This text has been originally published in the book Villa Lituania, which approaches the homonymous work presented by the lithuanian artists Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, at the 52ª Venice Biennial, in 2007. The title is the name of the building used until 1940 as the seat for the first independent Lithuania Republic's embassy, in Rome, nevertheless kept under the jurisdiction of Russian authorities since the fall of the soviet bloc, in 1989, and considered, by the ex-soviet Republic, national territory under foreign occupation. The work involved the creation of a pigeon loft at Villa Lituania building, as well as a series of actions targeted at social and politic issues in Venice, Rome and Vilnius, where the tandem lives. Socially and politically addressed actions have made the artists internationally known. Notwithstanding the strong ideological drive of Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas' intervention at the Venice Biennial, the author, an heir to the Marxist tradition, shows in the essay a remarkable skepticism regarding the critical power of the Marxist discourse evoked in most of contemporary art.
Julian Stallabrass; Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas; Venice Biennial; contemporary art; politics
