SHORT DECLAMATIONS FOR A PLACE — BOOKLET AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD

A SHORT GEOAFFECTIVE BUCHAREST GUIDE

Short Declamations for a Place is a booklet-kit intended to accompany the reader in a walk through Bucharest, by bringing together 9 texts authored by visual artists, writers or journalists. The booklet urges the reader to occupy and interact with the public space, often overlooked, by reading or reciting the texts , accessing and incorporating, in the most literal sense of the word, various contemporary artistic approaches.

The booklet is part of Practiced Places, an event series orbiting the contemporary conditions of public space and public sculpture, 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.

Short Declamations For A Place

Authors

Dana Andrei occupies various positions on the cultural work spectrum, most often working within collectives and collaborative configurations, and since 2013 she has been working as a duo together with Sorin Popescu. They research subjects such as the surveillance economy, the institutionalization of art, pop culture, ecological thought and public discourse. Since 2018, she is one of the editors of IDEA arts + society journal.

Bogdan Bălan (b. 1997) is active in contemporary art scene on various positions. He graduated in Art History and Theory with a thesis on Brazilian anthropophagic modernity.

Irina Bujor The work of Irina Bujor is based on formal associations which open a singular poetic vein; multilayered images and installations are highlighting the fragility and instability that question our seemingly certain reality. By applying a wide variety of analytic strategies, Irina Bujor develops a multifaceted practice around ordinary phenomena that tend to go unnoticed in topics she is obsessed with: laughter, gender, factories producing popular culture and things permeating other things.

Larisa Crunțeanu‘s practice as performer, video artist and sound collector moves from reality to fiction in an endless conversation with the viewer. She studied Journalism and Photography and Dynamic Image, and in 2021 she succesfully defended her PhD thesis at the University of Art in Bucharest. Larisa Crunţeanu’s works create contexts in which facts and memories are reactivated, encouraging a shared effort and the emergence of new practices. Many of her projects reflect on the notion of collaboration and the ideas existing behind objects and stories. Her works were shown in important institutions such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Biennale Matter of Art Prague, SAVVY Berlin, Zacheta Project Room Warsaw, RKI Berlin, Museu de Arte Brasieira – MAB FAAP, São Paulo. In 2022, Larisa Crunțeanu will publish the book titled Protocols of Singularity.

Teona Galgoțiu (b. 1998, Bucharest) is a film director and writer. Her films participated in the short film sections or seminars of Sarajevo Film Festival, Oberhausen International Film Festival, Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, and her texts have been published in anthologies and online publications such as Zona Nouă, Dear Virginia , Subchapter, Lighthouse Literary Journal. She is part of the organising team of Super Festival since 2014 and is the founder of Gura Mare platform, which explores poetry through interdisciplinary projects. In 2020 she debuted with “I look back and disappear”, a poetry volume, at OMG Publishing (“Iustin Panța” Debut Award, ARCCA Poetry Book of the Year) and is currently working on a play about the end of the world.

Adriana Gheorghe works with performance and writing, on their margins. Her activities, from poetry / speculative theology / grave irreverent theory and visual fiction to performance research and hybrid pedagogy in both academic and galleries/ black box contexts and, last but not least, performative work and research curating are, all reformulations of the same ongoing devotion to performativity. She works with specific definitions, understanding performativity as a space of affect opening up endless potentiality in language and as counterintuitive dosage between the structures of thought and situated, somatic knowledge. She works in various proximity constellations with unsituated artists and maintains ongoing collaboration with Susanne Grau, Lilach Livne and Alina Popa. Showed work at Pact Essen, Brut Viena, ZKM Karlsruhe, Pa-f St Erme, Atar Museum Tel Aviv, KuLe Berlin, Akademie Schloss Solitude, TanzFaktur Cologne, ICR Berlin, Tranzit and other galleries in Bucharest, Paintbrush Factory Cluj, National Dance Center Bucharest, Contemporary Art National Museum Bucharest etc.

Nicoleta Moise (*1989) is an artist and journalist based in Bucharest. Through the use of archive material and entangled narratives, her practice is focused on making visible less known stories, characters or events, which requires time and longer, careful work. In 2018, she co-founded CUTRA, a queer feminist magazine. She currently collaborates with Scena9, an online publication that charts the cultural scene in Romania (and elsewhere).

Jean-Lorin Sterian is a researcher, writer, artist and performer currently based in Bucharest. He has a master in anthropology from the SNSPA (2009) and a master in “Society, Multimedia, Spectacle” (CESI, 2015) and a PhD in social sciences, researching what he coined to be “homemade” culture. In 2008 he opened the lorgean theatre, the first living-room theater in Romania and since 2014 he manages “HomeFest”, an arts festival held only in houses and flats. He published several fiction books and one anthropological book related with his experience of turning his house into a public space for performances. Since 2009 he has been interested in performance and visual art. Jean-Lorin Sterian worked as a performer for two projects at “An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale” (2013) and “The Sinthome Score” (2015, Dora Garcia) when he also performed his own independent art project, “The parasite socks project”, as a statement against the biennale. He created performance shows like “We Need To Talk About lorgean” (2014), “Strip-tease” (2013, with Alice Pons) and “Zugzwang” (2012). In 2016-2017 he was a fellow at Schloss Akademie Solitude.

Carolina Vozian was born and raised in Republica Moldova. As a child she loved to read & write stories, in their various forms. In recent years she has been facilitating creative writing workshops, curated an anthology of speculative prose (Lumile Noastre Posibile), wrote a queer play (Negreșită), and various other texts that appeared online and in zines, magazines, collective volumes.

ISBN 978-973-0-37445-2

Published in October 2022
Editor –  Irina Radu
Translated by Maria Persu
Photos –  all the photos belong to the authors
Graphic design – Andreea Ilisăi  

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.