Artist Ruta Butkute

Collide

Collide, 2023, performance / public program: performance Collide on 8th of April (Saturday) at 16:00
duration: 00:14 min, PARK  Platform for Visual Arts, Tilburg

performer Yurie Umamoto / exhibition ‘a wheel a stone a rope a wing’ matea bakula & ruta butkute / supported by Mondriaan Fonds & PARK

/ photo credits: Rob Moonen & Jet Pronk 

Public program: performance Collide on 8th of April (Saturday) at 16:00   choreographed by Ruta Butkute and performed by Yurie Umamoto

When the object is moved by the performer, the audience is pushed, guided through the space. With sculptural forms (made of aluminium), artist comments on the space dimensions and it’s changeability. Width, Height, Length. The performance choreography is improvised around the audiences. The chalk is used to mark the movement and the limits, the borders of the space. Audiences are directed / suggested to draw a straight line on the chalk  boards, as an interactive gesture. How each individual part of the installation will play with the audience’s perception and guide them via materials and space. Emphasizing the play and counterbalance between the power of object and body in control. 
 

 

A – MOVE THE OBJECT ON THE FLOOR

B-  DRAW A STRAIGHT LINE 

C – DRAW A CIRCLE  

An exhibition A wheel a stone a rope a wing / matea bakula & ruta butkute, PARK  Platform for Visual Arts, Tilburg https://www.park013.nl/nl/activiteiten/a-wheel-a-stone-a-rope-a-wing
 
The exhibition focusing on movement, dynamics and interaction between people, objects and space. The visitor is invited to experience rather than view this presentation. Realise that the works are made in dialogue with the space in which they are presented and explore your own role as spectator within this interplay.

let your body do all the talking

Let your body do all the talking, 2021, performance
duration: 00:15 min, Arti et amicitiae / Playground Festival, Museum Leuven, Belgium (upcoming Nov 17-20th 2022)

performer Yurie Umamoto / text Emily Kocken, design Inedition /exhibition ‘Direct me to the Centre of Gravity’ / supported by Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, Tijl Fonds, Mondriaan Fonds

/ photo credits: Maarten Nauw, Natalia Sudova

LET YOUR BODY DO ALL THE TALKING #1 

PLAYGROUND_ M LEUVEN curated by: Eva Wittocx, Lore Boon, Steven Vandervelden

In her multi-faceted practice combining sculpture, choreography and installation, artist Ruta Butkute researches how to make sculpture move. An important question since sculpture is static, unless one is given the key to be able to read it, as is the case in Let your body do all the talking #1, presented in the lobby of M. The installation consists of sculptures built from ready-mades that are activated by performer Yurie Umamoto or, in her absence, by the audience. To touch and move the sculptures, listen to the loop of instructions written and recorded by Emily Kocken.

Interactive sculpture / sculpture performance
duration: 00:13 min

text/ audio: Emily Kocken (audio will be absent during the performance)
duration: 00:15 min, endless loop

Recently (July, 2022) the book ‘How To Make Sculpture Move’ was published by Jap Sam Books, as result of the collaboration between artist Ruta Butkute and artist/writer Emily Kocken. The book is part of the project How To Make Sculpture Move, putting language and objects in a dynamic dialogue, creating new functions for audience and performer.

spell action #1

Spell Action#1, 2020, performance
duration: 00:20 min, Why Not? festival, W139 / Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius (curated AV17 & Virginija Januškevičiūtė) /  AVL Mundo, Atelier van Lieshout, NL / Bradwolff Projects, Amsterdam

performers: Yurie Umamoto, Elisabeth Raymond & Artemise Ploegaerts / supported by Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, Mondriaan Fonds
/ photo credits: Nick Chesnaye

The performative sculpture ‘Spell Action #1’ in my ongoing ‘Spell Action’ series (2019-)*. Each ‘Spell Action’ work relates to, and questions a specific institutional art space, on which it paradoxically also depends itself to be completed. As ‘Spell Action exposes and plays with its own framing, it simultaneously suggests alternative narratives. It aims to fix and unfix temporary spatial boundaries in order to find new ways to negotiate and share institutional space and its power to validate. As the performers manipulate the sculpture, they shape a sequence of geometrical forms or draft-like spaces within the exhibition space, inviting or forcing the audience to move along. The performance aims to reveal, explore and shift possibilities and tensions between the guiding powers at play between sculpture, performers, institutional space and audience. *The configurations of ‘Spell Action #1’ are derived from the building of the Contemporary Art Center (CAC) in Vilnius, Lithuania. text by Richtje Reinsma

half hitch

Half hitch, 2016, performance, duration: 00:20 min, Suns and Stars, Rietveld Huis Cordemeyer Apeldoorn 2016 / Valkhof Museum Nijmegen (curated by Flos Wildschut & Jessica Helbach) 2022 / Van Doesburg house, Meudon, France (curated by Petra Noordkamp) 2024
performer: Yurie Umamoto / supported by Mondriaan Fonds / photo credits: Peter Cox, Flip Franssen

Sculptural performance as a research of extension based on the ‘Zig-Zag’ chair by Gerrit Rietveld design (1934) / performance duration 10 -15 min project review: www.museeum.com/suns-and-stars-a-museum-without-a-home

Two bowlines

Two Bowlines (under a strain), 2015, installation/ video performance, Rijksakademie/ Polyhedral Crystals, performance,
duration: 00:20 min, Work Space Brussels / Kaaitheater
performer Yurie Umamoto / supported by: Mondriaan Fonds (MF), Lithuanian Culture Funds, Work Space Brussels (WSB)

During Rijksakademie residency (2014-2015), Butkute started to translate sculpture into different mediums. The movement they introduced in her practice started to change the sculpture itself. Over the course of the years she created a new medium in her practice that she called ‘sculptural performance’, a new art tool where objects/sculptures and space direct the movement. She uses the primal efforts of movements such as grounding, falling, jumping, rising, sinking, a process close to creating her ceramic sculptures.

swinging sleeve

Swinging Sleeve, 2017, performance,
duration 00:15 min, Bradwolff Projects Amsterdam/ Intersections (Art Rotterdam) performers: Roos van Berkel & Tashi Iwaoka / supported by Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst / photo credits: Bradwolff Projects