tranzit.ro/ bucurești/ cluj/ iași/ sibiu/

Opening on Thursday, 12th of December, 7 p.m.
Brassai Sámuel Street, no. 5, Cluj-Napoca


Société Réaliste, in cooperation with computer engineer Frédéric Mauclère, has developed a software calculating average musical notations from MIDI files. The artists used this new software to calculate the average national anthem of the 193 member states of the United Nations. It is known that although the UN is an organization born from the union of nations according to its name, does not have an anthem, a song which is going beyond the nation states self-image and self-definition. But if we think about it, the pursuit of universality can’t really be sung as long as the individual states formulate their separation, dissimilarity from the other states and nations in their anthems. So the writing of any universal anthem containing national aspirations and brought to common ground is doomed to be unsuccessful. The software, of course, carries out the operation by decomposing track by track all these anthems. It means that the very first note is the average of all the 193 first notes, the second note is the average of all the 193 second notes, etc. until the last note of the longest anthem. The universal anthem containing every anthem is born as such, but being rendered only out of machinic algorithms, it remains unplayable by traditional instruments and living people.

In the exhibition space tranzit.ro/Cluj, with the contribution of the Agile orchestra (conductor Dalma Lidia Kovács) and composer Cora Miron, the artists will attempt the inevitable human interpretation: they will try to play the composition generated for 12 instruments. At the exhibition, besides the universal anthem interpreted and performed by the orchestra, the scores written by the computer program for 12 instruments can also be viewed.

The artistic cooperative Société Réaliste was founded in 2004 by Gróf Ferenc (1972) and Jean-Baptiste Naudy (1982). Universal Anthem is part of the thematic research project Culture States, which examines the continuous divergence and interlacement between the political entities and the different fields of culture, in parallel with the manifold dependence of the cultural construction. Universal Anthem was first presented by Société Réaliste in the exhibition "Thelema of Nations" at Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris.

Since 2012, Société Réaliste has presented its exhibition project "empire, state, building" at MNAC, Bucharest and Ludwig Muzeum, Budapest as well as various solo shows in New York ("A rough guide to Hell", P!), Athens ("The Shape of Orders to Come", Salon de Vortex), Warsaw ("Komfortkampf, Lokal 30) and Paris ("Thelema of Nations", Galerie Jérôme Poggi; "Monotopia", Galerie Michel Rein). In 2013, they also took part in numerous group exhibitions in Aachen, Budapest, Bruxelles, Chennai, Cluj, Dresden, Istanbul, Paris, Rome, or Thessaloniki.