KOSMOS APP is a digital audio-performance streaming platform that allows you to travel through the historical and cultural memory of specific public spaces. With the help of your phone’s GPS signal, the app tracks your geoVenue, enabling you to physically walk through the geography of sounds and stories. The app consists of three apps (stories) created by professional theatre, literature and music artists in collaboration with scholars from different fields, historical and cultural researchers. To hear these stories, make your way to the following spots:
Ramybės Park: Crossroads of Four Religions, an audio collage.
When activated in Ramybės Park (Kaunas Old Cemetery), the old city cemetery of Kaunas, this app will present stories collected from authentic documentary recordings and voiceovers read by professional actors, exploring things such as the events of All Souls’ Day in 1956, the traditions of four different religions, and Lithuania’s War of Independence. These accounts are accompanied by music and a special sound design.
Ninth Fort: Reconciliation, an audio composition. This is a musical memory track, connecting the Ninth Fort Museum, the Kaunas fortress complex, and the Ninth Fort Monument. The echoes of past upheaval call us to walk through this site and experience an emotional transformation, to feel the cultural trauma caused by the dramatic political changes of the 20th century. At the same time, this composition will encourage listeners to consider contemporary society’s relationship with history and lead them toward a greater understanding of and reconciliation with historical trauma.
Aleksotas (Vytautas the Great) Bridge. Absolute World, an audio composition. Recounted in the neighborhood of Aleksotas and the Kaunas Old Town, this story will immerse listeners into the intellectual world of internationally-renowned scientists Oskar Minkowski (1858–1931) and his brother Hermann Minkowski (1864–1909), who spent their childhood in Kaunas, and will explore the ties linking historic Kaunas and the discoveries uncovered by these two men. The journey taken every morning by these two brothers across Vytautas the Great Bridge to a secondary school in the Kaunas Governorate becomes the starting point for this programme. In their day, however, this bridge not only joined two river banks, but it also spanned two different eras.
You can try the app on your own already now by downloading the app “Kosmos App” (for free).
IMPORTANT.
On Friday, 15 July, we invite you to an exclusive discussion with the authors of the “KOSMOS APP”.
The discussion will include: film and theatre director Jonas Tertelis, director, artistic director of “KOSMOS THEATRE” Žilvinas Vingelis, and composer, chairman of the Lithuanian Composers’ Union Mykolas Natalevičius.
Andrius Šiurys, composer of electronic, acoustic academic, and applied music, and Domas Raibys, comedian, lyricist, and pioneer of slam poetry in Lithuania, will take part in the discussion remotely.
The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Daiva Price, art historian, curator of the “Memory Office” programme and organiser of the “CityTelling Festival”.
The audience will also be free to ask questions of the participants.
VENUE AND TIME OF THE PRESENTATION: Nepriklausomybės a. 12, next to M. Žilinskas Art Gallery
www.kosmostheatre.com/kosmosapp
Facebook: kosmostheatre
Organizers: Kosmos Theatre
Kaunas, Nepriklausomybės a. 12
LT/EN, Other