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Įrašė Moacir P. de Sá Pereira
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2008.06.09 11.45 |
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 I met yesterday afternoon with Monika Bončkutė, the correspondent to Lietuvos rytas and editor of Vakarai. We talked at Caffé Florian for over two hours (well, I did most of the talking), and she collapsed it all into a brisk little article that is now up on lrytas.lt. A more, how shall I say, pensive interview will be appearing in lietuviams.com next week. But I was casual with Bončkutė, so it is only fair that the article is also casual.
Basically, I have no complaints with the article, though there are two small factual errors points of confusion: my grade school was not predominately Jewish and Brazilian. There were, actually, no Brazilians there. But there were many Jewish students (in comparison to national averages), and New Bedford is full of Portuguese. Not a big deal.
In another paragraph, she writes that I said that my parents didn't speak English to each other. The opposite is the case. I just did not want to say that they primarily spoke English, since I simply do not remember, and I suspected that I may recall their English more than their use of Lithuanian or Portuguese because I was not allowed to speak English at home, so I used instances of their English use as evidence for my own use.
So, like I said, two small errors sites of uncertainty, neither of which really changes the focus of the article. I have not yet really decided what it means that I am being attached to this issue of dual citizenship, since I think there are far more pressing concerns, but it is what is in now, and I have a casual attitude toward it that can be described pretty easily. So that is that. The comments are, of course, hilarious and mostly completely miss the point. I especially appreciate the one calling me a capitalist stooge. [Update 21 June 2008]: I only remarked on the two divergences from my intent to make it clear that they were visible there for me so that when someone (like my mom) read the interview, she wouldn't think I had completely misremembered my youth. Bončkutė told me, however, that what the article stands as a faithful representation of what I said, reverified by listeners of the interview. In other words, I misrepresented my youth. So now I say that I did that unintentionally, and that this space is not for correcting her, but, rather, for correcting myself. |
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Paskutinį kartą atnaujinta ( 2008.06.21 10.03 )
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Įrašė Moacir P. de Sá Pereira
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2008.06.06 10.12 |
 Almost two weeks ago, the committee for the branding of Lithuania narrowed down their two finalists for logos for Lithuania. The plan of the logos was to be bold and assertive, much like the new bold Lithuania that the government wants to present to the world. This is the second attempt at coming up with a logo, though it is the first attempt since the new “bravery” ethos of the state.
In the first run, I made comparisons between the proposed logos and two logos that used a lot of color—to the point of using the variegation as a point of distinction: that of the Czech Republic and Brazil. The Czech logo is unclear, since I cannot tell if the various voice balloons are different languages or viewpoints. Both have historical weight, but the Prague before Hitler, was, I imagine, a far different Prague than today’s, in terms of multiethnicity.
 The Brazil logo has some similarities to the Lithuanian one, in that both involve polychromatic blending and overlapping, with white letters spelling out the name of the state. For Brazil, though, I joked that the blending was a comment on the multiracial nature of the state, with the white lettering being either a negative cutting out (removing the state from the population), or a subtle reemphasis of white domination.
Then this week the Seimas made their choice. They got rid of the god-awful “LT’S GO!” logo, which left only the desaturated polychromatic minimap logo. Zuokas is quick on the draw:
Suprantu, kad ta alyvinės, rusvai gelsvos spalvų gamos dėlionė yra įdomi, profesionaliai sulipdyta, ir ją kūrusieji turi protingus paaiškinimus, kodėl ir vardan ko tai darė, kad tai naujas žodis dizaino madose ar pan. Gal.
Bet prie ko čia Lietuva ? Kaip tos kaladėlės su jose netvarkingai išsivarsčiusiomis raidėmis atspindi, kas yra Lietuva ?
I’m not a big fan of the logo, either. I still think the simple tree from the last go-round is the best, but this logo does do a few interesting things. First, it asserts the primacy of the Lithuanian State, as opposed to the Lithuanian Nation. This is done in three subtle ways: it does not use the tricolor, which is a nationalist emblem appropriated by the state; it shapes the logo to a rough approximation of the borders of the state, as opposed to the fantasy of a greater ethnic Lithuania; and it asserts the name in English, not Lithuanian, thereby including Lithuania as a general state among a global order of states, not as a particularized state bound by its use of a specific language.
 The other interesting thing it does is break up the state map into separate units. I am not enough of an expert on Lithuania to know if the splits are meant to suggest various cultural/ethnic/linguistic/administrative regions of Lithuania, but I think that that is implied: here is Žemaitija, here is Aukštaitija and so on. But in the blending, it reminds me of the comment on multiracialism implicit in the Brazilian logo. And here, then, the minimap is a comment on the multiethnicity of Lithuania. A logo based on the trispalvė would have been the fascist cry “Lietuva lietuviams!” converted into a marketing slogan. A logo that avoids the tricolor rebuilds the state as a paragon of tolerance.
So that is my answer to Zuoko question about the fantasy of the Republic of Lithuania spelled out by the logo: it is one of inclusion, of political (as opposed to ethnic) borders, and of conviviality, of the possibility of different whatever populations living together. The Czech logo, by keeping the colors separate, maintains the possibility of different people all speaking to each other at the same time but not understanding or listening to each other. The Lithuanian logo forces the different people together, to blend, to merge, to form a unity based not on a single individual color, but, rather, based on the border of the negative space surrounding the colors as a whole.
Zuokas next, however, addresses the attached slogan (not reproduced in the logo): “Sense of Challenge.” I can add another data point to Zuoko understanding that that makes Lithuania out to be a land for extremists and those not concerned with putting in massive efforts to avoid failure (in business). Calling a country “challenging” is very weird, if one is trying to lure people to the country. Even “adventure” would be softer. Though “challenge” is so far afield that it certainly is not a cliché (like “friendly” or “promising” would have been).
So I am still pretty darned ambivalent about this rebranding effort. The logo that they have chosen has grown on me considerably, though I think that the layout of the text (and the drop shadows) is pretty darned inexcusable. But, then, I’m not a design student.
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Paskutinį kartą atnaujinta ( 2008.06.06 10.21 )
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Įrašė Moacir P. de Sá Pereira
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2008.06.03 09.20 |
 Sąjūdis pin [collectplaza.lt]
We had two shirts in March 1989: one was designed by Darius Lalas, and it featured a negatively composed, bold and sans-serif “FREE Lithuania NOW” along with barbed wire down the side, a sort of reference to the standard, Kronika-fueled gulag mentality of military occupation, in which the barbed wire can be best described as metaphorical, antagonistic.
The second shirt, designed by Algis Kalvaitis, was a squiggly “Sąjūdis” with rays spiraling out of the name and a Gediminaičių stulpai in a sun, sort of a psychedelic take on the pictured pin. We lined up yellow, green, and red dye on the spreader and applied all three colors at once, smearing the tricolor horizontally across the design.
So though aesthetically I didn't really like the smearing, now I can see that it prophesied the main contribution of Sąjūdis: the establishment of a fantasy of a united Lithuanian state, acting in concert for the best interests of the population of the state. Once the Lithuanian state became a reality, the fantasy was shattered, as older organizing fantasies of unification (like the Lithuanian nationalist fantasy) overtook it and reasserted their positions of power. Of course, in the diaspora, this made perfect sense (at least to me): how on earth could an organization that had both Brazauskas and Landsbergis as members adequately represent the interests of the ethnic nation? Brazauskas was a communist!
But like I said, I was a kid. So here are a few other, better thoughts about Sąjūdis:
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Paskutinį kartą atnaujinta ( 2008.06.03 09.28 )
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Įrašė Moacir P. de Sá Pereira
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2008.05.27 12.39 |
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Back when inCulto’s video for “Welcome (to Lithuania)” was first making its way through the diaspora, many times the link to the video was included with some kind of language calling it a “commercial” or “tourist video” of some sort for Lithuania. Well, via Ežiukas su kedais, I learn that the animators, PetPunk , have now made a legitimate touristy video for Vilnius and its cultural capital festival next year: What do you think? As I wrote in the comments on Ežiuko blog, I find the accent cute and disarming, like that of a grandfather about to spin a story about a forgotten world in the mists of time. The Princess Bride in Vilnius, say. I share, however, some of the concerns about “kindness” and the Gediminas legend, although it provides an excuse for trumpteting the long, long history of multiethnic Vilnius.
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Paskutinį kartą atnaujinta ( 2008.05.27 12.42 )
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