The creative team of the upcoming stage project “Man - City” will delve into the contemporary urban planning of Lithuanian cities and analyze how landscape elements and building architecture shape not only human ways of acting or communicating, but also directly affect the physical and psychological state of a person through the senses, and ultimately reflect the broader well-being, thinking, and psychological problems of society. Why does a person in a big city often feel lonely? When does modern architecture inspire action, and when and why does it cause anxiety? Did a person, while creating a city and its infrastructure, ultimately separate himself from himself, from other people, or did the city buildings, the shadows they cast, hide him, push him into the background?

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“The City as a Body: Subconscious Architecture Between Sound, Movement, and Memory.” This interdisciplinary performance examines the city as a living, organically pulsating body, whose internal processes are embodied through music, contemporary dance and multimedia structures. The work combines contemporary choreography, experimental choral composition, electronic soundscape and spatial scenography, creating a subconscious high-rise topography – an urban dream in which heights become emotional, mythical or physiological states.

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​​The latest global demographic studies indicate that by 2050. 68% of the world's population will live in urban areas. Nevertheless, according to theorists of contemporary architecture, various phenomena taking place in architecture currently lack a broader understanding of actions and reactions, which would lead to long-term and ideologically sustainable goals of city formation. In both Lithuania and the world's major cities, we can already observe the consequences of short-sighted urban planning, when the urban environment becomes non-dynamic, overshadows historically important buildings, does not respond to people's psychological needs, does not take into account the existing seasonality and natural relief. The essential, but long-lost and unused Roman concept of "genius loci" (spirit of place) has only recently returned to modern urban theory, indicating the specific atmosphere of a particular place, which should be paid attention to when developing and implementing new urban projects. The architect Christian Norberg-Schulz, who revived this concept, emphasized that a place cannot be considered anything other than an integral part of existential experience.

REVIEWS IN THE PRESS:

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