The Experimental Research Station for the environment, technology and society of the future
March 2018 – December 2019
tranzit. ro/ București
Str. Gazelei 44, sector 4
In the 5 years since its founding, tranzit.ro/ București functioned in an accelerated rhythm, in which as money and resources were becoming less available, the pressure to produce – events, discourse, objects, atmosphere, attention – increased; as the menace with non-existence and the precarious position of artists in society became more acute, the insistence on presence and claiming artists’ rights proved the more necessary; as public spaces in which to manifest a critical consciousness were shrinking, keeping alive such a space was crucial. Refuge, place for meetings, discussions, production, exhibiting, regrouping, the space of tranzit.ro in Bucharest fulfilled all these roles (as the spaces of tranzit.ro in Cluj and Iasi did it too). Things have changed meanwhile. Cultural, artistic and civic/ social activism spaces are perhaps not more but better defined, strategies are better targeted and more powerful, new or upcoming alliances have more chances to make a collective voice heard. It is the voice of a community that struggles to survive and at the same time to counter a context in which neoliberalism, returning fascisms, ignorant revisionism, bigotry and nationalism are deepening the fractures in a society already dried of hope. tranzit.ro/ București remains in solidarity with this community and open towards it, at the same time continuing the long-term projects and collaborations already started. However, for the moment it withdraws from the sphere of production to that of reflection, aiming to explore and experiment outside the agendas dictated by a fearmongering and retrograde context.
In the next two years, tranzit.ro/ București will continue the directions opened since 2014 through the “/ Natural” programme and will build around an experimental and international research Station, where the topics approached will include: the impact of climate change, the emancipatory role of technology in everyday life as well as the critique of its instrumentalisation for commercial or surveillance and control purposes, projections upon a less dystopian and fairer society of the future and others, from an artistic and pluridisciplinary perspective, aimed against the obscurantism which seems to be the dominant thread of the present. Symbolically, a station connotes also a stop, be it temporary, a necessary stop especially when transition/ transiting lose their meaning in the absence of a destination.
Several research modules will be organised within this Station. Alongside giving time and space for research and experimentation, these modules will concretise in different forms, from seminars, artistic-scientific expeditions, databases to exhibitions or publications.
The first such module starts from the Tranzit Garden, a project of tranzit.ro/ București, which developed organically in the past 5 years, with a life parallel to the institution’s artistic one, but gradually starting to influence it, and imposing itself as an important identity feature of the space on Gazelei Street. Thus, some of the artists involved in the permaculture group of Tranzit Garden and whose interest extends in the area of natural sciences will constitute the starting nucleus of the research module called Amborella*, dedicated to botanical species (on the verge of extinction or (re)apparition, native species vs. exotic ones, invasive, resilient, edible or simply imaginary species). These artists are: Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Athena Dumitriu, Claudiu Cobilanschi & Iulia Toma, Dana Andrei & Sorin Popescu, Daniela Pălimariu, Kiki Mihuță, Olivia Mihălțianu & Stoyan Dechev, Raluca Popa, Simona Dumitriu & Ramona Dima, V.Leac, Vilmos Koter, Vlad Basalici. Their research, following their specific interests and practice, will be accompanied by other events on the topic, involving other guests from different fields and contexts.
Gradually, more modules will be initiated on the mentioned themes, which are to be announced as they unfold.
The Station’s team: Raluca Voinea, Iuliana Dumitru, Edi Constantin
The Station benefits already from several strategic partnerships, with:
The Research Centre for the Study of the Quality of Horti-viticultural products and Useful Substances in Plants, within the Horticultural Faculty in Bucharest
The Image Processing and Analysis Laboratory (LAPI), within the Polytechnic University in Bucharest
Czech Centre Bucharest
Zeppelin Magazine
Post/h/um. Journal of (post)humanist studies
LevArt, Levanger, Norway, through the project Park and The Black Cube, Oslo, Norway
For further information you can write to iuliana.dumitru@tranzit.org or raluca.voinea@tranzit.org. ERSTE Foundation is the main partner of tranzit.ro.
*Amborella trichopoda is a plant that systematists place, based on molecular phylogenetic analyses, at or near the base of the flowering plant lineage.
