Spit

The starting point of Spit is the story of the Curonian Spit, a narrow sand peninsula in present-day Lithuania, famous for its seemingly idyllic dunes, pine forests, and fishing villages that have long inspired landscape painters and poets. Beneath this pastoral image lies a past of environmental violence: in the 18th century, uncontrolled deforestation – intensified during the Russian army’s presence in the Seven Years’ War – stripped the ancient forests that once held the sand in place, leaving it exposed to the wind and eroding forces of the Baltic Sea. As the roots gave way, the dunes began to move; whole sand masses migrated across the peninsula, slowly engulfing houses, churches, graveyards. Eventually as many as fourteen coastal villages that were forced to relocate or vanish under the sand. This violent yet eerily poetic history echoes the present moment, in which ecological catastrophe is again accelerated by war, extraction, and geopolitical aggression. The project draws an explicit line between the historical devastation on the Curonian Spit and contemporary climate breakdown, in which Russian military action once more acts as a catalyst for environmental harm. SPIT approaches nature not as a passive backdrop or romantic refuge, but as an unpredictable, more-than-human force that reacts to the damage inflicted upon it. Sand becomes the central visual and conceptual element: a deceptively fragile material whose cumulative pressure can undo entire architectures of human life.

The project is created as a part of the Heritage Lens EU cooperation program.