'Cloackroom' by Antanas Gerlikas at Editorial, Vilnius

Testimony

I wake up early and readily throw a dream off myself. It then moulders in the corner like an old cloak, its sleeves are fastened with steel shavings. I am trying to stay disciplined, to keep my gaze from wandering so that it doesn't tumble my thoughts. Yet in fact, I can laugh at all of it, that's why the names come to me easily. Surely, there come harder days, or nights, when it's difficult to find my voice or my place. But that's how I usually work — I come at a place and throw off a dream. Then I look at what's left of it.

Shells, big or small –– that’s what’s usually left, and they need to be swept off or put in place. Clothes are also shells. I don’t believe there are completely clean or fresh new clothes. Each coat has a story, its origin is industrial, though it is continued every day or on festive occasions, it is not cared for too much but it helps to endure the days of winter. I’ve decided to set up a room where the shells could take a rest, so that I could sleep among them and listen to their stories, all at the same time. They don’t bother me, after all, it’s just a chatter of some shells. Meanwhile underneath the shell there are the proteins, the egg whites. Our soft gelatinous flesh, lungs and electricity. We are sleepers to whom something is constantly happening. Some of us attempt to harden, we start running, lifting heavy things, or looking for some other way out. In a way, I’m no different, however, I’m also truly melancholic. In my dreams I often see something at which I have been looking throughout the day without realising I’m noticing anything at all. I also tend to sigh about intimate stories since, in my opinion, they are the only good ones. But such stories don’t travel around. They visit a few decent parties on this or the other side of the river, maybe some banquets. If they swell up, they become shallow and vulgar, just as the self-deprecating people with constipation of their proteins.

I read quite a lot of books, since my adolescente I’ve loved music. I’d like to think that what I am creating is a place to put one’s gaze, everything else comes after that. That should have probably been said in the beginning, shouldn’t it? It’s hard for me to talk about myself, unless that happens in the very beginning. If it was for me, the exhibitions could also be opened in the mornings, right after our dreams get thrown off. We would meet before having had time to spend our money, we would go somewhere we oughtn’t be and see what’s left of it. And even if someone got offended it would just be the beginning.

— Monika Kalinauskaitė