The Sapieha Palace Symposium has established itself as a distinguished annual gathering bringing together leading scholars and artists to explore pressing contemporary questions. The inaugural symposium, held in 2025, examined the multifaceted theme of ageing and featured presentations by Eglė Ambrasaitė, Jo Applin, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Kim Kraczon, and Artūras Tereškinas. The conversations that emerged addressed ageing not merely as a biological process but as a complex cultural, political, and aesthetic phenomenon.

For the 2026 edition, we turn our attention to the role of storytelling – word, voice, text, listening, memory, and emotion – in contemporary art and culture. The symposium will gather an international group of artists, curators, art historians, and researchers covering several distinct themes, including speculative storytelling, feminist voices and listening, the archive, and the fate of narrative in the post-digital world.

Symposium language: English

Admission is free and open to the public.

Programme:

10:30 am Doors open

10:45–11 am Greetings and introduction

11:00–11:40 am Irene V. Small: Trompe L’oreille: Rumours of Sight and Sound

11:40–12:20 pm Irene Revell: A Score Telling Tales

12:20–12:40 pm Coffee break

12:40–1:20 pm Monika Kalinauskaitė: A Heartbag of Open Questions

1:20–2 pm Agnieszka Polska: lecture performance Stories for Mechanic Bodies

2–3:30 pm Lunch

3:30–4:10 pm Marissa Lee Benedict and David Rueter: Artist talk

4:10–4:50 pm Goda Klumbytė: After Transparency: [Feeling Sensing Knowing] in the Midst of Human-AI Interaction

4:50–5 pm Break

5–6:30 pm Roundtable with presenters, moderated by Keiu Krikmann and Isabella Tjäder

About Sapieha Palace Symposium 2026 participants:

Inesa Brašiškė is a curator and Head of Research at Sapieha Palace, and curator of the Sapieha Palace Symposium.

Monika Kalinauskaitė (Monika Kalin) is a writer and curator based in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Goda Klumbytė is an interdisciplinary scholar working across human-computer interaction, algorithmic systems design, and critical theory.

Keiu Krikmann is a writer, translator, curator, and editor of A Shade Colder magazine, published by the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA).

Marissa Lee Benedict and David Rueter work across video, installation, and performance, staging encounters between industrial processes, professional grammars, and the human body.

Agnieszka Polska is a visual artist and film director who uses computer-generated media to reflect on the individual and their social responsibility within environments driven by flows of information.

Irene Revell teaches on the MFA Curating programme at Goldsmiths and is a Senior Lecturer in Sound Research at CRiSAP, where she Co-Leads the Scoring Warnings research project.

Irene V. Small is Professor of Contemporary Art and Criticism in the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University.

Isabella Tjäder is Director of Index — The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, and a curator interested in language, listening, and the subversive potential of stories told well.

About Institution

Sapieha Palace opened its doors to the public in April 2024. Housed within a recently restored Baroque palace, it is run by the Contemporary Art Centre, the largest contemporary art institution in the Baltic States. Its programme aims to create a critical dialogue between contemporary art, history, and tangible heritage, while reflecting the social and cultural processes relevant to the region through contemporary art exhibitions, an annual symposium, and educational and public engagement activities.

For more information about the symposium, please contact inesa.brasiskecac.lt or visit www.sapiegurumai.lt/en

Partner: Rupert, Center for Art, Residencies and Education