Wednesday 9 September 2009

Surviving History Exhibition in Vilnius: Installation Completed :)


Finally, we've completed the set up work for the Surviving History: Portraits from Vilna exhibition, and we're all ready for tomorrow's opening launch. I must say I am feeling very satisfied after two days of effort.

If you'd followed my Facebook entries, you will know that I was hyperventilating three days ago when I was having trouble with the resolution of the video diaries file (Vilna Video Portraits segment of the exhibition). Today, we tested the video diaries and thankfully, it's looking a lot better than I had expected. I had had a mishap with converting the video file a few days ago and was a little worried about the results but it's holding up - phew! 

Rachel dropped by too and Shivaun gave her a mini tour of the work in progress. Some tourists dropped in as well and didn't seem to mind that we were in the midst of setting up. 






















Here's me adjusting the lighting after setting up the first panel of the photo exhibit.


Yesterday, we had help from staff at the Tolerance Centre  to set up most of the structures. So today was spent tidying up, checking over the finer details. I must say I spent most of today down on the floor, taping down wires, tucking them under carpet tiles, connecting cables and lights, and generally, just making the exhibits look as presentable as possible and of course making sure the wires would not be potential hazards. I must have used up to 45m of cloth tape securing wires to the floor!


But a picture tells a thousand words, so I'll let the pictures do the talking rather than describe the installation any further....

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Photo exhibition section
 
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Visual biography section
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Shoah memorial section - entrance
 
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Elevated view of Lithuanian map - centrepiece of the Shoah memorial installation


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Ieva Sadzeviciene and Shivaun


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Close up of bottles and map detailing massacre sites


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We caught up with Ruta later this evening to run through the details for the teachers workshop. However, both Shivaun and I were starving as we'd only had breakfast. So we ended up having a really nice Lithuanian meal, complete with pickled garlic and stewed cabbage for me - yummy! (and I don't want to hear any comments about gas :) Jesse had a dose of 'Zeppelins' - potato dumpling and minced meat - looked good.

Tomorrow, we start off early to do some final checks and prepare for the opening launch in the evening as well as the teachers workshop which follows the day after and ends on Saturday. It feels like a dream. It is almost exactly one year ago that we'd begun on this project. It feels like a dream. Can't wait to see the narrators tomorrow; Cholem, Fania, Isroel, Gita.... everyone :)





3 comments:

Unknown said...

All looks wonderful.. Best of luck over the next few days... I look forward to your updates. Nicky X

Unknown said...

Hi This looks really great- well done. You have worked really hard over the last year and you should be really proud of the exhibition.

Mike and Birgit

fievel said...

the exhibition looks good and nicely done. Great idea on the bottles. :)keep up the good work!