According to the artist, the audience of this project is not human – she performs for sofas instead. Always eager to challenge herself, Marija was inspired by contemporary artists who are already making shows for pets or plants and decided to take one little step further while researching audiences without any consciousness at all – furniture. This is a continuous creative process in which human and sofa relations are being explored.

How are we as human beings related to sofas? What are the differences between humans and sofas? How much consciousness is needed to be an audience member or a performer?

The project was already presented at the New Circus Weekend ’18 (Vilnius), Cirkuliacija’18 ( Kaunas), Edengurgh fringe festival, PAF, visited the private local sofas of Berlin, Bonn, Paris, Vienna, Brussels, Open House Vilnius in collaboration with Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius) and etc.
One of the aims of this project is while traveling around the world to get the world’s sofas to meet the performer and spread the word about unconventional contemporary performances.

The creative process of “The World Around Sofa” began with the global pandemic. This is a continuous creative process of the solo project “The Sofa Project“ launched by Marija Baranauskaitė in 2018, which explores the possibilities of creating performances for audiences comprised of furniture instead of people.

One of the main goals of the project is to visit local sofas from different countries, but once the pandemic struck, a quick solution has been found - 7 artists from different continents are taking care of the well-being of local furniture in their countries.

How to travel around the world after a pandemic starts? Is it possible to create not only for sofas but also for other things? Could this alleviate the anxiety of artists who are afraid of losing their audience? How and why should we create together? During the performance, live audience watches how artists present their art for furniture online (through the screen in the space).

„The Cello Project“ is an artistic project which is being developed by Marija which is taking up a new challenge: she is choosing one specific object again – CELLO.

Creating for humans and creating for objects is equally challenging, but the two are very different processes in many regards.

So how are we, human beings, related to cellos? What can we discover about ourselves and others (humans and non-humans) in these relationships? What information is cello giving to us? Are we consiouss enough of it? Do we need to be consiouss of that? Do we need to act on something or for something here?