PRACTICED PLACES — EVENT SERIES
OCTOBER 23 — NOVEMBER 13, 2022
AT SUPRAINFINIT GALLERY, SANDWICH OFFSPACE & PUBLIC SPACES OF BUCHAREST
How can one (re)establish an affective and slowed-down relationship with the city? What kind of monumental repositioning do we create in cities and what is the relationship between monuments, public space and its inhabitants?
Practiced Places outlines bridges between public spaces and sculptures, personal premises and ways of relating towards the public sphere. The program probes, through a series of texts, tours and an experimental writing workshop, the artistic and social resonances of the Bucharest public space, of Romanian monumentality and sculpture in the local collective imaginary, generating tools for their decoding or for a potential reconfiguration. The artistic coordinates of the project branch out the public space, draw new levels of interaction and generate new forms of collectivity, be it temporary.
Walk & Talk with Me is a series of 2 guided psychogeographic tours of Bucharest, hosted by two artists: the first one by Kristin Wenzel, visual artist and the second one by Ovidiu Pop, writer & theorist. The tours follow the affective force of the city and its materiality: the two practitioners reveal a different side of relating and working with the space, showing their methods and inviting the participating audience to enter and embody the narrative.
The tours will take place on Sunday, Oct 23 & Saturday, Nov 5.
Short Declamations for a Place is a booklet-kit intended tp accompany the reader for a walk in Bucharest, bringing together 9 texts authored by visual artists, writers or journalists. Reading and reciting the texts urge urge the reader to occupy and interact with the public space, often overlooked, by accessing or embodying various contemporary artistic approaches.
The launch of the brochure will take place at Suprainfinit Gallery on Friday, October 28, between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. and will be accompanied by a performance by Adriana Gheorghe, starting at 7:30 p.m.
The booklet will also be available to download freely as a PDF, in a bilingual version here.
Măiastra Open Lab is a laboratory open between November 12 and 13, initiated by the American artist Timothy Stanley. The first day consists of a tour dedicated to public monuments, chosen by the artist, followed on the second day by an informal writing workshop, dedicated to the relationship between art history and literature. The artist will provide the audience with writing prompts designed to encourage their own experimentation with art and literature, prompts based on specific artworks, challenging the audience to imagine alternative methods of analysis and criticism.
The lab will start with a guided tour on Saturday, Nov 12 and continue with the workshop at Sandwich Offspace, on Sunday, Nov 13.
ARTISTS
OVID POP is a cultural worker with a background in political science, writing and theory. Together with Radostina Patulova, he is the co-founder of kollektiv sprachwechsel: Literatur in der Zweitsprache a literary group of second language writers based in Vienna, which he coordinates since 2016. Together with Valentin Cernat, he curates art projects revolving around such topics as logistics, water transportation and big infrastructure in the context of financial capitalism.
TIMOTHY STANLEY (b. 1984) is a multidisciplinary artist from New York, NY. He graduated with a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from Columbia University. Stanley uses a combination of mediums including sculpture, experimental fiction and video game development in order to explore the limitations of traditional literary narrative, with the aim of uncovering new methods of storytelling. Stanley is the author of the experimental art historical novel Măiastra: A History of Romanian Sculpture in Twenty-Four Parts by Igor Gyalakuthy. Volume one of Măiastra was recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of the museum’s permanent collection.
The primary focus of Stanley’s practice is the sculpture project Ursula, an ongoing series of studies for a single, theoretical work. Objects, drawings and writings from the Ursula series have been exhibited in institutions across the US and in Europe. Ursula will have its inaugural exhibition at the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum in St. Augustine, Florida in January 2023. His newest work, entitled Kathleen’s Game, is a development log for a mobile video game highlighting various systems of digital time keeping. Kathleen’s Game is experienced as the centerpiece of a makeshift cafe and free bookstore inhabiting the gallery space in which it is exhibited. Stanley lives and works in Bucharest, Romania.
KRISTIN WENZEL born in 1983 in Gotha, East Germany, lives and works in Bucharest and Gotha. She received an MA from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2013. Kristin Wenzel’s multidisciplinary practice involves large-scales installations, sculptures and interventions in public space, often created as site-specific and site-sensitive social environments. Drawn to micro-architecture, such as kiosks, vitrines and flower shops, the visual scanning and mapping of places and buildings is an ongoing process undertaken by the artist. She tackles the implications of public architecture as both ‘memory foam’ – inscribed with its particular history – and open structure – allowing it to be strayed from its original design. The notion of transformation, be it conceptual or material, permeates her entire practice and connects the past and present through processes of collecting and reinterpreting. Her projects embed the production of temporary spaces and identities through playful environments that visitors are invited to inhabit. In 2018, together with the artists Vlad Brateanu, Alice Gancevici & Remus Puscariu, she co-founded Template, an artists’ initiative and exhibition project in Bucharest.
The project is co-financed by the Municipal Council of Bucharest through ARCUB, part of the București afectiv Programme 2022. The content of this project does not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the Municipal Council of Bucharest or ARCUB.
Graphic design: Eugen Neluțescu
Visuals photo credits: Personal archives of Timothy Stanley & Kristin Wenzel