Compo(s)t and Detritus: A Research Exhibition by Doctoral Students in the Arts
Dates: November 8th - December 6th, 2025
Opening: 7th November
VDA Exhibition Halls "Titanikas", Maironio st. 3, Vilnius
Program of public events
“Compost is stuff, junk, garbage, anything, that’s turned into dirt by sitting around a while. It involves silence, darkness, time, and patience. From compost, whole gardens grow.” Ursula K. Le Guin, 2006
Artists/Curators:
Adomas Žudys, Artūras Mitinas, Eglė Kliučinskaitė, Gailė Griciūtė and Miki Ambrózy, Gediminas Viliūnas, Gerda Liudvinavičiūtė, Ieva Butkutė, Ieva Rižė, Ieva Šlaičiūnaitė, Indrė Liškauskaitė, Justė Tarvydė, Justina Semčenkaitė, Justinas Dūdėnas, Kipras Dubauskas, Marija Nemčenko, Neringa Poškutė-Jukumienė, Nina Nowak, Renata Mockutė, Sophie Durand
With the support of Alfreda Pilitauskaitė, Marquard Smith, Julijonas Urbonas, Vytautas Michelkevičius and Dovilė Džervutė-Laurinkienė.
Compo(s)t can be both an epistemological and aesthetic model, where the researcher is not a neutral observer but an active participant — one who connects the old and the new, thought and matter. Through the composting of knowledge and practice, disciplinary boundaries begin to break down, theories intertwine with sensations, and texts transform into textures. In this way, artistic research becomes a living ecosystem in which processes of decay turn into acts of generation, and temporality itself becomes a productive state. In biology, detritus (/dəˈtraɪtəs/ is organic matter made up of the decomposing remains of organisms and plants, and also of feces. Detritus usually hosts communities of microorganisms that colonize and decompose (remineralise) it. It is also energy source for other organisms.
Compost is a living, ever-changing formation—akin to the processes of artistic research. It emerges through decay, layering, and mutual transformation, as texts, ideas, and experiments begin to act as a nourishing medium for new ways of thinking. The composting cycle is employed here as a living metaphor for the progression of artistic research, where each stage reflects a distinct phase of inquiry, reflection, or creative work. These stages are:
1. Collection (gathering material: ideas, archives, notes, prior works).
2. Layering (placing theory beside practice; sensation beside analysis).
3. Fermentation (concepts heat up; unexpected links appear; old ideas decompose).
4. Formation (an installation, text, performance, or object coheres).
5. Integration (outcomes disseminate and seed further cycles).
This exhibition of work by doctoral students at Vilnius Academy of Arts, and organised by them, is an opportunity to try to grasp these visible and invisible connecting points, as these manifold practices and individual trajectories of inquiry meet to reveal the coexistence and diversity of unifying problematic fields.
As such, overlapping or related areas of research emerge. These thematic, material, and other forms of kinship are not always obvious or explicitly expressed, but precisely because of this, they acquire an unspecified sense of importance and relevance, a concern and focus on something that is currently taking (or changing) shape.
“Reseach is all about unanswered questions, but it also revealed or unquestioned answers” (Wilson, 2008. 6). That which is grown from compost also is compostable again through iterative developments of projects and also by others.
This exhibition is an invitation to become part of an unfolding discussion.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a program of public events curated by Sophie Durand.
At the end of the exhibition, on November 27-28, an international forum curated by Vytautas Michelkevičius will take place, entitled "Why artists are better storytellers than other researchers. 15 years of writing experiments at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and beyond."
