The Baltic Notebooks of Anthony Blunt
Addresses
Contemporary Art Centre Café (CAC Café)
Vokiečių Street 2, Vilnius
Open Mon–Sun 11:00–24:00

Know as the place where the famous international artists lose it and start dancing on the tables, the café tries to conceal this reality by self-promoting as a popular meeting-up spot. Inside the CAC Café, we find Konstantinas Bogdanas’ light boxes I am an Artist and I Love Myself from 1996, even if it is constantly more and more difficult to be an artist and to love yourself, especially after Pierre Bismuth has displayed his famous slogan "Everybody is an artist, but only artists know it" (2001) on the CAC façade. The CAC Café makes it almost impossible to distinguish the artist from the work of art, evidencing the power of Joseph Beuys’ concept "Everybody is an artist"; it is certain the artist visited this place in one way or another, but most probably he was mistaken as Evaldas Jansas, another Vilnius-based artist. The last time I visited the CAC Café, I met up with a concept designer Darius Mikšys who pointed to a middle-aged fellow transforming him into a piece of work. The piece was sitting there in the corner with a cup of coffee, deceptively sad, and muttering Hamlet-like texts all the time. VK, 2009