Lithuania

animism sings anarchy is a multi-channel film installation by Eglė Budvytytė, an artist whose practice spans performance, film, song and poetry. Inscribed on 16 mm, it is a performative and poetic attempt to translate archaeological research into songs, feelings, movement, and altered states.

The film draws from the research and theories on Neolithic matrilineal, animist societies by the late Lithuanian archaeo-mythologist Marija Gimbutas. Filming took place at locations that coalesce with, and challenge notions of, pre-historical narratives: the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome and near Grotta Scaloria in Apulia, the site of a Neolithic water cult.

The scenes are structured around museum interiors and a coastline populated by ancient caves and watery burial grounds. Sequences on porous rock and in salty seawater inform the unfolding ritual movements: a form of animist prayer tethering the choreography to natural landforms and remnants of the past. Facsimiles of anthropomorphic deities – rendered as 3D-printed figurines and modest photocopies – offer a devotional locus for tender, trembling choreographies: gestures that suggest altered states of trance, ecstasy, and compassionate surrender.

Reverberating with Édouard Glissant’s trembling thinking, animism sings anarchy quivers with a shimmering, defiant potential.