Mihaela Moldovan: The Endless Thread of Hope
tranzit.ro/București and The Last Archive present:
Mihaela Moldovan: The Endless Thread of Hope
21 December 2024, 2-6 p.m.
A temporary intervention at the Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life
Int. Primaverii no. 10, Silistea Snagovului village
GPS Coordinates
A ball of straws is wrapped in a lacery made from fragile but strong cord, bringing together the organic and modest material that forms the core of the work and the thread as a long-standing symbol of connectedness in the world and to the other layers of life. Situated in the field and interacting with the natural elements, the object becomes a small sun fallen on the ground, a glimmer of colour and hope during the short winter days. Gradually, surrounded by the growing vegetation in spring and baked by the real sun in summer, the ball of straws and string will become and belong to the earth, will disappear into the landscape which, for a short while, it had attempted to treat as an upside down sky.
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L’Internationale presents two new publications: Soils & Collective Study in Times of Emergency
L’Internationale presents two new publications:
Soils
internationaleonline.org/publications/soils
Soils was published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum.
Soil is a strong and resistant material. It is alive, it breathes, and it can recover. In this exhibition, soil is seen as both matter and metaphor. For some, soil is used as an artistic vehicle. For others, soil is a metaphor for the possibility of not only resistance but also the re-existence of under-standing about our relations with the Earth today.
This book is a reflection on the Soils exhibition in the Van Abbemuseum. The exhibition was five years in the planning and the book leads you through the various phases of its realisation. Alongside a rich selection of images, it includes texts by the three curators, artists and key interlocutors: Teresa Cos Rebollo, Zena Cumpston Charles Esche, Wapke Feenstra/Inez Dekker, Victoria Lynn, Struggles for Sovereignty and Rolando Vazquez.
The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life had a small display presented in the Soils exhibition, curated by the Resurrection Committee (Adelina Luft, Ovidiu Țichindeleanu, Raluca Voinea), with contributions from Anonymous artist (Transylvania, 19th century), Adelina Ivan, Anang Saptoto, Eduard Constantin, Livia Pancu.
vanabbemuseum.nl/en/see-and-do/exhibitions-activities/soils
Collective Study in Times of Emergency
internationaleonline.org/publications/collective-study-in-times-of-emergency/
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News from the Station
Dear friends, followers and distant readers,
It has been a tough year for us at the Station: drought, sorrow, building work advancing too slowly and older age settling in too quickly. Yet: the plants we saved from being completely scorched, the vegetables that our neighbours still managed to harvest, the new neighbours who did not let themselves discouraged and joined us on the lands nearby the Station, the friends who came to plant and the new visitors who came to listen, what we did manage to build, the allies and peers from distant places, the sunsets and the green grass emerging after the rain, the insects we didn’t have last year, the lizards called Sam, they were all so many reasons for encouragement, helping us to counter the agenda of doom guiding life in other places, close and afar.
December should have been a time of celebrating our collective survival for another year, instead, we find ourselves stranded in the only territory that still feels safe for the moment: our imaginary of hope, our horizon of trust in people’s desires for the common good rather than for the individual capitulation in front of the apocalypse. We (people at and around the Station, birds, artichokes, insects, lizards, stray dogs and more) think this territory can be as wide as we want to stretch it, as fertile as we struggle to irrigate it, as welcoming as we dare to make it.
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Some of Us Did Not Die
Autumn planting workshop /
Saturday, 9 November 2024, 11 to 5 p.m.
The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life,
Intrarea Primaverii no. 10, Silistea Snagovului village, north of Bucharest, Romania
GPS coordinates
In Autumn 2022 we planted the first trees of the Cosmos Garden, when the war in Ukraine was still in its early days and the earth was sending vibrations of the bombs falling and the ecocide in progress. In Autumn 2023, after the 7th of October attack of Hamas and the ensuing massacre of Palestinians, turned into an ongoing genocide, we were planting fruit trees that were to become an orchard of hope. Apricot, pear, sour cherry, almond and quince trees. In Jewish Palestinian Aramaic language, quince was known as the miraculous fruit. In Autumn 2024, while Lebanon is being bombed, we organise another collective planting session. We will plant a Lebanese cedar, more fruit trees including a quince type named Constantinople, grape vine and others.
With the privilege and responsibility of being still alive, we continue to plant life and to cultivate hope, even when reason itself turned against it.
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Images of the Good Life in the East
Exhibition and Forum /
Chișinău, 14-28 September 2024
Exhibition participants: Darya Tsymbalyuk, Ghenadie Popescu, Maria Doni, Marina Sulima, Nikita Kadan, Pavel Brăila, Tatiana Fiodorova, Alexandra Tatar, Ana Barbu, Ana Kun, Andrei Nacu, Catherine Morland, Daria Nedelcu in collaboration with Cyrill Lim, Jo Brăilescu, Irina Botea & Jon Dean, Lilia Nenescu, Maria Mora in collaboration with Tudor Vlădescu, Paula Dunker, Raluca Popa, Silvia Dogaru
Exhibition venues: Bunker, Lutnița, Zpațiu
Opening: 14 September 2024
Forum participants: Charles Esche (online), Corina Oprea (online), Elena Crippa, Irina Cios, Magda Radu, Miki Braniște (online), Sara Buraya, Theo Prodromidis, Zdenka Badovinac (online), Diana Munteanu, Lilia Dragneva, Nora Dorogan, Octavian Eșanu (online), Pavel Brăila, Rusanda Curcă, Ştefan Rusu, Tatiana Fiodorova, Valeria Barbas, Vitalie Sprînceană, Vladimir Us and others
National Art Museum of Moldova
15 September 2024
Curators: The Resurrection Committee (Adelina Luft, Nora Dorogan, Ovidiu Țichindeleanu, Raluca Voinea)
From 14 to 28 September 2024 the project “Images of the Good Life in the East” will take place in Chișinău, organized by tranzit.ro/Bucharest in partnership with teatru-spălătorie, Ksak Association (Center for Contemporary Art Chișinău) and Bunker space, Lutnița gallery, Zpațiu, and The National Art Museum of Moldova. Curated by Adelina Luft, Nora Dorogan, Ovidiu Țichindeleanu, and Raluca Voinea, the project consists of an exhibition in the partner spaces with an opening on 14 September, and a public forum at the National Art Museum of Moldova taking place on 15 September.
The exhibition brings together artists from Moldova and Ukraine: Ghenadie Popescu, Marina Sulima, Tatiana Fiodorova, Pavel Brăila, Darya Tsymbalyuk, Maria Doni, Nikita Kadan, together with 14 participants from the independent course “Non-Western Technologies for the Good Life” (October 2023 - May 2024): Alexandra Tatar, Ana Barbu, Ana Kun, Andrei Nacu, Catherine Morland, Daria Nedelcu in collaboration with Cyrill Lim, Jo Brăilescu, Irina Botea & Jon Dean, Lilia Nenescu, Maria Mora in collaboration with Tudor Vlădescu, Paula Dunker, Raluca Popa, and Silvia Dogaru.
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Quiet Food Sovereignity in Eaestern Europe
Lecture /
With Natalia Momonova (Ukraine/Norway)
respondent: Valer Simion Cosma (Romania)
Friday, 19th 2024, 6-8 p.m
at The National Museum of Romania Peasant (Sala Acvariu entrance from the restaurant)
Cover credits: watercolor painting by Natalia Mamonova
Feeding a growing world population with sustainably produced food has been a challenge and it became critically important in the wake of covid-19, climate change, the wars in ukraine and gaza, and the rise of the far right in europe. while politicians debate how to make our food systems more innovative and resilient, there is a solution that has been available and practised in eastern europe for decades. smallholder farming and local food networks are widespread in many post-socialist countries, but are not typically seen as sustainable alternatives to globalised industrial agriculture. meanwhile, as the example of ukraine has shown, these practices are not only environmentally friendly and sustainable, but also capable of feeding the country’s population with healthy food in peace and wartime.
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Discussion around the book Bright Ecologies with Caretto/Spagna
Saturday, 6th of July.2024, at 2. p.m
A meeting at The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life
GPS Coordinates
The Italian artistic duo Caretto/Spagna will present their first monograph entitled "Bright Ecologies. Caretto/Spagna: experiences, forms, materials" which extensively traces and documents more than 20 years of their artistic research structured on research involving care, the transformation of matter and experiments in form, materialized in sculptures, site-specific installations, laboratories, residencies, actions, and collective projects based on encounter, process, gift, participation, and co-authorship. The result of a close dialogue between artists, curators, and the publisher, the publication blends a documentary approach, critical and theoretical interpretation, and a rich body of descriptions and images.
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Summer Kitchen in progress
The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life,
Intrarea Primaverii no. 10, Silistea Snagovului village, north of Bucharest, Romania
GPS coordinates
Inspired by multi-functional annexes in the post-Ottoman tradition of rural Romania, Atelier Ad Hoc designed a building that is part of a core infrastructure for the Station. Part kitchen, part storage-space, including functions such as pergola for climbing plants and time indicator through an incorporated sundial, the construction is complementary to a series of eco-prototypes that serve each other to represent both tools of conviviality and ways of coexisting with the environment in a less damaging way. Thus, the kitchen will provide the space and storage for preparing food, which is to be cooked using the oven Demeter, built in 2023 from recycled bricks and clay from the area by poet V. Leac, and also the space for washing the dishes, with the grey water circulated through a phytoremediation system designed by atelier d'architecture autogérée and implemented at the Station in 2023-2024.
With the collaboration of Andrei Savonea, the kitchen structure installed this summer will receive its inside shells and outside walls this November.
If you are an architecture or design student, a carpenter, or simply someone who dreamt about assembling a kitchen without IKEA type of instructions, you are welcome to join one of the sessions in which we bring this structure closer to its final shape.
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Acting with others: collaborative practices across architecture, design, and radical pedagogies
A series of presentations followed by a discussion and dinner in the garden
With:
Floating (Berlin) / Kristin Lazarova and Jöran Mandik
El Warcha (Tunis) / Aziz Aissaoui, Radhouane Boudhraa, and Marlène Halguevache
Atelier Adhoc Community (Bucharest) / George Marinescu and Daria Oancea
Wednesday, 26 June 2024, 17:00 – 21:00
At The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life
Organised under the frame of the Creative Europe project Architecture, Biodiversity, Culture [ABC]. Building ecological institutions for culture, the event brings together three self-organised practices of civic action that operate at the intersection of different disciplines through collaborative work and ways of coming together that respond to the specific conditions of each site. Driven by an interest and desire to cultivate collaborations, taking care of neighbourhood connections, building temporary urban furniture and installations with local inhabitants, or by developing potential living scenarios for marginalised urban communities, all three projects seek a new language of practice or new practices altogether for imagining and creating different forms of living.
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Residency and artistic intervention – Jaana Kokko
24 June – 3 July 2024
The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life
Siliștea Snagovului village
After a Gregorian calendar year, Helsinki-based artist Jaana Kokko returns to the village of Siliștea Snagovului. She is interested in gathering with the plants that are growing on the sides, taking the position of being not in the center. She asks: What are they revealing us with their hidden pigments and forms? And even more: What does it need from a garden to become a place/ space for emancipation, a place for political enlightenment?
Her search in the fields around the Station is inspired by dear places of her past, and the emotional connection to Maitohorsma, Fireweed (Ebilobium angustifolium).
The plant is very common in Finland, and it appears especially when the forests are cut clear, which is unfortunately still very common practice. One hundred years Fireweed was still rare in Central Europe, but the burning ruins of both world wars gave space for it and it started to blossom on the lands emptied by fire. The leaves of Fireweed unveil a yellow light pigment. The color gives pleasure, when it appears, it feels like a small, uncovered secret.
After her research residency at the Station last year, Jaana focuses this time on a precise task, albeit one that shows the ephemerality of being in this world. Collecting flowers and seeds from the area, while paying attention these are plentiful, she extracts the pigments from them, using the organic colours afterwards for woodcut printing. At the same time, this offers the team of the Station an occasion to learn the skill of working with plants pigments in order to further challenge the community of artists around (as well as the children in the village) on the importance of materials used in art, and of accepting the limited time an art work may exist in the world.
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Flowing Streams Residency
at The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life /
15 June – 15 July 2024
Václav Šana (The Czech Republic) has been selected to join Flowing Streams, a multi-residency project in rural areas of Romania exploring local approaches to the cultural ecology of water, organized by EUNIC Romania in collaboration with curator Adelina Luft.
At The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life at Silistea Snagovului, Václav will document and evaluate pre-selected sites from the vicinity of The Station, including Lake Snagov and other sources of ground water. He will look at the scale, social, cultural and environmental aspects of the water sources to develop an analytical documentation of the water channels through diagrams and drawings.
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Residency and artistic intervention – Darya Tsymbalyuk
June – July 2024
The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life
Siliștea Snagovului village
“If, following rivers and rivulets, lagoons, meadows, plavni, and forests, you keep going down southwest from the south of Ukraine, you might eventually pass over the Stația experimentală de cercetare pentru artă și viață. Perhaps, then, looking up at the sky for a second, I will catch a glimpse of you, a greeting from places that have raised me.
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