International Contemporary Art Exhibition “Gates of Noise”

What is common between the two Baltic Sea ports – Klaipėda and Kotka in Finland? Both cities are marked by different losses and different city rhythms. This will be revealed by the exhibition “Gates of Noise,” which the Klaipėda Cultural Communication Center (KKKC) opens on September 11 together with the Museum of the History of Small Lithuania. The exhibition runs until November 22. The works of the exhibition are displayed in two spaces: in KKKC Exhibition Hall, Didžioji Vandens g. 2, where most of the exhibition is presented, and in the tower of the Klaipėda Castle Museum, Priešpilio g. 2, where the works of the artist Ervinas Faktura are presented. In the exhibition “Gates of Noise,” the city’s rhythm, silent nature, and the ruins of construction and war create an environment where the experiences of urban changes are encoded. Here, the sounds of the port and heavy industry, harsh and sometimes even disturbing sounds reveal themselves not only as disturbances. Sometimes they can become movement and a common rhythm, providing an impulse to unite communities, help survive losses, and seek new ways to create experiences in cities whose identity is unstable, and thus appealing. In the town of Kotka in eastern Finland, the horizon is still marked by the islands of the Gulf of Finland lost after the Winter War. From the city of Kotka, they are visible to the naked eye but remain inaccessible. They have become relics of geopolitical imagination and personal losses. Meanwhile, in Klaipėda, after World War II, the community of the city’s inhabitants has dramatically changed. The city has survived, but its continuity of experience has broken, as local narratives have dispersed. Later, after the end of the 1990s, the city of Klaipėda lost part of its population again, including mediators of alternative culture. Together with the lost landscapes of the islands of Kotka, references to the former avant-garde culture and rave scene of Klaipėda also open up in the exhibition, as well as the overall importance of the city’s sound in imagining the city of the future. What remains of cities when their history no longer matches their geography? Sometimes it is not monuments or buildings but the images of construction, transformations, and ruins. Also, the sounds of the city: the sound of the port, the rhythm of construction, the pulse of electronic music, the fog of the paper mill, the burning heat, or complete silence. Although even the silence of the lost islands of Kotka is not completely mute, it speaks through images, people’s stories, and memory. For the first time, KKKC collaborates with the Klaipėda Castle Museum, which holds historical significance for the city. The exhibition “Gates of Noise” is curated by Justė Kostikovaitė, and the exposition is organized together with the city of Kotka.