Augustina Lavickaitė. Visual research and storytelling. Based between Rotterdam (NL) and Vilnius (LT).
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Information Smuggling (2023)
Video installation, 7min.

Design Academy Eindhoven, master’s thesis.

The installation delves into the media ecosystem of illicit publishing and the dissemination of information as acts of resistance against russian oppression and cultural erasure in Lithuania. The video installation transports viewers to a forested region with contemporary political significance and historical relevance, situated on the borders of Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, and Kaliningrad. By employing diverse modes of witnessing—via the landscape, historical narratives, and the viewer's perspective—the installation positions the terrain as an active participant, facilitating the smuggling of information.
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Dunes, reconstructed (2024)
Multimedia installation

Domestic Data Steamers residency.
Exhibition website

A strip of sandy terrain, at times only 400 meters wide, separates the Baltic Sea from the Curonian Lagoon. This sand houses myths, legends, and songs of longing and belonging within a desolate landscape - from towns buried under the dunes to meticulously planted forests designed to anchor the shifting sands.

The project deconstructs the Lithuanian seaside through its mediated forms and reassembles it from scratch - no rock or sand remains, only a shell, shaped by human intervention, perception, and mediation. Is a landscape defined by its physical form, or by the songs written about it, the myths told to explain it, and the maps drawn to claim it? Peeling back layers of symbolic intervention, we uncover not just a place, but a testament to the ways we shape and are shaped by the terrain.
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Conflict Ecologies (2024)
Multimedia installation

Salone del Mobile, Milan.
Young Designer Award, Vilnius.

The installation delves into the media ecosystem of illicit publishing and the dissemination of information as acts of resistance against russian oppression and cultural erasure in Lithuania. An infographic in engraved on a metal sheet, covering a stump of wood. The infographic visualizes a network of people, infrastructure, and terrain - the forest, to be specific - with its active and strategic role in resistance. The focus is placed on the affordances of the forest, which helped the partisans - selection of moss and soil, use of water and wood, etc. 
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Conspiratorial Status of Iodine (2022)
Installation, metal and print

Design Academy Eindhoven, master’s course. Years of imposed Iodine deficiency and the fear of nuclear power plant emergencies have made Iodine a household name in Post-Soviet Lithuania. Yet, the element’s simple, cold, plain, and factual nature results in a strange, conspiracy-like obsession, larger than the individual pieces of information and more mysterious than the political, economic, and environmental struggles it stems from. In the installation, a series of found footage, scientific measurements, aerial images, and perfect placeholders aim to tell the intertwined and contradicting web of stories surrounding Iodine. Through an attempt to be read, the simple blocks form an ambiguous narrative, as we continue to search for an organized evil by simplifying complex realities.
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Citizen’s Assemblies (2024)
Multimedia installation

Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn.
Kunstgewerbemuseum, Dresden. Every aspect of democracy has been designed, therefore it can be designed differently.
For the exhibition All In! Redesigning Democracy, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn and the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Dresden have commissioned two citizens’ assemblies. Thirty five randomly selected citizens came together in each venue to develop a list of recommendations on how the two museums could become more open, welcoming, and inclusive. Together with videographers Karnik Gregorian and Uwe Wröbel, the process and the outcomes of the citizens’ assemblies were processed into an artistic multi-media installation and presented in the exhibition. Both host institutions have committed to implement the citizens’ recommendations or react to them in another appropriate way.

Completed in collaboration with Studio Folder, Jennifer Carniel, Susanna Tomassini, and Louisa Wolf.
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Thesis: Conflict Ecologies (2023)
Print publication, 134p.

Design Academy Eindhoven, master’s thesis. The publication delves into the media ecosystem of illicit publishing and the dissemination of information as acts of resistance against russian oppression and cultural erasure in Lithuania. The thesis examines the complex system of elements required for the operation to function, such as an organized network of people, infrastructure, and suitable terrain. My fascination is the repetition of resistance strategies that unfolded in this media ecology, and how the patterns of information smuggling could be told through elements of the forest and the evidence it carries.
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Permanent Theatre (2022)
Publication, 61p.

Boijmans van Beuningen Depot, Rotterdam. Permanent Theatre addresses issues of static year-round exhibitions in museums and archives, which result in limited visits and low returns. The project proposes a tool - a booklet - for embracing and observing the performative dimension of the museum or archive. With Permanent Theater, the first visit makes us actors experiencing the scripted narratives of the space. The second visit shifts the roles - the guest becomes a spectator and other guests become the dynamic exhibit. The project was created for and with Depot Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
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Third Space (2020)
3D renders

Dutch National Archives, Den Haag. As an ever-increasing amount of data becomes available to the general public, many forms of information need to be digitized and archived. Certain types of data can transition easily (ex cheques, legal documents), while others cause technical and conceptual complications. Completed during Covid, the project addresses difficulties of categorizing and comparing personal and intangible data - our experience of the domestic space around us. Abstract input is collected on individual domestic space; it is translated to data equivalents and presented in physical form.
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Last updated December 2024