ECHO | Muzika Erdvėje x Karolis Zajauskas x Natas Kunas

ECHO

2026.09.16 | WEDNESDAY| Liepkalnis water storage facility

18:00 guided tour

18:30 performance

The interdisciplinary performance “Echo” (created by director Karolis Zajauskas and composer Natas Kunas), presented within the context of the festival’s theme Hello, World, opens up an Anthropocene perspective—a noisy intervention of human technology into nature.

The foundation of the piece – Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which tells the myth of the nymph Echo, cursed to eternally repeat the words of others. Here, Echo is no longer a nymph protecting nature, but rather a human-made Echo—a system of technological vibrations and noise polluting the underwater world. Throughout the performance, the pulsing of ship engines, sonar signals, and the drone of metal create an industrial violence that disrupts the natural connections of the environment. Ritualistic actions performed by two actors—ranging from the precise filtration of industrial water to the figure of a modern mermaid washed ashore—give form to this desacralisation, where the digital echo of humanity irreversibly alters physical reality.

The performance seamlessly merges sound, experimental cinema, and theater. Utilizing authentic sounds recorded at Lithuanian dams and harbors, it transforms the Liepkalnis water reservoir into a giant “listening chamber.” This intensely reverberant infrastructural space serves not as a mere backdrop, but as an integral part of the performance’s dramaturgy: an emptied vessel in which the memory of the water that once filled it still resonates.

Director: Karolis Zajauskas

Composer: Natas Kunas

Scenographer: Justas Sabastijanskas

Actors: Dita Klinkaitė, Gustas Vičkačka

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Organized by: Culture Agency “Miške”

Festival Artistic Directors: Marta Finkelštein x Agnė Matulevičiūtė

Festival Producer: Liucina Mackialo

Designer: Normatonis

Technical Director: Dovydas Kiela

Funded by: Lithuanian Council for Culture, Kaunas City Municipality

Strategic Partner: Lithuanian Composers’ Union

Venue Partners: Rupert, Vilnius Municipality, Kaunas IN, Leticija, Sapieha Palace, Medūza, Museum of Energy and Technology, LNDM Radvila Palace

Other Partners: Open House, LRT