On June 7, a rainy summer Sunday, the staunchest residents of Vilnius gathered for a European Street Fair organized by the European Commission. The Fair took place on the bridge of Žirmūnai, which was closed to traffic for to the occasion. The topic of the Street Fair was climate change, and the British Council decided to invite one of the Lithuanian Challenge Europe Projects – the Eco Lab – as participants.
One of the Climate Advocates, designer Mantas Lesauskas, was demonstrating to Fair visitors and other participants how something new and useful could be created from old, throw-away automobile tyres. The artist decided to demonstrate, how to make “a sports motorbike” from a pile of old tyres and precisely cut tyre pieces. The “motorbike” can be used in a playground for children or as a design piece to decorate a garage or any other place.
“I think that the biggest concern in the developed world today is useless consumerism,” says Mantas. “I wanted to demonstrate the idea that even garbage material can be used again and serve usefully for people to enjoy, sometimes more than some new things people tend to buy and then throw away.”
Participation in the Street Fair was the first public demonstration of the
Eco Lab project, which is holding several workshops in Vilnius, in July 2009. The workshops will involve examining, transforming and testing garbage material with the aim of making something useful from it.
“It only takes some imagination, a few good ideas and a group of climate-change prevention oriented people who are not necessarily artists or environmental protection professionals,” says Rasa Alkauskaitė, another Climate Advocate and spokeswoman for the Eco Lab Project.
Several days later the motorbike created by Mantas was demonstrated at the Queen’s Birthday Party in Vilnius – a big reception for the prominent Lithuanian political, media, entertainment and NGO representatives.
