On Saturday, August 18, at  6 p.m., Smiltynė will see the opening of the fourth edition of “The Blue Line” art festival. Each time, the festival pays special attention to nature, ecology, and coexistence.

Participants in the festival will discuss the problems of the environment and the relationship between man and nature. In what was once a resort, they will search for historical remnants of the past and draw a vision of the future resort. The artists’ site-specific artworks will be displayed in a common open-air exhibition.

The artistic action “Stone from Stone” by the sculptor Nerijus Erminas is a reference to the sculptor’s symposiums that began in the 1970s. The stone-forging symposiums that took place in Smiltyne in 1977 to 1991 were undoubtedly the heart of Klaipėda’s cultural life and the hub around which the media, artists, officials, and curious Klaipėda residents revolved. The sculptures, created over several months, were moved to the Sculpture Park and received a grand reception. This 10-hectare city park showcases 116 works of art by 61 artists on various themes. Erminas will connect the traces of the past and the present by sculpting a boulder.

In the first art festival “The Blue Line” (2016), architect Vladas Balsys disorientated visitors to Smiltynė in a white cloud of smoke. This time, those travelling along the forest path towards the sea will have to pause and decide whether it is worth wading halfway into the formless, thick fog of the artwork, enveloping forest paths, meadows, trees and people. Or is it better not to get lost this time and choose the artwork bypass? The author invites you to experience the beauty of the unknown. Invisibility, disappearance, emptiness, transience are the main materials of this artist’s work, allowing him to balance between the desire to create paradoxes and the possibility of simply not creating. The author of the installation “Going White” argues that when we travel by ferry to the other shore, sometimes we approach the horizon of the unknown without realising it ourselves. Reflecting on something doesn‘t mean finding a common measure for everything nor bringing external phenomena necessarily closer to man. There is no single truth; every phenomenon has its own invisible truth and closely guards its knowability.

Raimondas Daukša’s sculpture “Tracery ” consists of seven wooden sculptural objects that resemble a tangled forest. Graceful in form, yet monumental at the same time, they raise the question of urbanisation in the natural landscape and the relationship between man and nature.

Artist Agnė Jonkutė will immortalise the seascape in her piece of process art “Book of the Sea”. The author says that, living on the continent, she always longs for the sea and looks for a maritime horizon in the urban skyline. The sheets of paper, coated with a light-sensitive material and half-buried in sand, will capture the landscape of Smiltynė.

Remigijus Treigys, a photographer living and working in Klaipėda, well known for his monochrome scratched photographs of cities and their streets, architecture, and interiors, this time will share his early literary work.

Visitors are welcome in the parking lot after moving from the Old Ferry to Smiltynė.

The festival is free of charge.

The project is sponsored by Klaipėda City Municipality.