Questionnaire: Raimundas Malašauskas
Q. What image keeps you company in the space where you work? A. The window.
Q. What image keeps you company in the space where you work? A. The window.
What was the first piece of art that really mattered to you?
The Disney-esque paintings of the Himalayas by Roerich. According to my mother, they were made by Svetoslav Roerich, not his father, Nicholas, as most people believe.
If you could live with only one piece of art, what would it be?
I have never tried to live with a piece of art. I could probably live for one, but I would never be willing to die for it.
What is your favourite title of an art work?
Yesterdays New Quintet (2000) by Madlib; Or Black, a perfume that was created for Pascal Morabito by Jean-Louis Sieuzac in 1981.
What film has most influenced you?
Perhaps the films we enjoy are not necessarily the ones that have the most lasting influence on us. I watched Claude Zidi’s L’Animal (1977) – released in the us as Stuntwoman – five times in the cinema. I assume the first porno I ever saw must have had an influence on me too, but I don’t remember what it was and I don’t think I watched it in its entirety. Then there are films that I’ve never seen, but must have influenced me in the future ...
What are you reading?
The letter that just arrived from my neighbour: ‘I cannot accept this situation any more and will not accept any more apologies. Apologies work when you are sincere and do not reiterate the same behaviour. Even the neighbour from the top floor was awake because of the noise you made yesterday. Maybe you were not aware of the noise you made because of the state you were in, or I don’t know what exactly, but this is not any of my concern.’
What music are you listening to?
Must have been that Cold War boogie.
What do you like the look of?
The way dots can connect without forming a recognizable image, and how connections within a dot may slip into an abyss and re-emerge where I am not. In other words: fogs, monsters, equations. Or words.
What should change?
The assumption that the past was more human than the future will be. And the prolongation of dying due to institutional consensus.
What should stay the same?
Nothing.
What could you imagine doing if you didn’t do what you do?
Being closer to a narrator than a protagonist: my daughters are more amused by their father being at home rather than popping crunchy punch-lines in the pages of a magazine. Meeting Silvia for a coffee. Apparently writing a preface for a book that starts with the question: ‘What does it mean to write a book in the trenches?’
What do you wish you knew?
The difference between A and B. Or whether agnosticism made more sense as a premise for making senses like making love or making sound. What is art for? All of the above and more of the below.
