Daiva Tubutytė
I am interested in documenting states of being where social performance is absent and a natural cinematic presence emerges. I create minimally scripted film setups in which I document people in social interaction, or deeply focused on an activity, forgetting to perform themselves. I use close-ups and long shots to create an experience of being near a person—experiencing and observing them in natural time.
When documenting scenes spontaneously, I use the edit to reconstruct that natural rhythm of observation based on the accuracy of my own experience. Not a narrative accuracy, but a subjective one—recreating the timing, atmosphere, and meaning I felt in the moment I decided to start filming. Those moments commonly share a physical intensity and cinematic presence, where the people I observe are in states of intense play, unaware of the camera, focused and in a flow; a state where a person is so busy doing something that they forget to perform a version of themselves (what Robert Bresson termed "Automatic Action").
Fundamentally, my work questions the relationship between truth and fiction, documentation and construction, and what we perceive as reality or to be true. It studies how perception—being the result of surrounding culture and biology—is susceptible to influences that can alter our relationship to the world on a subconscious level.
communication, 6′10″, 4K video, colour, sound, 2026
continuity, 7′35″, 4K video, colour, sound, 2026
Continuous Thread is a moving image series filmed during a residency in Apulia. The protagonist, Jimi, who runs a bookshop in Putignano for 40 years, sits at a rooftop film setup and reads excerpts from Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 Six Characters in Search of an Author, reflecting on the play’s exploration of the boundaries between fiction and reality. In this play, six characters interrupt a theatre rehearsal, insisting they are more real than the actors’ portrayals, and asking the director, “And who are you?”
Jimi’s commentary, where he reflects on being a protagonist both in my film and in the political narratives of his generation, is overlayed with documentary footage from his life—hosting friends for lunch at his home on a Sunday. The series, in four parts—theater, roles, continuity, communication—moves from long, dynamic sections toward shorter, increasingly abstracted non-narrative segments—from a time of presence to a time of memory and imagination. It explores how culture, history, and unconscious drives influence experience and the truth of self-understanding. And how the thread of consciousness communicates itself through a continuous cultural archive and changing physical forms.
theater (15′20″)
roles (9′10″)
continuity (7′35″)
communication (6′10″)
The project is financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture
And supported by Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the European Union and the Goethe-Institut, and Flusso Association.
Jimi’s commentary, where he reflects on being a protagonist both in my film and in the political narratives of his generation, is overlayed with documentary footage from his life—hosting friends for lunch at his home on a Sunday. The series, in four parts—theater, roles, continuity, communication—moves from long, dynamic sections toward shorter, increasingly abstracted non-narrative segments—from a time of presence to a time of memory and imagination. It explores how culture, history, and unconscious drives influence experience and the truth of self-understanding. And how the thread of consciousness communicates itself through a continuous cultural archive and changing physical forms.
theater (15′20″)
roles (9′10″)
continuity (7′35″)
communication (6′10″)
The project is financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture
And supported by Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the European Union and the Goethe-Institut, and Flusso Association.
Vincent Series, filmed over four-days, documents a mother and her two-year-old son moving through their daily routines. A particular breakfast scene stood out in the edit as the setting of the table and the morning light created a semi-staged space for Vincent’s presence to be observed in. In the scene, Vincent’s behaviour comes across as fragmented, even abstract, creating a rhythmic performativity to his presence on camera. He disrupts the rhythm with various behaviours that suggest an unease towards abstraction most noticeably when he gets upset about a ruptured egg and resists his apple being cut. His reaction reflects an early stage of object constancy, where deviations from an object's perceived essential properties create a sense of loss or irreversibility, momentarily destabilizing his understanding of reality. Kids at this age can also assign anthropomorphic qualities to objects, empathising with them and perceiving their formal changes as injuries.
Vincent’s Breakfast (18′20″)
Vincent’s Cartoons (9′10″)
Vincent’s Breakfast (18′20″)
Vincent’s Cartoons (9′10″)
Vincent’s Cartoons documents an afternoon. This time, Vincent wants to watch cartoons and keeps on reminding of it while his mother tries to distract him. The word entertain originating from the Latin inter-tenere, means "to hold among" or "to hold inside." In Old French, entretenir meant “to maintain,” “to uphold,” or “to keep someone in a state.” From its etymological origin and historical use, the meaning of entertainment was less about pleasure and more about maintaining someone within a certain frame of mind. Vincent’s preference—rescue cartoons like Paw Patrol and Fireman Sam—present an orderly world where crises are always effectively resolved by institutions: firefighters, police, and rescue teams. After a long day, his need for self-soothing found through identification with larger-than-life characters within a safe narrative sequence, is being interrupted by the authority in his life, the parent.
The film series is a two-part moving image work which studies the early stages of cognition through everyday situations, tracing how perception, attachment, and meaning begin within cultural and relational frameworks.
The film series is a two-part moving image work which studies the early stages of cognition through everyday situations, tracing how perception, attachment, and meaning begin within cultural and relational frameworks.
Vincent’s Breakfast (18′20″)
Vincent’s Cartoons (9′10″)
Vincent’s Cartoons (9′10″)
In a small medieval town in Apulia, a religious procession passes through a circular rotunda on a street that forms a ring around the town’s concentric layout. A forward movement through a set of streets carries a historical narrative reenacted by participants in period clothing. The figure of Maria SS. Addolorata, one of the many yearly processions in Italy, is a type of devotion to the Virgin Mary, often depicted holding a handkerchief, with droplets of tears running down her face, or with seven swords, representing seven sorrows, piercing her heart. In the history of the understanding of time, the idea of linearity brought by Christianity—a progression from suffering toward transcendence, as embodied by this figure—introduced and established a narrative model for secular belief in linear progress, replacing previous cyclical concepts of time. This narrative of progression, now embedded in political and cultural imaginaries, suggests an advancement through form while idealogically returning to the point of departure.
Acorn was filmed spontaneously, in response to a moment of play between a father and a son. Along with round fifteen all sound, made later that year, it laid the foundation for a new direction in my practice, focusing on performativity between staged and documentary film, and the possibilities of editing and narrative within them. On the subject level, Acorn can be seen as a relationship study of a child and their parent, enacting the dynamic of the reality principle—a negotiation between primal instinct and external reality. Through the production of this film, I became increasingly interested in how perception of reality changes with age, and how families and relationships function as scenes where relational dynamics, unfold and can be observed.
round fifteen all sound was filmed during a three-day workshop at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in 2022 as part of The Institute for Scene Experiments in which a collective of artists divided into two groups - performers and crew improvised and filmed loosely scripted scenes with industry standard equipment. An agreed-upon scene was repeated many times resulting in hours of material between the takes where performers and crew discuss how they will do the scene. The video weaves the behind-the-scenes and fictional material together into an ambigious narative.
Presented at Postproduction, Studiengalerie 1.357, Goethe-University, Frankfurt, 2023
Pictures
Presented at Postproduction, Studiengalerie 1.357, Goethe-University, Frankfurt, 2023
Pictures
Press release
Installation view, Postproduction, Studiengalerie 1.357, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, photos by Jens Gerber
Daiva Tubutytė (b. Vilnius, lives in Berlin) works with moving image, writing, and photography. Her practice studies dramatic narrative structures through human behavior in its socialised dimension, exploring how perception of narrative influences social positioning and collective thought.
The artist’s work has been presented internationally, including exhibitions and screenings at Studiengalerie 1.357, Goethe University Frankfurt; the Wavelengths program at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF); Ashley Berlin; B3 Festival of the Moving Image; and Videograms Festival. In 2013, Daiva Tubutytė was nominated for the Berlin Art Prize, and in 2022, her texts were published in the anthology of Lithuanian artists' texts Žodžiai, žodžiai, žodžiai arba Lietuvos menininkų tekstai (artbooks.lt).
Lithuanian tax payers can donate 1,2% of their income tax to this practice. Paramos gavėjo kodas: 74001543
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