Reading Evald Ilyenkov
Friday, 22th of November 2024
tranzit. ro/Cluj,
Napoca str, no 16, 1st floor, Cluj Napoca
Evald Ilyenkov (1924-1979) is the most important Soviet Marxist philosopher of the postwar. He has written on a large gamut of subjects, from problems of theoretical philosophy, theory of knowledge, the concepts of the “abstract” and the “concrete”, the “ideal”, and the universal, to Marx’s materialist dialectical method in Capital, problems of cybernetics, automation, machine-thinking, to problems of pedagogy, theory of education, psychology, human mind, and ethics and aesthetics. Ilyenkov can be considered the philosophical originator of what is known as “activity theory” in the Soviet Union, which in its turn precedes what is known as Cultural-Historical Activity Theory internationally nowadays. The concepts, ideas and theories of Ilyenkov have influenced generations of younger philosophers from the 1950s to present in Eastern Europe, while recently enjoying an increased attention in the anglophone world.
The aim of these monthly reading seminars is to closely familiarize the participants with the key concepts and theories developed by Ilyenkov with the hope of utilizing them in the face of contemporary polycrisis.
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Upcoming: The fifth edition of Ecologies of Emancipation – Imminent horizon: fascism or imperialism?
Organizational work of the fifth edition of the Ecologies of Emancipation summer school has begun. The school will take place at the hypha_etc campsite in Câmpu Cetății, between 10-16 August 2025.
The latest political and geopolitical developments, local and global, seem to confront us with a threatening double horizon: an accelerated slide towards fascism, or an equally precipitous retreat into imperialism - with all the overlaps, complicities and continuities between them. On the one side, then, a European democratic establishment that can only articulate its immediate future by renouncing the last remnants of a distributist state and democratic appearances, in a general arms race that promises nothing but authoritarianism and austerity at home, and devastating inter-imperialist conflicts on a global scale. On the other side, a populist insurgent bloc with deep roots and complicity in the very systems and apparatuses of Euro-Atlantic democracies, which is no longer shy in displaying its assumed fascism, and which promises, just as grimly, a harsh regime of austerity and authoritarianism at home, coupled with an equally provocative and bellicose attitude abroad, only in the name of a different set of values.
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Listening to the Earth Beyond Silence
10.5.2025 - 9.8.2025
Kunsthalle Seinäjoki, Art and Culture Centre Kalevan Navetta, Nyykoolinkatu 25, Seinäjoki, Finland
An exhibition curated by The Resurrection Committee: Adelina Luft, Ovidiu Tichindeleanu, Raluca Voinea
With contributions from:
The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life & Adelina Ivan, Darya Tsymbalyuk, Eduard Constantin, Jaana Kokko, V. Leac, Vlad Basalici
Collectivo Suumil Móokt’aan & Valiana Aguilar
Weaving Realities & Aldo Esparza Ramos, Yuchen Li
PARI (Panen Apa Hari Ini) & Anang Saptoto
Ingenious trackers overcame the limits of what can be seen by putting their ears to the ground in order to listen to the movement of horses or of a herd of animals coming from a distance. The Earth, large and all-welcoming, holds the weight of all our movements, across seas and continents. Can we learn though to listen to each other? Do we still have time – and do we give ourselves the time to listen beyond silence?
Four different collectives that are re-learning to listen to the Earth beyond silence are bringing here signs from the lands of China, Indonesia, Netherlands, Romania, and Yucatan, among others.
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CULTIVATORS OF LIFE
Announcement of a new two-year program: CULTIVATORS OF LIFE, initiated by tranzit.ro/Bucharest Association in partnership with MODEM – Center for Modern Contemporary Art in Debrecen, co-financed by The Administration of the National Cultural Fund.
Cultivators of Life is a cultural program that continues and supports the activities started in 2021 at the Experimental Research Station for Research on Art and Life in Siliștea Snagovului, focused on conserving biodiversity, testing ecological prototypes, and rethinking the relationship between soils, materials and artistic production. The program proposes the study and formulation of a new lexicon and practices related to an emerging relationship between indigenous/ancestral knowledge, land cultivation and natural sciences. It will be carried out by organizing a series of artistic residencies at the Experimental Station and in the city of Debrecen in Hungary, public events in four gardens outside Bucharest, applied workshops, conferences with indigenous philosophers and local guests at the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, and a final group exhibition at MODEM – Center for Modern and Contemporary Art in Debrecen scheduled to open in October 2026.
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Marxism in the Sciences: Toward an International Critical Knowledge Network
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION /
Marxism & Sciences Journal, in collaboration with tranzit.ro/cluj, organises its second symposium at the hypha_etc campsite in Câmpu Cetății (Romania) between 1–6 September, which attempts to foster a forum for discussing the chances for collectively building up an international network of projects in particular pertaining to Radical Science and Art activism, Socialist Heritage Studies and Critical Contemporary Research.
In today’s situation, when Marxist thought seems ‘undead’ and has retreated to the academic realm, all we offer, it seems, are attempts at dissemination of ideas and publication projects (book series, journals etc.). We want to discuss what can be done about it and how that ‘retreat’ is not fortuitous, since Marxist terminology seems indispensable especially in the realm of ‘knowledge production’ and ‘knowledge economy’. We would like to discuss the possibility of building up a platform of exchange, education and information that goes beyond a collection of papers, pamphlets, and books that describe the situation, but to actively connect local grassroots activism and global academic and artistic research. The split of the realms seems to be a major obstacle to us nowadays. This aim in mind we should start in the fields we already work in.
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Mimosa Pudica
Residency of artist Valentina Vetturi and a get-together on 26 April 2025 /
The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life
Int. Primaverii no. 10, Silistea Snagovului village
After more than 10 years since her first collaboration with tranzit.ro/Bucharest, artist Valentina Vetturi returns, this time in relation to Mimosa Pudica, her performative research on how learning about their memory with plants can inform principles of digital ecologies.
“At the core of this research are two questions that have fueled my artistic practice for over a decade: how do we remember and forget individually and as a society? And what remains of us when we no longer remember anything or if we remember too much? The movement, the space created between the experiences of forgetting and remembering, shapes the essence, the core of our mutating, hybrid, multiple identities as individuals and collectives. Over the years, I have sought answers to these questions in the persistence of music in human memory. I have looked at web technologies and the depths of their permanent records, and I have observed the fragile memory of papier-mâché dissolving in water. With Mimosa Pudica, I turn to the plant world. Inverting the human-centric perspective, I activate listening, observation, interaction, and learning practices with plants, questioning how they remember and if they forget. This individual listening phase alternates with discursive practices and shared experiences among plants and scholars from diverse disciplines and machines.
During the residency at the Station, we’ll observe some of the plants of the Cosmos Garden and invite a few Mimosa Pudica in the conversation. An ongoing observation in collaboration with tranzit.ro will begin in these days and last until September and maybe more. Parallelly, similar ongoing observations are running physically and remotely in Bari, London, and Hagen.
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On language, history, care
Artist talk: Theo Prodromidis
Friday, 11th of April, 2025, 7 pm - 8.30 pm
@tranzitiasi,
Address: Str. Sf. Atanasie nr. 25, Iași
Theo Prodromidis will expand on his personal history of art practice through collaborative processes and working relationships as a starting point and take a self-reflective look through the challenges of aesthetic production of crisis (for and from Athens) but also through involvement in initiatives on solidarity education and social movements. Theo will invite us to follow threads of language, fragments of oral history and reflect upon places of care.
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Wild, Uncultivated and Spontaneous at La Casa Encendida, Madrid
Tranzit Garden and Cosmos Garden are included in the Festival
Wild, Uncultivated and Spontaneous at La Casa Encendida, Madrid
18 March – 6 April 2025
As part of the Salvajes, Silvestres y Espontáneas 2025 festival at La Casa Encendida, Paisanaje collective in Madrid creates a mural-diagram installation, which presents an open map of projects that reinterpret community gardens as spaces for learning and experimentation.
Paisanaje, with its dual curatorial and artistic nature, presents a selection of initiatives that, from different cities, are exploring new ways of inhabiting the world alongside other species. These gardens invite us to imagine alternative relationships with living beings, where scientific knowledge intertwines with the poetics of our coexistence with plants, animals, and fungi.
Installed on the mezzanine wall, the exhibition functions as a living archive—a space for the exchange of knowledge and the convergence of inspiring proposals. Eight invited projects will share documents, photographs, audio recordings, and manifestos, allowing connections to emerge between their experiences and those of visitors to the space.
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Spring works at the Station
The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life
Int. Primaverii no. 10, Silistea Snagovului village, north of Bucharest, Romania
GPS coordinates
The Station is a participatory place, where the fruits of the earth are more plentiful when grown with a multiplicity of hands, where the songs of birds reverberate through many ears that are willing to hear them, where we see the generosity of the plants in return for us taking care of them and where we can touch the stories of those who helped building the structures we use. If you want to take part in this process, of planting, building, mending, accompanied by cooking, listening, remembering, drop us a line at raluca.voinea@tranzit.org. The open sessions usually take place on Saturdays.
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Fellowships for Curators and Artists at Salzburg Summer Academy 2025
CALL for APPLICATIONS now open until APRIL 6th, 2025 /
The Fellowships for Curators and Artists at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg are part of ERSTE Foundation’s educational program and its long-term endeavour to support and strengthen contemporary art especially in the region of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. The fellowship program is realized together with ERSTE Foundation’s long-time cooperation partners from tranzit, Igor Zabel Association and Kontakt Collection. Kontakt Collection collaborates with the Zagreb based WHW Akademija.
ERSTE Foundation offers fourteen fellowships for young artists and emerging curators from Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine to take part in a course of their choice at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg 2025.
Every summer some 300 students from more than 50 countries participate in over 20 classes at the Salzburg Summer Academy. Well-known artists, curators and critics from all over the world offer courses focusing on topical questions of art production, as well as curatorial practice and writing about art.
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Moving away from Meta
tranzit.ro/București is gradually withdrawing from the social media platforms owned by Meta corporation. To be consistent with our programmes and mission, we can no longer legitimate and invest (time, energy, data) into an instrument of censorship and repression, which is currently in the service of a political regime that is prioritizing the violent erasure of truth and the disestablishment of the most common human rights.
In active search for other platforms where we can communicate with our peers and our publics, you can meanwhile find us on Bluesky: @tranzitb.bsky.social, on Pixelfed: pixelfed.social/Statia, and you can subscribe to our newsletter on https://ro.tranzit.org/en/newsletter/.
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In the Blink of an Ear
An interdisciplinary sound art workshop,
10th - 15th of February 2025
Public presentation,
Saturday, 15th of February 2025
tranzit.ro/ Iași
Adress: Sf. Atanasie Street, no. 25, Iași, Romania
Workshop Description
The hands-on workshop In the Blink of an Ear delves into the multi-layered concept of listening and the constellation body-sound-space. Through various listening exercises and soundwalks, we will explore the intricate relationship between our body, the bodies of others and the surrounding space. This year’s workshop will focus on the theme of “Playing The City”. The city of Iasi will be our inspiration to develop ideas or scores and to collect materials for creation, such as acoustic phenomena, environmental sounds, or reflections on and about sound.
To expand the interaction between sound and space, we will introduce, alongside our physical presence, simple and readily accessible devices: piezo, coils, recorders or MP3 players, smartphones or small speakers. This will form the basis for the individual / collaborative artistic works created as part of this project, which will be presented in an open atelier day format at the tranzit.ro gallery in Iași.
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Marxism in the Sciences: Toward an International Critical Knowledge Network
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION /
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ERSTE Foundation is main partner of tranzit:
