offering a space where art and science converge in an intricate dance of meaning and interpretation.

In the 21st century, material is an area of speculation, innovation, discovery, and experimentation. With your duo, it's evident that you are bringing these intentions to the forefront, allowing a fresh perspective for upcoming future experiences. Could you take us through the struggles and challenges you undergo for your projects?

The biggest and weirdest challenge was when our speculative future scenario came into reality when COVID-19 hit the world: when we were preparing a series of shows exploring telemedicine and robotic surgery, very niche fields of medicine at that time, suddenly the pandemic made telemedicine the main form of getting your GP consultation. It was truly uncanny. Yet mostly, the challenges are related to the material realization of those various visions of possible futures that we have come up with. We often push the material properties or technological processes to their limits, and often they cannot hold anymore, so we need to rethink quite a bit on the way. These shape-shifting and intermixed materials are also part of the fun of being an artist.

Pakui Hardware's work reflects the unpredictability of our rapidly changing world, capturing the tension between speculative visions and tangible realities, revealing the resilience required to navigate the unknown.

Your recent pavilion “Inflammation” at the Venice Biennale for Lithuania brought awareness of humans as foreigners themselves for the theme “Foreigners Everywhere” was quite unraveling and exposing again. Your play with the materials and the concept was truly unearthing. Please take us through the process you underwent for this exhibition and how you came across the book 'Inflamed,' which shaped your conceptual direction.

For the past few years, we have explored the relationship between bodies and contemporary medicine - how medicine intervenes, transforms, and even multiplies bodies and their parts. Also, how medicine is interconnected with larger economic and biopolitical structures. Inflammation was an extremely powerful and fruitful way to unravel these connections and look for possible ways to move towards convalescence, not merely diagnosing the cause. The title refers to inflammation both as a biological process and as a notion to reflect upon the current state of human and planetary bodies. Under healthy conditions, inflammation acts as an ancient and natural mechanism of a body to withstand damage or threat. However, if the conditions remain harmful and threatening, the inflammation becomes chronic and goes out of control. Such are not only current social, economic, and ecological conditions of today but also have been a continuous exposome for several people. According to the authors of the book, which became a departing point for our installation, “Inflamed: Deep Medicine and Anatomy of Injustice”, Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, human and planetary inflammation is caused by the colonial capitalist cosmology, which built artificial categories, such as humans vs. nature, that opened up doors for easier domination and exploitation. Critique of Western cosmology and its extractive mindset has also been one of the key elements in our previous work too, in which we inquired about the divisions, such as natural vs. man-made, self vs. the other, etc., invented mainly by the “Enlightenment”.

By intertwining the themes of human and planetary inflammation, "Inflammation" invites viewers to ponder the interconnectedness of societal structures, medicine, and ecology, urging a reevaluation of the systems that shape our lives.

You mentioned the influence of well-renowned modern artist Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė. Let's get onto the role of her artwork influencing you and your ode to her contribution in the art space. Why her?

Rožanskaitė’s paintings, depicting various scenes from the medical field, such as surgeries, hospital rooms, and X-ray procedures, were our point of inspiration and admiration for more than several years. We referenced these works directly already in our previous “trilogy” that focused on telemedicine and robotic surgery (“Virtual Care,” “Absent Touch,” and “The Host”). In the works of Rožanskaitė, created mostly in the 70s and 80s, human bodies are mostly depicted in fragments, surrounded by technology, surgical draperies, and tubes. By employing such strategies of presentation, she managed to quietly criticize both the larger systems of her time and rapidly developing technologies, and the medicalization of society as such. Thus her inclusion in the pavilion is not an artificial way of putting two historically different practices into a dialogue. It is an attempt to show how seemingly divergent political and economic ideologies were both extractive and threatening in their ways. What’s important is that together with the curators of the pavilion, Valentinas Klimašauskas and João Laia, we also selected some of her more abstract paintings, depicting celestial bodies and landscapes, this way reconnecting the human-planetary scales on another medium.

Incorporating Rožanskaitė's works adds historical depth to the pavilion, bridging generational gaps and fostering a dialogue about the shared experiences of art, technology, and societal critique.

In a world where we are constantly distracted and unconscious of our surroundings and organic mechanisms, your art brings the necessary conscious attention to our holistic ecosystem within a contemporary mold that fits just right for a modern yet transcendental experience. Take us through your vision for further interplay with materiality. The materials you look forward to playing with eventually and the untouched areas of medical science and human/natural experiences.

It is quite an exciting post-Venice moment of exploration of other potential materials and plasticities that we might work with. Currently, we’re very interested in membranes, viscosity, and porous yet physical barriers. This might bring us to elastic, translucent, tactile surfaces and fabrics. Yet it’s just the very first steps of gathering research material on the more theoretical and technological approach to membranes and later moving to actual experiments in the studio and outside of it. Another direction we’re looking forward to investigating is new therapies for the ongoing climate catastrophe, with references to diverse healing practices, both ancient and recently invented. We have been working with the visual and political rhetoric of self-healing, outsourcing of care, and bioengineering for the past several years, but we’re ready to search for other threads that interweave past and present into more caring futures.

Pakui Hardware's future projects promise to unravel new dimensions of materiality and healing, offering a glimpse into a world where art becomes a catalyst for transformation and renewal.

As you step into the Pavilion of Lithuania, "Inflammation" invites you to embark on a journey of exploration and introspection. With the delicate interplay of Pakui Hardware's sculptures and Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė's paintings, this installation transcends the boundaries of art and science, illuminating the intricate dance between the visible and the invisible, the human and the planetary. Curated by Valentina Klimašauskas and João Laia, this exhibition at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin offers a powerful and thought-provoking experience that challenges us to question the very fabric of our existence.