Our Metamorphic Futures.
Design, technical aesthetics and experimental architecture in the Soviet Union 1960–1980
National Gallery of Art, Vilnius
09.12.2011—12.02.2012

Our Metamorphic Futures investigates visionary projects in Soviet architecture and design practices throughout the 1960s and 1970s, which aimed at the production of new and ideal living environments that could be easily adapted according to the changing needs of their users. It would combine the latest technological innovations with a new concept of the human being as an active component.

Often growing out of state-sponsored socialist research institutes and centres, they nonetheless offered an alternative to the prevailing practices in building construction and urban design, and foresaw a future in which transformability and surprise would be central characteristics. During the mid-1970s, attitudes towards design and technology became more ambivalent: critical and conceptual projects emerged, pointing to the underside of an excess of consumption and a media-saturated space, indicating a need to consider the contradictions inherent in modernist ideals, in culture based on technology and industry.

Participating artists and architects: Māris Ārgalis, Igor Berezovsky, Valdis Celms, Dvizhenie group, Alexandr Ermolaev, Tiit Kaljundi, Vyacheslav Koleichuk, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Jānis Krievs, Kaarel Kurismaa, Leonhard Lapin, Vyacheslav Loktev, Eugenijus Miliūnas, Andrei Monastyrski, NER group, Lev Nussberg, Jüri Okas, Artūrs Riņķis, Sirje Runge, Yuri Sobolev and Yuri Reshetnikov, Jurgis Vroblevičius.

Curators: Andres Kurg and Mari Laanemets
Designers: Indrek Sirkel, Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik; Jesko Fezer, Anita Kaspar, Andreas Müller