Yesterday I completed the circle and found, more or less, where the last part of the wall went. I ended up in the Museum of Applied Art, which stands on what was the far northeastern corner of the wall. Actually, the original wall’s still there, hidden inside. The main archway through to the exhibition spaces is the original city gate, this one Gothic red brick. I also finally realised what a ghastly piece of marble public art next to the Cathedral is. I’ve walked past it (and on it) a million times and just thought it was a typically lacklustre monument. Rectangular, maybe five metres long, two metres wide and less than a metre high, it clearly marks the spot where Vilnius’ old defensive wall stood. If you stand on it and look in either direction, you can see the sense in it. I’ve always wanted to be a detective. This is fun. I’ve now made a map of where the wall was. Next, I need to do one and mark where parts of the original wall still exist. Why? I don’t know. It’s all part of the process I guess. Once you put a line around something it becomes a country, a city-state. I thought about portraits of citizens of the city-state. I thought about portraits of people I know. I’m still not sure. I need to keep looking into the subject. The more I look, the more the project will reveal itself to me. I found some interesting models of Vilnius as it looked over the centuries in the museum as well as several paintings of the same subject. The paintings especially show life inside and outside the defensive walls. Quite powerful stuff. There’s a book about Old Town by a Lithuanian writer by the name of Tomas Venclova. There’s an English translation. The next thing I need to do is to read it. Finally, to get back to the Lithuanian language thing, here are three translations of words related to this project. All are related to the root ‘wall’. The Lithuanian word for foreigner literally translates as ‘beyond the wall’.
- Wall siena
- Border siena, pasienis
- Foreigner užsienietis
Yesterday I completed the circle and found, more or less, where the last part of the wall went. I ended up in the Museum of Applied Art, which stands on what was the far northeastern corner of the wall. Actually, the original wall’s still there, hidden inside. The main archway through to the exhibition spaces is the original city gate, this one Gothic red brick. I also finally realised what a ghastly piece of marble public art next to the Cathedral is. I’ve walked past it (and on it) a million times and just thought it was a typically lacklustre monument. Rectangular, maybe five metres long, two metres wide and less than a metre high, it clearly marks the spot where Vilnius’ old defensive wall stood. If you stand on it and look in either direction, you can see the sense in it. I’ve always wanted to be a detective. This is fun. I’ve now made a map of where the wall was. Next, I need to do one and mark where parts of the original wall still exist. Why? I don’t know. It’s all part of the process I guess. Once you put a line around something it becomes a country, a city-state. I thought about portraits of citizens of the city-state. I thought about portraits of people I know. I’m still not sure. I need to keep looking into the subject. The more I look, the more the project will reveal itself to me. I found some interesting models of Vilnius as it looked over the centuries in the museum as well as several paintings of the same subject. The paintings especially show life inside and outside the defensive walls. Quite powerful stuff. There’s a book about Old Town by a Lithuanian writer by the name of Tomas Venclova. There’s an English translation. The next thing I need to do is to read it. Finally, to get back to the Lithuanian language thing, here are three translations of words related to this project. All are related to the root ‘wall’. The Lithuanian word for foreigner literally translates as ‘beyond the wall’.
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