Programme 2025

Birth of a Grenade draws connections between economic botany, colonial sciences with the present day extractivism by neo-empires. The work performs an alternating role of grieving, anticipating and raging for a world belonging to war-production that need not have been that way, but which now it surely is.

The film has been hand processed in bananas, dates and cocoa powder — produce that would once have been carried in the bellies of ships, across the heaving seas into Europe. The source and its journeys, both, since obscured.

Produced as part of 8th Artishok Biennial, Tallinn (curated by Ann Mirjam Vaikla), the film work became the seed for the long form lecture-performance, Force Meets Vacuum, commissioned by Publics for Today is Our Tomorrow (Nicosia, 2023)

Unconditional Love has been commissioned and developed by Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts in collaboration with PUBLICS as part of the Today Is Our Tomorrow annual festival initiated by PUBLICS.  The 2021 edition was realised in collaboration with the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (https://lcca.lv/en/), Narva Art Residency (https://www.nart.ee/en/residency/) and NAC. Today is Our Tomorrow is an annual transdisciplinary festival, initiated in 2019 by PUBLICS.

Unconditional Love by Agnė Jokšė is a previously unscreened video work and an ongoing inquiry into entangled cross-generational family relations and their role in the claim of kinship. Several interlinked chapters explore themes related to care, compassion, and love through the lens of intergenerational relations constituted in parallel to the societal and political changes in Lithuania when transitioning from the Soviet Union and its economic and ideological models into the independent state of today.

With this specific geography and sociopolitical context in mind, Agnė Jokšė questions how two sociologically distinct generations – the so-called “lost” generation formed prior to the 1990s transition period and the “independence” generation born after the reestablishment of sovereign Lithuania – became so connected while remaining politically and ideologically far apart? And how do their generational clashes affect the relationship dynamics of these two groups that are often closely linked by a family bond?

In Unconditional Love, Jokšė observes and follows the thread of family relations as it takes her to seemingly ordinary, but tender emotional places. By filming and interviewing her extended family in Lithuania and the Lithuanian diaspora in Europe, she chronicles their rituals and collects their memories in an attempt to portray the “lost” generation that her parents belong to. Jokšė’s research originates in the idea of generational divide and cultural trauma but the notion of Unconditional Love is tranquil. It reaches beyond disappointment or conflict into a state of shared familiarity, where one is resigned, resting, joking, worrying, and sharing with each other.

16mm film, 30:00 min, w/ sound

The film centers around “Song for The Fighters,” which was found at the sonic archive of the Popular Art Center Palestine. Through the layers of the song, in a labyrinth of sounds and sites, the film conjures history as a permanent present tense, a collective and imaginative act.

The film was shot in ancient sites in Palestine—caves, carved holes, underground passages, and wild valleys—the land becomes our main character. It traverses beyond the first layer of visibility to reveal a vast, hidden world similar to the one we know. Throughout the film, scenes intertwine rituals and narratives of community and resistance into everyday representations of social life in Palestine, thus emphasizing the role of collective rhythmic movement and the potential impact that shared feelings can evoke in creating and sustaining a community.

The three episodes of The Future Futures Talk Show bring together young creatives, artists and filmmakers to discuss how film can redirect our gazes. The talk show is hosted by the members of PUBLICS Youth Advisory Board (Helsinki), Index Teen Advisory Board (Stockholm) and PRAKSIS Teen Advisory Board (Oslo). It was recorded live at Konstfack Stockholm in November 2024.

EPISODES

• ‘On Controlling the Narrative’ by Index Teen Advisory Board with artist Roxy Farhat
• ‘How Exposure Shapes Perspectives’ by PRAKSIS Teen Advisory Board with film producer Malin Hüber
• ‘How to Film the Present?’ by PUBLICS Youth with artist Vanja Sandell Billström

FILM CREW

Director: Ebba Gustafsson
Producer & FAD: Tiffany Louise Hoff
Director of Photography: Kevin Orellana Jansson
Editor: Balder Ljunggren
Music Composer & Sound Mix: Edwin Dickson
Location Sound: Alessandro Ekman Cassinari
Production Designer: Trixie Edlund Falkenborg
Production Design Assistant : Aima My Daorana Björk
Gaffer: Michael Zwierz
Camera Operator: Timmy Prag
Camera Operator: Luciano Quinteros
Script Supervisor & DIT: Kevin Naderi
Master of Ceremonies &
Clapperboard: Hani Al Abras
Intro Editor: Ebba Gustafsson
Graphics: Tiffany Louise Hoff
Colour Grader: Kevin Orellana Jansson
Production Assistant: Aima My Daorana Björk
Location Manager: Marti Manen