Amber Burn 2024

Co-creating the event is starting!

Would you like to be involved in the co-creation magic for Amber Burn 2024? Our beautiful city is built on dreams and ideas; it could be yours that come to reality this time. From project lead to placement, from gates to finance, theme camps, arts, or performances, there is an opportunity for our skills to shine!



Fill out the form here and join a live + online meeting on Tuesday, November 28. It will happen in Geležinkelių muziejus at 7 p.m. and in English. The volunteers taking care of the meeting are delighted to try to improve communication between everyone present and those online.



See you soon!

Amber Burn 2023, burning the WarmWhole, photo by Remigijus Ratkevičius

Iškąnuoti/ Kanuked

One of the Amber Burn 2023 art grants

Amber Burn 2023 was really one of the most impressive events considering the quantity and quality of arts in Pievaya and all over the place. One of the art grants - Iškąnuoti, by the Kanuked team, was massive in size, creativity, skill, time, and work invested. All that translated into deep meaning and strong emotional power for every visitor. 



How was it born? One of the ideas was to ´make art that was interactive and alive, a space for the craft of suspension and aerials; a place where people could hang out'.



However, it was also important to create art that 'represented and made room for feelings that are often hidden away, disallowed, or shunned, like dread, grief, and despair - emotions we are not allowed to feel or talk about in the frantic race for success that is our hyper-competitive society—and sometimes even at burns'.



Project lead comments that he liked the idea of a big and disquieting sculpture that made people freak out a little (or a lot). Therefore, the team found a mission: to create interactive art while representing the darker side of the burn. It seems it really worked out the way it was intended.

Amber Burn 2023 Cosmic Freedom, aeral performance at Iškąnuoti/Kanuked, photo by Ygit

The first announcement about the project clearly defined its purpose: ´We, the Kanuked, are bringing an infernal, abominable and splendiferous pandemonium at Amber Burn this year (2023) in the form of Iškanuoti, a sublime three-pronged art piece that will be the receptacle for all of your despair, terror and repugnance.



Iškanuoti is a massive tripod, several metres tall, guarded by the three incapacitating, crippling and devouring monsters that inhabit our brain carcasses — Hopelessness, Fear and Revulsion — and overseen at the very top by The Council of the Tormented, the 666kanuoti.



Iškanuoti is a place for you to confront and embrace your paralyses, paranoias and perversions, because we all sometimes lose hope, we fear and we abhor. We are all imperfect, fragile, demonic, misguided and judged inadequate. Iškanuoti is the place to accept: to transcend, transfigure and transmute, and thus to connect.´

Amber Burn 2023 Cosmic Freedom, Iškąnuoti/Kanuked at night facing The Fear (photo used with permission)

Planning Iškąnuoti started in September 2022. Actual workshops slowly started in spring 2023, and most of the work was done on site. Fede says 'it took 8 full days and nights to be satisfied with it'.



The whole sculpture was planned to be about 5 meters tall, but the team decided that each side of the triangle should be 6 meters, so that it is 666 on the ground. After scaling up the rest, the whole artwork became nearly 9 meters tall!



The inner suspension structure was made of metal and was nearly 8 meters tall in the center, on top of which you could see the wooden exoskeleton and the hooded mannequins that made the Council. The nests around the monsters were about 4 meters away from each other, making the total footprint of the installation about 250 m2. Two monsters were made of papier-maché: at least 15kg of flour! The third monster was made of wood and broken mirrors. Of course, the whole thing had to be infused with heavy metal for, like, 24/7 and different at each sculpture: funeral doom metal for Hopelessness, drone and crust/sludge metal for Revulsion, grindcore and black/death metal for Fear.

Amber Burn 2023 Cosmic Freedom, Iškąnuoti/Kanuked at day facing Hopelessness (photo used with permission)

Iškąnuoti/ Kanuked team is, consider it a coincidence or not, initially made of 6 members: Aistė, Goda, Olga, neMonika, Gintarė and Fede. Fede took care of the whole structure and concept, and the main design for the monsters came from Gintarė. He said, 'we all had to spend quite some time inside her head trying to pull everything out (the ideas, not the brains)'. It was not easy. Each of the team member had at least one other major lead role in the Amber Burn organization.



A few more people joined the team on site, 'and proved to be the most Rockstar team ever, bringing in endless energy and fresh ideas'. The ideas and details that came from everyone in the team made the whole installation very special.

Amber Burn 2023 Cosmic Freedom, Burning Iškąnuoti/Kanuked (photo used with permission)

 'Iškąnuoti was a truly living creature and thirsty for blood. First, it nearly took Tengu’s eye out (he’s fine!), then it cut Gintarė’s wrist to the bone (she’s fine too!)', remembered Fede. Just so you know, the words ‘Kanuked’ and ‘Iškanuoti’ come from Ričardas Gavelis’ delirious and demented novel ‘Vilnius Poker’. ‘Iškanuoti’ is an old word that means “the tormented”, like all of us are. If you want to understand the meaning of ‘Kanuked’ better, then go read the book.



For the final say, many thanks to the team and volunteers who made it happen. It was a special experience.



The team comments that the metal tripod of the art remains and is easy to put up and take apart. It can be used by anyone in the community. And for next year's event, the tripod will come back, but its surroundings will be very different. Stay tuned.