Magazine from Kaunas „Į“ #6: the Futures of the City

What a thankless task predictimžng the future can be. Such were the thoughts that were racing through our minds as we clung to the back of a furiously leaping year-long collaborative project aimed at reflecting on the links between the city and the future. <...>
If meeting up with a stranger in an unfamiliar city, when calibrated maps dictate the landmarks, presents no great difficulty, it has proved much more difficult to greet one another in the future. The future is such a flighty bird – hard to catch, and not everyone has seen it.

But we have been on a hunt, we promise – not only for futures, but inevitably for pasts and presents, shimmering within the consciousness, health, worries and expectations of Kaunas residents and visitors. We have delved into the city’s breathtaking materiality, and allowed ourselves to be captivated by its intimacy, while not trusting unsustainable strategies.

Healthy speculation has helped us in some cases. Between the micro- and the macro-words: allowing us to experience a neighborhood of familiar silhouettes from a different perspective, or to listen to what micro-urbanites, usually inaudible, are saying. Or imagining what the river will have to say when its banks are connected by the new bridge (leading to nowhere, according to the macro-urbanites). Sometimes, the speculation may well be of national significance. For example, when sitting down at the drawing table to decide what will happen to Lithuania in the three decades, whose hands will pick up the pencil?