Petroglyphs (from Greek petro – “stone”, glyphein – “to carve”) – pictographic or logogram pictures carved on the surface of rocks, found all over the world. They are associated with prehistoric cultures and are among the longest and best preserved archaeological finds. Petroglyphs often depict figures of various animals, people, celestial bodies, and geometric figures. Although their exact purpose is unknown, it is hypothesized that they could have been part of shamans’ ritual practice, primitive means of communication, and could also have been important in determining astronomical phenomena, migration routes, hunting areas or being a kind of maps. 21st century a person “sticks” his stories, current news and everyday impressions on a virtual wall in social networks and other media. This is the same prototype of petroglyphs, through which the events of their time are told, opinions are expressed, experiences and emotions are shared. Everything is significant – Facebook and Instagram users, who themselves have become creators of knowledge, and their evaluators and consumers, affirm with one voice. The most important news of the day for each individual is carved not in a dark cave, but on a publicly accessible network, where every moment one news is replaced by another, thus belittling, outmoding and pushing the previous ones out of the field of attention. The circle of news samsara is devouring itself.
Saulius Vaitiekūnas installation “Patterns of the Earth” is a return to sustainable and reliable media – stone and an attempt to carve out an SMS message for future generations, in which, through symbols, the history of our past and present is told, what is really significant, what is timeless, what can still be to be recognized intuitively, creatively looking at the environment around us. In this work, the artist reinterprets the old Baltic ornaments, mainly used in textiles, combining them with the signs of our time – computer graphics that have become both a multi-meaning symbol, a new language and a kind of way of life. Are these signs different from each other? Are they identical? Is the information that people encode in their signs thousands of years ago and today have the same meaning? What message do we convey with our life – a sign – to those who will come after us and read our discovered writings.
Returning to the most reliable way of transmitting information – signs in stone – the artist becomes not only a narrator of the news of our time, but also a mediator between the past and the future. In this way, through a symbol, the experience of our ancestors and the everyday life of the 21st century are immortalized in stone. human efforts on this stone – the earth – in the time allotted to us, commit crimes, to write out our own happiness. And at the same time, it is an effort to leave our mark in stone – perhaps the only reliable testimony – that we were really here.
