Magazine from Kaunas ‘Į’ #3: (Post)industrial Kaunas

In Kaunas it is still possible to find an aged, diminishing species: giants of 20th century industry[1]. Next to these fallen giants – i.e., the large Kaunas factories, that used to determine  urban development – have remained the communities that formed around them. Members of these communities, the loyal workers, keep a small part of the remaining industry’s mammoths alive. Old giants of industry are replaced by modern ones. A different kind of organism is born in the city and its surroundings. These new organisms are set in close proximity to residential buildings, which were themselves supposed to be in the refuge of nature, but as industry expands, it takes the place of this nature. 

Brackets are useful when talking about (post)industrial Kaunas, because the phenomena being signified is not complete. In other words, ‘post’ has not happened yet. There are manifold signs of industry’s prosperity in Kaunas; the diminishing of industry is an ongoing process, and the memory is still alive of those that were, or still are, affected by these changes. The magazine hence does not provide final answers about post-industrial reality, but is rather an attempt to search for starting points of a discussion by selecting the particular case of Kaunas and the dynamics of the ongoing processes of transformation inside of it – a process that encompasses the city’s past, present and future perspectives. 

A conversation is started in the third issue of magazine between a giant and a human – industry and human experience – that has followed the industrial transformation of the city.

[1] On the Shoulders of Fallen Giants – the name of the Industrial Art Biennial that happened in 2018 in Labin, Croatia