Dear A.,
It is raining tonight. Yesterday I was walking home from the movies. I crossed the street and approached my house, when on the right side of the street the green park appeared. Silent and dense, it stood quietly. Immediately I felt the cold ground and the little drops that moistened the air on my body. I didn't expect the temperature change to be so present. Cold and silent, calm.
I understand Raimundas. Writing is melancholic, the words too fast; the sentence too slow. The memory detached from reality, the present so fragile, losing touch with its narrative, losing itself in the tunnel-vision of the pen that couldn't keep up. Writing is tearing yourself apart. Always on the edge of drowning in itself.
We can make rules in order to brake them. As a character, an alter-ego, we can ignore the multi-faceted experience of everything collected in ‘I’ and take one narrative, make some extra up and forget about the responsibility of the author of a diary.
J

The present situation was totally unimaginable just a few months ago, and shows both an unprecedented rise of state control over the public sphere and an inspiring example of what can be achieved if humanity is united in a common cause. The global lockdown is a rite of passage of sorts – our society is at the crossroads of perhaps more compassionate times, and as people spend more time with themselves and their families, it also means a certain intensification of experience, which could bring about a change in the outlook and values. To celebrate this transition and offer some mirroring, Annastate residents are issuing a video-broadcasting series combining video and performance with the readings of works of Lithuanian writer Raimundas Malašauskas.

Annastate would like to thank Stroom for the support of the project, PageNotFound for the informational support, Raimundas Malasauskas for his interest in collaboration and West for the guidance and platform.

P.S. The members of Annastate have started the project during the peak of the pandemic and today (four months later, July 2020) it seems that the whole world is ready to ‘get out’ of the lockdown, to meet friends again and... continue the life as it used to be. We share the same desire to overcome the lockdown, but putting a different meaning to what overcoming means.
It is about re-evaluating oneself and the world we are living in, to meet the new world where the whole system and society as we know it, invests more into education, health, people’s values and morals.