Contributions

During the Soviet occupation, the authoritarian landscape developed as a space of radical physical transformations, where the experiences of those changes were suppressed, representation was censored, and perception was ideologically directed. The work of Lida Meškaitytė, a miniature artist who lived and created in the village of Antšvenčiai in the Jurbarkas district, stands as a unique testament to this environment. A self-taught, disabled young woman from the formerly German Klaipėda region quickly gained recognition from the authorities of the time due to her rural origins and depictions of pastoral landscapes. However, this recognition came at a cost—even today, the artist’s personality and creative legacy are often evaluated uncritically, overshadowing the contradictions of her era and the environmental changes of the time.

The Colorado potato beetle, which spread across Europe after the First World War and reached Soviet Lithuania in the second half of the 1960s, eventually captured not only potato fields but also the imagination of potato growers. Associative images, such as collective searches or bottles of alcohol, and puzzling theories about the beetle’s methods of escape, continue to live on, albeit in a diminished form, to this day. When did the myths surrounding the pest originate, and why did it take on additional meanings? How was it welcomed in Soviet Lithuania, what mechanisms were in place to ensure the superiority of the planned struggle declared by the Soviets? And what did this struggle look like in practice?

Time, Waste, Extinction workshop, held on September 17-18, 2024, is a collaboration between PAScapes, Acid Horizon and Nicolas de Warren of the Penn State Philosophy department. The workshop explores the intersections of extinction, temporality, and ecological ethics, featuring lectures on topics such as human extinction, temporal justice, pollution, and responsibility in the Anthropocene.

Time, Waste, Extinction workshop, held on September 17-18, 2024, is a collaboration between PAScapes, Acid Horizon and Nicolas de Warren of the Penn State Philosophy department. The workshop explores the intersections of extinction, temporality, and ecological ethics, featuring lectures on topics such as human extinction, temporal justice, pollution, and responsibility in the Anthropocene.