Č˜tefan Constantinescu
Contents This is a non profit publication produced in connection with Ștefan Constantinescu’s exhibitions Den gyllene eran för barn at Botkyrka konsthall and Archive of Pain at the Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm. exhibition producers: Miriam Andersson Blecher, Joanna Sandell, Giorgiana Zachia exhibition assistants: Daniel Andreescu, Simona Buzatu, Caroline Malmström project manager in romania: Angelica Iacob graphic designer: Arina Stoenescu copyediting and proofreading: Brita Johnson, L. Allen Poole, Caroline Malmström photo sources: Ștefan Constantinescu, Nils Klinger © 2008 Eroik and respective authors. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be copied or reproduced without the written permission of the authors and Eroik. publishers: The Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm, Labyrint Press and pionier press paper: 300 gsm Arctic Volume White for cover and 170 gsm Arctic Volume White for insert typefaces: Adobe Garamond Pro, Futura Black OT Std run: 1,000 Printed by HS Grafiska (Stockholm) 2008. isbn: 978-91-977432-3-5 (The Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm) isbn: 978-91-87440-96-0 (Labyrint Press) isbn: 978-91-977927-0-7 (pionier press) Financed by Botkyrka konsthall (Stockholm), Eroik (Bucharest), Labyrint Press (Stockholm), The Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs: Promocult 2008 (Romania), pionier press (Stockholm), The Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm. produced by eroik (bucharest).
5 : 13 : 18 : 2 1: 2 9 :
thank you for this wonderful day Tom Sandqvist
can you feel the pain of the other? Anders Kreuger
the passage Marita Castro
interview with ștefan constantinescu Giorgiana Zachia
the golden age for children at botkyrka konsthall Miriam Andersson Blecher romanian translation, p. 30 swedish translation, p. 31
2 9 : Joanna Sandell
3 2 : curriculum vitae
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labyrint press
romanian translation, p. 30 swedish translation, p. 31
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projects – visual documentation
Good night children! (2008) 3 min. video, plastic toys, rug, VCR, TV, chair, flowers, VHS tapes installation, Botkyrka konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2008
Thank You for This Wonderful Day
his studio full of strongly Bonnard-inspired paintings, showing nudes lying in a bathtub, to his latest video piece, inspired by John Everett Millais’ famous 1852 painting of Ophelia. In between, one finds both strong political statements and nostalgic stories about being lost in a kind of a transitory state of mind between home and abroad, between the familiar and the strange. Ștefan Constantinescu’s oeuvre seems to be permeated with a peculiar feeling of loneliness and sadness. This is emphasized in, among other recent works, the video piece El Pasaje (2005), a piece that, at first, seems to be much less auto-biographical than the previous pieces, but nevertheless evokes sentiments familiar in practically all of his works throughout the years. Ștefan Constantinescu is a “special case”. Born in 1968 in Bucharest, he grew up in the Colentina district of the Romanian capital, during Nicolae Ceaușescu’s tyranny. He registered as an immigrant to Sweden in 1993, and graduated from both the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest and the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm, in 1996 and 1997 respectively. He is special in both the Swedish art context and the Romanian one, at the moment gaining more and more international reputation for art projects recognizing and exploring precisely his own life and his experiences of being “in between”. As in most serious, authentic, and well-qualified oeuvres, the autobiographical references are obvious, although embedded in a discourse that also speaks, indirectly, of its own political and social points of departure.
tom sandqvist
The country’s falcons under the sun You raise us and teach us To love ardently Your dawn Rising triumphantly In your garden From early age We are your children You, serene country, We’re your valiant young men.
archive of pain Having lived through Ceaușescu’s dictatorship from its beginning to its bloodstained end in 1989, Ștefan Constantinescu has understandably been moved to document the horror of the communist terror of the 1940s and the 1950s. The video installation Archive of Pain (2000), made in collaboration with movie director Cristi Puiu and graphic designer Arina Stoenescu, centred around the story as told by twelve former political prisoners.
(Falcons of the Country) My decade-long collaboration and companionship with Ștefan Constantinescu started in a studio at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm, and resulted, among other things, in me standing as godparent with his youngest son in my arms at the altar in the small medieval Swedish church of Lid. Reflecting on my time with Ștefan, I imagine seeing a strange but nevertheless obvious chronology from 5
The installation’s homage to those who suffered was deep and profoundly felt. Its message was as clear: the communist assumption of power immediately after World War II was both a human and material disaster. The destruction of civil society was complete and Romania was “Sovietized” through massive economic measures, collectivization and mass persecutions of large sectors of the population, especially bourgeois intellectuals and other white-collar workers, as well as Jews and Romanies. Of these groups, a large number were interned in camps round the “Death Canal” constructed between the Danube and the Black Sea, and in the camps in the Danube Delta. Calculations of how many people were imprisoned during the Romanian communist era vary between 300,000 and one million. Tragically, Romania was not unique, although the Romanian Communist Party was numerically the largest in Central and Eastern Europe apart from the Soviet Party, and despite the fact that many previous communists returned to power after the “revolution” of 1989. On an individual level, the experiences revealed in the video installation are naturally unique, but also shared: millions upon millions in both the previous and present communist world can testify to the pain, degradation and terror that characterise communism. From the Bolshevik repression and the Stalinist mass murders, the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, Tito in Yugoslavia, the Stasi persecutions in East Germany, the 1956 Hungarian Rising, and the Prague Spring in 1968, to the Chinese “cultural revolution”, the Khmer Rouge genocide, and the misery of today’s Cuba, the list’s length is trumped only by the magnitude of the repression; the testimonies are as painful as they are imperative. Upon first encounter, Archive of Pain filled the visitor with a feeling of the sublime, in the word’s classical sense of awe, terror and pain. You stepped into a dark space reminiscent of a classroom or an archival room, old-fashioned, filled with tall steel cases and rows of tables laden with thick folios. Gradually you were able to catch a murmur of voices coming from the cases. A faint light was shining through some openings, and you began to realise that you were soon to be confronted with something you must never forget or deny. Archive of Pain only made its full, terrible impression once the visitor began to take part in the testimonies, which were projected, from flickering obscurity, into four dark “cells”. Twelve men and women in their sixties and seventies, filmed against a pitch black background, testified to their punishments for “subversive activities” during the first decades of the communist regime in Romania. They told of how they were imprisoned, interrogated and tortured; how they were treated in prisons and labour camps such as Jilava, Sighet and Miercurea Ciuc, together with thousands and thousands of other prisoners. Twelve faces, twelve voices, twelve tragic lives – one story interwoven with the next in a discourse permeated by the cruelties Soviet and East European communism allowed itself in its capacity as a power apparatus.
For instance: Miltiade Ionescu was the doctor sentenced to fifteen years hard labour in 1951; Alex Constantinescu, a student of philosophy and literature, taken prisoner at the eastern front in 1944 and sentenced nine years later to sixteen years hard labour; and Aurora Ile Dumitrescu, a student of philosophy sentenced in 1953 to six years imprisonment. Anastasia Iorgulescu was a nurse, sentenced to a hard labour for life in 1958, but surprisingly soon released as a result of the visit by then UN Secretary General U Thant to Romania and the dictator Gheorghiu Dej’s false assurance that there were no political prisoners in this model communist country of the Balkans. Naturally, it goes without saying that Iorgulescu was not allowed to take up her medical career again. One of her final comments must be a gross understatement based on a will to live which few of her fellow-prisoners, in what has been called “the communist hell on earth”, managed to achieve: “Our life goes on like everyone else’s.” Ștefan Constantinescu, Cristi Puiu, and Arina Stoenescu, in cooperation with the National Organisation for Ex-political Prisoners in Romania (AFDPR) and Academia Civica in Bucharest, gave voice to the inhuman suffering and hideous pain that resulted from political repression, blind obedience, and the faith – equally rigidly “honest” and fanatical – in the “gospel” of communism. Both hellish cruelties and human weaknesses were portrayed here, as well as an indescribable will to live and redress in a country still trembling from its past, a past that not until today has begun to open its archives and mentality to major processes of change. Simply put, the story had to be told, and it was done in the spirit of its necessity, ending in that crowded silence of which Isak Dinesen once said: “where the story-teller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak; where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness”.
the splendid car Considering Ștefan Constantinescu’s next video piece, this reference to a poem by Lucian Blaga, quoted in the book that accompanied the Archive of Pain, became self-evident – although it was, of course, a pure coincidence: With fingers of memory I fumbled slowly, as a blind man, for my past, without knowing why I collapsed and laughing began weeping over my cradle.
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If Archive of Pain was based on the painful experiences of his parents’ generation, Dacia – My Generation (2003) indirectly tells of Constantinescu’s own childhood and adolescence through a series of interviews with people living in the Bucharest neighbourhood in which he grew up. The video project centers around the most splendid symbol of communist “freedom” and “progress”, i.e. the Dacia 1300. The test model of this car was completed in August of the year the artist was born, the same year in which the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia and Nicolae Ceaușescu consolidated a dictatorship under which everyone became as “free” as anybody else. Through a flow of images, including cut-up passages from propaganda broadcasts and short stories told by residents of Bucharest’s Colentina neighbourhood, Ștefan Constantinescu asks those questions which must be asked, however painful they might be: what was it like to live under the terror regime? How were your thoughts and behaviour affected by the oppression, the ever-present fear? How deeply did you sink into inhumanity when you couldn’t trust anyone around you, not your neighbours, not even your closest friends or your own family? How cruel was life when anyone could be an informant, a collaborator, a snitch; when conditions became more and more squalid, when the electricity was cut off, food rationed, when the stores went empty and the queues grew longer and longer? Dacia – My Generation is one of Constantinescu’s most moving and, artistically speaking, perhaps most fully-developed video pieces. In the piece, Constantinescu takes us to a country – or rather a state of mind – where a copy of a French car became the foremost symbol of the entrance of the nation and its people into the new bright future offered by the communist Dacia Felix; transportation, if you will, into a land of milk and honey, of oil and gas, led by the beloved “conducator”. It was a country where, after all, the artist himself would say that he spent a happy childhood, even though he and his family were forced to move from their family home to a government-built multi-storey block apartment building. His father was able to bribe a few people, and the Constantinescu family rented a three-room apartment in a block located only a few hundred metres from where they had previously lived. They were lucky, as some former neighbours and even some relatives, moved to the same block. One section of the block was reserved for foreign diplomats, thus giving the whole block a special status. This special status also brought along certain possibilities for the rest of the residents, in terms of unexpected privileges. The black market was soon in full swing: “blue jeans”, alcohol, coffee, cigarettes, beer, coke, various “luxury” products, and after a while even women were being sold, as the numerous informants and party collaborators made everyday life a nightmare under the sign of the shiny Dacia. Here Mr. Ialomiteanu, entrance 1, 3rd floor, played an important role as he sat at his window for hours on end, seemingly doing nothing, at a time when unemployment was officially an unknown phenomenon. He was
occasionally equipped with both binoculars and a camera and was, furthermore, the first tenant in the block to have a TV antenna which could receive Bulgarian television signals; slowly, but surely everyone started learning Bulgarian, and soon the Bulgarian-Romanian dictionary became a real treasure.
milk, honey, oil, and gas The year 1968 was a special year in many respects. It was not only the year in which students in the West rebelled against the capitalist order; it was also the year that could be labeled as a kind of a new start for a regime that would shape a whole generation of Romanians. Many from this new generation testified to their hardships in Constantinescu’s video, but also expressed a strange nostalgic longing for a past in which everything seemed much better than today. Ironically enough, the invasion of Czechoslovakia let Ceaușescu, “the Genius of the Carpathians”, discover the real power of repressive national sentiments to increase the efficiency of everything from social control and the power of the party to his own personal execution of power. The overwhelming demonstration that took place in Bucharest, in support of Ceaușescu’s decision to not participate in the August 21 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, was to become the starting signal for one of the most grotesque cults of personality in history. At the same time, the image of Romania in the West was that of the last neutral stronghold against the Soviet Union and its claims to universal supremacy. This was, of course, a misconception that Ceaușescu manipulated in exchange for international favours with foreign guarantees of non-involvement in the country’s internal affairs (regarding, for instance, questions of human rights, political prisoners, or the disastrous treatment of national minorities). Ceaușescu played an incredibly high stakes game when, before the cheering masses in Bucharest’s Piata Revolutiei, he characterised the invasion of Czechoslovakia as a “terrible mistake” and a “shameful moment in the history of the revolutionary movement”. The decision to build the car – the famous Dacia, referring to the myth of Dacia Felix, the ancient happy land of Romania – was of course part of this strategy evoking strong ethno-nationalist feelings. Ceaușescu and the political leadership were cunning enough to understand that both the party power and the personal power of the leader could become stronger against the Soviet hegemony only by making direct and open references to the ethno-nationalist foundation at the core of Romania’s self-image. This was the idea that Ceaușescu was demonstrating when inaugurating the new car plant in Pitești the day before he equally bombastically denounced the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Before that inauguration Romania had an import of almost 9,000 cars per year, but now the time had come for the country to become “ultra-modern” and at the same time self-supporting in this respect, even though every part of the new car – from the steering wheel, engine, 7
and wheels, to the signal lights, bumper, and exhaust pipe – was made in France. “Long live and flourish our beloved country”, was the propaganda text on the red banners placed along the highway – the country’s only highway – from Bucharest to Pitești. It was along this road that the Dacia would drive directly from the assembly line to the capital, where the city’s wide boulevards would be filled with people shining with joy, uttering ovations and waving flags. The first Dacia crossing through the factory gate was, of course, driven by none other than Nicolae Ceaușescu himself, and the car was offered as a symbolic gift to him from the proud Romanian people.
temperatures over 40º C. It was by no means unusual for Marin Constantinescu to take his position in the line in front of the Bucur Obor shop at 5 o’clock in the morning and to remain there for over 12 hours, so that at 5 o’clock in the evening he would be replaced by Ștefan or his older brother Constantin coming to take their turn with the family ration tickets, ID cards, and other necessary documents. When they did not go to school or were not asked to sweep the school yard or the football field across the street from Ghica Tei, the children were encouraged to play as near a shop as possible since you could never tell when a delivery was coming. In other cases children were lent to the neighbours so that the adults could stand in the line somewhere else. Pre-school kids were often the first ones released when the adults came from work. One could stay in several lines at the same time if one’s place was marked with a market bag, a plastic bag, or a coat, which was advanced by someone nearby – if not thrown away altogether – every time the line moved. There was a joke in those years telling of a person living in Bucharest who heard that there was meat in a store in Brașov, so he hurried to the station to ask for a ticket to Brașov, yet he got a ticket only as far as Ploiești, the ticket seller explaining that the queue had already reached Ploiești. Gasoline was rationed as well, and the five-kilometer-long queues to the few gas pumps became shorter only when private cars were forbidden to drive around the country from the first snowfall untill March 1st. Before this, cars with an even registration plate number could be driven only every other Sunday. Nobody knew for sure when the petrol truck would arrive at the gas station and if there would be enough gas for everyone. It often happened that a full ration was consumed in making trips from one gas station to another. The octane ratings were 90 and 98 as the cheap 75 option had disappeared altogether in parallel with the illegal trafficking of a certain lead mixture, of course stolen from the factories producing this extremely poisonous substance. The Peco station staff often mixed gasoline with water to be able to sell the surplus at a higher price on the “free market”. The fact that the gasoline reserved for party officials was coloured red didn’t stop people from keeping some tanks on the balcony or in the basement. If caught during a raid, you risked hard years in prison unless you had a few extra thousand lei, of course. Ștefan Constantinescu’s Dacia 1300 evokes all this – and much more. He evokes that strange, sad feeling, paradoxical in light of the hardships during Ceaușescu’s terrible regime, that practically everything was better before the overthrow of the “beloved Father of the nation” in
the communist paradise The gates to paradise were open – and everyday life turned into a hell. Officially, of course, there was no shortage of food or necessities in the Romanian paradise. When during the 80’s there was practically nothing left on the shelves in the shops, Scânteia reported that “purchasing power had increased dramatically”, at the same time the newspaper promised that everything possible would be done in the future to attain “an adequate structure of the food supply, so that it may meet the population’s rational and scientifically grounded needs for food and alimentary hygiene.” Just as the cholera outbreak was not cholera, but diarrhea, the rationing was nothing else but actions to achieve “a more rational and therefore healthier nutrient input”. According to definitions from dictionaries of the time, the decided ration was “the portion of food supplies used by man or animal, in a determined time, including all substances necessary for a vital functioning of the organism”. In this paradise there was, of course, no inflation either as prices never rose but were “correlated”, “adjusted”, “made adequate” or simply “improved” along with the constant increase of the living standard and the continuous growth in production. When it came to the “curse” of market economy, unemployment, there was no reason to hide it behind beautiful words as everyone was given a job. And if, by chance, the authorities heard that for some reason or another you were not officially employed, you were thrown into the nearest military prison for three months and then forced to wash the police headquarters’ floors for days, irrespective of your possible qualifications. There was little care for productivity or quality as long as the norm was fulfilled – many, maybe the majority, made in one hour the eight-hour 40 daily norm. “Long life and prosperity to our dear Socialist Republic of Romania” was the slogan, while men from the militia asked peasants at the Obor market in Bucharest selling their poor products: “Why do you sell for eight lei? Sell for six lei – that’s the market price!” As in all other communist countries, standing in line became a way of life, especially for pensioners, who soon became accustomed to standing in queues that began before dawn. In the same way, Ștefan Constantinescu’s grandfather was appointed for the “family market”, an inhuman and tough job done in all conditions, whether in cold rain or
“Circus of Hunger” comercial pavilion Târgoviște, Romania 1988 8
1989: in the 80s, everyone was equal; “proportions” were maintained as everybody got enough money (though there was no food to buy with that money); no one was better than any other; no one was warmer than any other; no one really had to work either, as everybody went to the factory to do nothing; and you could even afford holidays in the mountains or on the seaside, though nobody was allowed to travel abroad or even speak to a foreigner in the street. And all this is rendered with an unusual lyrical atmosphere congenial to the subject, both sad and so tremendously human.
story – told with the aid of interviews – about being at home nowhere, neither in Chile, Romania, nor Sweden, in no culture. Pedro Ramirez, the train guard, commutes between sad and lonely states of mind just as he commutes every day between Stockholm and the city’s outskirts, those suburbs sensitively depicted in Constantinescu’s series of photos ironically entitled Northern Lights. At the same time this main character in the film tells a story pieced together through his melancholic description of despair, estrangement, isolation, disconsolateness, and political oppression. Published in IDEA arts+society (No. 23, 2006), the series of photos Northern Lights was accompanied by the artist’s diary telling of his everyday family life in the suburb of Vällingby, just outside Stockholm. The diary documents moments of waiting, dark cold days of snowfall, taking the children to kindergarten and school, receiving packages with music, movies, and books from relatives and friends in Romania, constant worries about getting a proper job… The diary ends with the artist sleeping on the living-room couch warmed by the sun falling on his breast, feeling that there is only one thing missing, the buzz of flies. A day or two earlier, he had decided to apply to regain his Romanian citizenship. The story of the Chileans is really a sad one, permeated with melancholic longings, feelings of non-identity, and loss of a future that never came. Encouraged by his mother, Ramires illegally crosses the border into Peru in 1974. Arriving in Lima, he contacts embassies of countries such as Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, England, and Romania. Because he doesn’t hold membership in any party, he is only granted entry into two countries. He must choose between England and Romania. Pedro chooses “the communist paradise,” Romania, something he has never regretted. He flies from Lima to Germany with the help of the UN Commission for refugees. In Germany, he boards a Tarom charter to Bucharest. After a day of waiting, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative receives him along with other Chileans. Soon afterward, he receives an apartment together with two fellow Chileans, after which he is transferred to Iași and subsequently to Cluj-Napoca where, together with tens of others of Chileans, he attends language schools for the following year. After a while, Pedro decides to study at the Institute for Theatre Arts and Film in Bucharest in order to become a cameraman. He had taken a few pre-requisite courses at Babeș Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca with various members of the film and theatre world. The admission process for Chileans to the Institute for Theatre Arts and Film was – of course – only a formality compared to the tough entrance exams that Romanian students had to undergo. Most of the accepted Romanian students had to use their personal contacts for admission. Pedro develops a great passion for his studies and is appreciated by his professors: he assists as cameraman during many film shootings and even during the filming of some projects ordered by the Ministry of
circus of hunger Every time Nicolae Ceaușescu went visiting some factory and his official cars passed by, everyone was told to take their laundry away from the balconies so that the facade would “look nice”. Why bother about the shortage of food anyway, because there could be no such problem in the socialist republic of Romania with all those fancy cars driving on the highways and with a people stupid enough to baptize those megalomaniac architectural structures – which Ceaușescu began building in the early 80s after his visit to North Korea – “circuses of hunger”. One of Bucharest’s oldest neighbourhoods was demolished to make space for, among other monumental buildings, the famous People’s Palace, today containing both the parliament and the Museum of Contemporary Art. These constructions were part of a utopian, truly demented plan, which also included building huge cafeterias for the working forces all over the country. Before the end, six of these “monsters” were actually built, four of them in Bucharest, one in Tîrgoviște, and one in Pitești. It is precisely this terrifying dream of Ceaușescu that has also engaged Ștefan Constantinescu in trying to survey Romanian society and its absurdities during communist times. In addition to artistically sophisticated video works, the artist has also installed six light boxes projecting photographs of the remaining structures of the circus buildings, where the workers were supposed to eat their rationed food in total silence while being watched by the party leadership. Ceaușescu’s “systematization” plans also included shutting down all the restaurants in the country. Today some of the circus buildings have been turned into malls, where one can eat McDonald’s hamburgers and buy Diesel jeans and other capitalist necessities.
the ticket to “freedom” The story goes on, transformed into a journey, a film about refugees, strangers, prejudices, and the loneliness felt by three Chileans forced to leave Chile after General Pinochet’s coup d’etat of 1973. All three of them end up living under Ceaușescu’s dictatorship and, over time, two of them leave for Sweden. One of them still lives a sad life there, working as a train security guard even though he graduated both as a lawyer back in Santiago and from the Institute for Theatre Arts and Film in Bucharest. Unlike a regular self-portrait, El Pasaje (2005) is essentially a 10
Education. Like most Chileans, Pedro goes abroad each summer. With the help of some friends he goes to Sweden to work at various jobs for which he is clearly overqualified, like many of his fellow-immigrants. Arriving in Sweden in 1980, he hopes to continue his studies and work as a cameraman, but after many attempts, he nevertheless manages to film only a few low-budget projects; neither his Romanian education, nor the follow-up studies in Sweden are able to help him very much. Regretting leaving Romania, accepting the lukewarm position he was offered within Swedish society, he says that Romania is the only place he hasn’t felt himself as a stranger since he left Chile, and he would love to return to Romania and visit the places and friends that he left behind almost twenty-five years ago. Ironically, El Pasaje ends with ABBA singer Agnetha Fältskog’s famous hit Thank you for this wonderful ordinary day.
is ever-present in our everyday lives. We live in a world where death is absurd, Ștefan Constantinescu says, referring to all those modern technologies that help us to forget our own bodies, the brevity of life, and our mortality; all those computer games and 3D technologies, hightech fitness machines, digital photo manipulations that do everything possible to make us forget our own inevitable death. This is a surprisingly strong statement from an artist not yet forty, who is nevertheless contemplating his own mortality. In fact the work is the first in a series of future projects, all of them planned to focus on the restless feeling of getting closer and closer to death, our last transition into the unknown, this existence denied by contemporary society obsessed with more or less absurd strategies of staying young as long as possible. This restlessness must also underlie the work’s decentered, allegorical discourse, this mysteriously floating way of silently letting the images follow each other like the stream of the grieved water in Millais’ painting. We are reminded of those nudes in the bathtub in the artist’s first studio in Stockholm, where this special idiom seems to have begun assuming its shape, if it had not already begun to take form in Bucharest, at a time so obsessed with post-Impressionist Symbolism. On the other hand, death is really far, far away when you are standing with a child in your arms at the altar of a small Swedish church.
ophelia’s death Like the two other Chileans – one of whom is still living in Bucharest and the other who has returned to Santiago after more than twenty years in the Swedish “paradise” – Pedro is the victim of “totalitarian” Swedish benevolence ploughing through his grey, sad existence as if it were a never-ending transition between death and life. In this, with all respect, his situation reminds one too much of precisely that state of uncertainty which the pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais has depicted in his famous painting of Ophelia. It is no coincidence: Ștefan Constantinescu’s 2006 project was based on this work and baptized Ophelia’s Death after the title of the painting. Indeed, according to Constantinescu, this painting has obsessed him for a long time: a work veiled in mystery expressing an ambiguity wonderfully created by the author, not revealing whether Ophelia, lying on her back in a stream of water, is dead or alive. Ophelia’s Death is a 3D animation together with a transposition of Millais’ painting into a three-dimensional model following the aesthetics of both popular computer games and the pre-Raphaelites. According to the artist, it serves as a memento mori, reminding us that death
Tom Sandqvist is a writer and a curator and currently holds positions as senior lecturer at University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden and assistant professor in art history at the University of Lapland, Finland. Previously he has been working as senior curator at Swedish Travelling Exhibitions in Stockholm and as professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm as well as at the University College of Fine Arts in Umeå, Sweden.
note: In large parts this text is a sample of passages in the books Archive of Pain (2000) and Dacia 1300 – My Generation (2003), translated by Joan Tate and Carmen Karen respectively, as well as passages from press releases during the years.
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Archive of Pain (2000) in collaboration with Cristi Puiu and Arina Stoenescu book page
Romeo Catuneanu (born 1913) Lieutenant-“comandor”, sentenced in 1949 to 10 years in prison, followed by 4 years under house arrest in the Baragan plains for “not divulging the crime of high treason”.
Paul Dumitrescu (born 1925) Law student, sentenced in 1948 to 2 years in prison for the “crime of concealment”.
Alex Constantinescu (born 1922) student of Letters and philosophy taken prisoner on the eastern front, sentenced in 1953 to 16 years of hard labor for the “crime of conspiracy against the social order”.
Miltiade Ionescu (born 1924) physician, sentenced in 1951 to 15 years of hard labor for the “crime of conspiracy against the social order”.
Aurora Ile Dumitrescu (born 1932) student of philosophy, sentenced in 1952 to 6 years in prison for the “crime of conspiracy against the social order”.
Anastasia Iorgulescu (born 1932) medical student, sentenced in 1958 to hard labor for life for the “crime of conspiracy against the social order”.
Can You Feel the Pain of the Other?
what is archive of pain telling us about romania? and what is it not telling us? The book (published in English and Romanian with support from Sweden’s Art Grants Committee) is an ambitiously researched attempt at capturing Romania’s 20th century between two covers. Senior historian Lucian Boia provides a bird’s eye view of Romanian society during and after Communism. Junior historian Adrian Cioroianu fills us in on the details: how Romania became part of the Soviet sphere of influence in 1944; how Romanian society was gradually taken over by indigenous and foreign Communists until King Michael was forced to abdicate on November 30, 1947 and the ‘People’s Republic’ was proclaimed; how the Communists fought the people and how they fought each other; how the leaders Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Nicolae Ceaușescu managed to turn Romania into a faithful copy of the Soviet Union while still effectively maintaining an illusion of independence and even ‘stubborn self-reliance’ on the international arena. Tom Sandqvist unearths the Romanian roots of 20th century European Modernist art – Dadaism in particular – and sketches a picture of pre-war Romania: a ‘normal’ Eastern European state, starting to feel important after the First World War, where the never-ending everyday of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires was still essentially going on, albeit under a thin veneer of Western culture. There was tension among peasants wearing embroidered folk costumes of different stripes (Romanians, Hungarians, to some extent Slavs) and between peasants and the people crowding the streets of the capital, decked out in formal morning wear with striped trousers (a sizeable part of these were Jews, Germans, Greeks or Armenians). In the Ottoman Empire, the different ethnic groups were in fact separated through strictly regulated colour-schemes for clothes and shoes… The book also provides full transcripts of the filmed statements by twelve former inmates of the post-war Romanian Gulag that make up the installation. Twelve personalities, twelve world-views, twelve strategies, twelve integrities – and none of them can be fully captured. These
anders kreuger
Vasile Mare (born 1924) Greek-catholic priest, sentenced in 1948 to 5 years of hard labor for the “crime of conspiracy against the social order”.
Emil Steanta (born 1922 ) student, sentenced in 1946 to 18 years of hard labor for the “crime of conspiracy against the social order”.
Mihai Timaru (born 1918) army lieutenant, sentenced in 1950 to 15 years of hard labor for the “crime of conspiracy against the social order”.
Ion Varlam (born 1938) high-school student, in 1952 received an administrative sentence to 24 months of reeducation for “founding of monarchist organization”, sentenced in 1956 to I5torture years (inmethods accordance with criminal law) and archive of pain 24 months (in accordance with administrative law) for “public sedition”.
Eugenia Vasile (born 1939) high-school student, sentenced in 1954 to 3 years in a house of correction for “dissemination of prohibited publications”.
Gavril Vatamaniuc (born 1924) non-commissioned gendarme officer, sentenced in 1956 to hard labor for life for “terrorism”. 89
Archive of Pain is a book about the history and legacy of Communism in Romania, and also an installation of 12 filmed interviews with people who suffered under Communist repression there in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. The work is an attempt by a younger generation of Romanians to come to terms with the lives their parents and grandparents had to live. Archive of Pain is also a statement about Romania today, made by a team of six: the artists Ștefan Constantinescu (new media), Cristian Puiu (film) and Arina Stoenescu (graphic design), in collaboration with the writers Lucian Boia (historian), Adrian Cioroianu (historian) and Tom Sandqvist (art critic and theorist). This project is an exploration of Romania as a country. Almost every country is a whole world in itself, and cannot be captured in one single attempt, one single project, one single archive or library, or even in one single collective mind. One single article cannot capture a complex project like this one. That is why I want to ask only a few questions here, but they are all difficult and, perhaps, irritating. 13
are not the ‘Captive Minds’ of Czesław Miłosz, but rather ‘unbroken’ fragments of humanity that cannot be locked up inside any collective explanatory mind. In the exhibition, though, three people have to share each ‘cell’. The witnesses become inmates, once more. In Romania, political prisoners had to sign a promise upon their release that they would tell nobody about what they had gone through. Release from prison meant first a couple of years under ‘house arrest’ in a location assigned by the Securitate (‘Security’), then life-long incarceration inside the physical and mental borders of the People’s Republic. Archive of Pain guides us through the different stages of Romanian Communism, from selective oppression by ‘rotating re-education’ (a local Orwellian innovation, whereby political prisoners were forced to take turns dividing the roles of victim and perpetrator among themselves – soon abandoned for being ‘too effective’) to mass oppression by enforced poverty and compulsory procreation. The book is a rare and valuable survey of recent history in one of the larger European countries (today, Romania has more inhabitants that all the Scandinavian countries combined). For this very reason, we have to ask ourselves: What are the questions not asked and answered? As far as I can see, three important issues are not being dealt with in this project, or they are by-passed very quickly – too quickly: Romania’s, or rather the Romanians’, status among nations is a tricky issue. Any self-respecting nation, of course, ‘looks down on’ other nations in more or less subtle ways. And every nation has, from time to time, been forced to ‘look up to’ other nations. For a sharp-witted dissection of Romania’s traumatised identity, particularly its troubled relations to Hungary, I refer the interested reader to ‘The Philosopher of Bitterness’, Emil Cioran. The Romanians like to think of themselves as the cultural descendants of the Romans who colonised the Balkans in the first century AD.1 The Romanians also like to think of themselves as the Frenchmen of the East; they have substituted yellow for white in their Tricolor and they do, of course, have their own Arc de Triomphe. Still, Romania was ruled by kings of the German Hohenzollern dynasty from the mid-19th century until the end of the monarchy. Romania is predominantly Orthodox Christian, but has a long tradition of Russophobia. Romania was the biggest net winner of the First World War, without suffering anything like the destruction that befell countries like Belgium or Poland. It gained large territories that had never been collected under the same crown at the same time before. Some of them, but not all, were lost again after the Second World War. The chronology in Archive of Pain offers the following description of events: 1918 March – December: Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania are reunited with Romania. Romania’s wartime collaboration with Germany, under the leadership of General Ion Antonescu, is an even trickier issue. This clarification is provided in the book:
1941 22 June: Allied with Germany, Romania joins the anti-Soviet war. The participation of Romania in the Holocaust is a very, very tricky issue indeed, mentioned only in Tom Sandqvist’s essay.2 But since I find no mention in Archive of Pain of any wrongdoings by the Royal Romanian Army on what was then Soviet territory, I feel compelled to supplement the book with the following passage, quoted from Borderland. A Journey through the History of Ukraine by Anna Reid, the former correspondent for The Economist in Kiev (London, 1997, pp 155–156:) On 23 October [1941, AK] came the turn of Odessa, home to one of the largest and most flourishing Jewish communities in the world. Six days after the city’s capture by the German and Romanian armies, a bomb exploded in the Romanian headquarters, killing several officers. The next day, Romanian soldiers herded 19,000 Jews into a fenced square near the port, where they were sprayed with gasoline and burned alive. Another 16,000 were marched to the nearby village of Dalnik, where they were tied together in groups, pushed into anti-tank ditches and shot. When this method proved inefficient the Romanians drove the remainder into four large warehouses and machine-gunned them through holes in the walls. Three of the warehouses, containing women and children, were then set on fire, and the fourth demolished with artillery fire. The rest of Odessa’s Jews were sent to concentration camps – Dumanovka, Bogdanovka, Atmicetka and Vertugen – sixty miles to the north, where they died, along with tens of thousands of others from central Ukraine and Moldova, of disease, starvation, cold, and in more mass executions. A third issue, so tricky that most contemporary Romanians seem tempted just to forget about it, is this: How did Communism end in Romania. Or did it ever end? 1989 16 December: An anticommunist revolution breaks out in Timișoara, then overruns Bucharest on 21–22 December. On 25 December, Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu are sentenced to death and executed. What really happened during the December 1989 ‘revolution’ in Romania? What, or who, triggered the demonstrations in Bucharest? What, or who, turned the tables on the Conducător and his wife? Why did they have to be eliminated so swiftly? Why were the National Library and the National Gallery shelled in the process? Who are the people that came to power afterwards, really? There are many, differing, answers to such questions, but neither questions nor answers are produced in Archive of Pain, although we are reminded several times that the Securitate archives have still not been opened. These three silences, to my mind, subtly pervert the story told in Archive of Pain. Archive of Pain (2000) in collaboration with Cristi Puiu and Arina Stoenescu video, book, web site, metal booths installation, The Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania 2000 14
what are the similarities between romania and lithuania? and the differences? and why should anyone in lithuania be interested in romania? Some conclusions can already be drawn from a comparison of historical events mentioned (or not mentioned) in the Archive of Pain book. Lithuania is small, Romania is large. Romania has oil. Lithuania has no oil. Lithuania and Romania are both countries who prefer to identify themselves with ‘Western Civilisation’ but always risk being placed, by others, in the unfortunate (and sometimes misleading) category ‘Eastern Europe’. Lithuania, being a Catholic country, is perhaps more ‘Western’ than Orthodox Romania. Romanians, speaking a Romance language, are perhaps more ‘international’ than Lithuanians. Lithuania is a stranger on the fringes of Northern Europe. Romania is a stranger on the fringes of Mediterranean Europe. Lithuania has been squeezed and pressured by its imperial or would-be imperial neighbours: Russia, Prussia, Poland, and Sweden. So has Romania, by Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Austria and even by Bulgaria. Before the war, Lithuania had its Iron Wolves, and Romania had its Iron Guard. Lithuania and Romania were both brutally incorporated into the Soviet, Communist sphere of influence during and after the Second World War: Lithuania, where direct Soviet rule was imposed, possibly even more brutally than Romania, which remained sovereign at least on paper. Like Lithuania, Romania had its anti-Communist guerillas after the war, and in both countries the myth (or self-deception) that ‘The Americans won’t let us down’ lived on well into the 1950s. And yes – there is one more thing. Vilnius used to have the best English-language city-guide of any Eastern European capital. But now the Vilnius In Your Pocket publishers have branched out, and one of their first new ‘victims’ was Bucharest. Bucharest In Your Pocket gives visitors honest and useful advice, for example concerning the city’s ubiquitous stray dogs: Should you get bitten here’s what to do; report at once to the Antirabic Centre at the Colentina Hospital at Șoseaua Ștefan Cel Mare 1921, tel. 210 50 70. Once there, look for Dr. Margarescu and ask to be treated with the vaccine Verorab, which means a series of light jabs in the solar plexus. To get to the hospital, take Metro M1 (red line) to Ștefan Cel Mare, then limp eastwards. The hospital complex is on the left, the Centrul Antirabic is at the rear end of the campus.
the re-modelling of the exhibitions had to be interrupted, unexpectedly, ‘for technical reasons’. But who, except myself, is interested in such comparative studies of historical museums?3 Who is interested in comparative studies of pain? In the pain of others? Only those visting foreigners who like to think they do not have enough pain of their own to carry? Or who prefer to shift their own sorrows over to the history of others – for is this not what Sweden, for example, was trying to do as the organiser of a huge international jamboree on the Holocaust recently?
in the art world.3 Maybe art has to be a little more easy-to-watch and straightforwardly visual in order for us still to want to see it around?
is archive of pain a good show?
notes:
This is also a tricky question, and one that can take us far into a debate about contemporary exhibition-making. It would be too easy to answer it in the negative. It is true that Archive of Pain is not an exhibition that is very easy to watch, but this does not mean it is badly or unintelligently installed and designed. It is just very difficult to consume the show by looking at it. The essence of this project is communicated through its content or ‘subject-matter’, which you have to read, particularly since it is given in Romanian, a language which would make a foreign audience feel quite helpless if it were not for the subtitles. (All the reports on display are printed in the book in two languages, by the way.) So, maybe this Archive of Pain is meant to be a composite research project rather than a strictly visual presentation? We read the book, and then we come to study the facial expressions of the interviewees to try and understand something about their characters. These are strong statements by strong people. The stories they tell deserve to be remembered, and we deserve to remember them. The conduct of some of the former inmates can instill hope in us, hope about human nature. But why does this have to be art? In our case, I doubt whether the mere fact that Archive of Pain is displayed like art allows us to think of it as art. I hope it contains more than the often-proved Heideggerian paradox that ‘works of art are art because they are made by artists, and artists are artists because they make works of art.’ I prefer not to think that this is just another educational art project, produced with Swedish money and tested out in middle-ground, almost-democratic Lithuania (at the Vilnius Contemporary Art Centre in 2000) before its definitive launch as a democracy-boosting measure in poor, backward, still-evil Romania. It is true, sadly perhaps, that even art professionals nowadays seem to consider art and art exhibitions less interesting, and maybe even less important, than a number of other activities: following the politics of your country or professional circles, watching the latest Hollywood films or reading Vanity Fair (if you think of yourself as a citizen of the globalised world). Fascinated as I am by research and archives and political economies, or by Romanian history and indeed Eastern European history in general, I am still not altogether convinced that we should allow such strategies to become the future focus for what is left of art
Lithuania seems to have liberated itself faster and more thoroughly from the Communist legacy than Romania – at least this is my generalisation as a visiting foreigner in both countries. In Vilnius, the columns of the National Museum are repainted once in a while, and the stuff on display is more or less compatible with the present ideological state of affairs in the country. In Bucharest, the columns of the National History Museum are covered in at least forty years of dust, and about one third of the halls are sealed with lead and official stamps. I guess that 16
2 Archive of Pain, p. 75: “It is difficult to speak of any mass persecution of Jews in the same way as in Nazi Germany either before or after the war, but available statistics nevertheless speak their clear language when it appears that the Jewish population was reduced by nearly 70,000 people between 1930 and 1948”.
Anders Kreuger is Dean of the Malmö Art Academy, Sweden and curator at Lunds Konsthall, Sweden. From 1997 to 1999 he was director of Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland and from 1991 to 1995 he was head of the Nordic Information Office in Vilnius, Lithuania.
3 Museums of military history are even more interesting. I can particularly recommend – for reasons that should be obvious to anybody interested in the study of empty pride and victimisation – those in Brussels, Lisbon, Minsk and Riga… 4 The same criticism applies, I believe, to the Pan-European biennial Manifesta, organised in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2000. In an art exhibition, the ideological, propagandist agenda of a TV film about traumatised children in Sarajevo is impossible to hide. But it is also impossible to watch the film in the exhibition. If we want documentaries and archival material to be art, perhaps we should enjoy them as art on TV and in archives instead of trying to turn them into art in biennials?
1 The express train from Constanţa to Budapest is called Ovidiu in memory of the Latin poet exiled at the Black Sea coast, in what was then definitely the End of the Universe. Before the train is allowed to cross the border into Hungary, a little old lady steps in with a broom and sweeps out the thick layer of cigarette ash that has accumulated in the corridor during the night.
This is a slightly adapted version of a review first submitted to the cultural newspaper 7 Meno Dienos in Vilnius, Lithuania, in September 2000.
17
The Passage “El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!” – the air is still in the room where the video work is projected. I get goose-bumps; this is a part of my history, these black and white pictures are my memories…or at least they could have been. But they are not. They are Pedro’s, and the others’. Or are they? “This isn’t about Pedro, this is about me, this is my story. I wanted to get hold of myself and my fears”, Ștefan says during the panel talk just after the screening of his work, The Passage (El Pasaje), at the Multicultural Centre. In the film Pedro turns to Ștefan, looks right into the camera and says what I am currently thinking: “It’s not my life you are watching, this isn’t me, it’s your film”. Scattered? No, perfectly clear. Here, borders are blurred between me/ you and “the other”. Coexistence is necessary, but it hurts when borders are blurred and we are merged with others. Migration is a rather painful process that concerns us all, a collective feeling of departure and transformation. A history of battle and war without the return of victorious heroes. As an organization, we are in a boundary country between academia and museum – memory and reflection. Ștefan’s work is obviously not an academic truth, rather a memory and a testimony opening up for reflection. Who controls history? What is true? Is there an absolute, objective truth? My stomach aches when Ștefan’s work seems to put a question mark after “El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido” – though it’s not me doubting, it’s Ștefan and maybe Pedro and the others. Or is it? Ștefan’s work feels to me like artistic research. It feels right, and it is exciting. I see great potential in these kinds of border-crossing experiments under a roof such as ours, where the vision has been formulated as: “a forum for research and artistic expressions concerning migration as well as social and cultural diversity”. Marita Castro is Head of Programme at The Multicultural Centre, Botkyrka, Sweden.
The Passage (2005) 62 min. video (Sony PD 150) still from video 19
Good night children! (2008) plastic toys, rug, VCR, TV, chair installation detail Botkyrka konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2008
Interview with Ștefan Constantinescu
wasn’t very comfortable with that so after a while we bought a couple of bottles of red wine and went to Gege’s place to film. giorgiana: This is perhaps one of the least known works you’ve made, in Sweden for instance it has never been shown before now. I find the story quite strong but film-wise it is very simple. Can you say something about what you were thinking when you made it? Ștefan: I actually think The Baron, 22.02.2002 is quite poor from several points of view. For instance I was totally uninspired when it comes to the strategy I had in telling this story. I was slightly influenced by some films that I had seen in that period, especially some films from Scorsese’s early years about his parents. What attracted me to them was the fact that they were so negligently made and that they seemed not to have a purpose, a predetermined story. In The Baron, 22.02.2002 I think that what comes out is that I didn’t choose a certain way of telling the story; it’s like the piece has no identity. I don’t have a position as a storyteller. I manage to reduce even my position as author to that of a spectator who is not active enough to try and register this story and reproduce it again afterwards. So I think that the film has a lot of minuses.
giorgiana zachia During September 2008 I had a few meetings with Ștefan at Il Café on Kungsholmen in Stockholm. We were preparing his exhibition at the Romanian Cultural Institute at the same time as he was working on the installation at Borkyrka konsthall. The following interview builds on the conversations we had then and on those we had during the months we worked on his book The Golden Age for Children. giorgiana: How did you come to make the film The Baron 22.02.2002? Ștefan: The story of the Baron begins one evening when I was with Cristi Puiu and Liviu Popp (Gege), who knew Luigi Cora (alias “the Baron”) quite well. They had lived in the same district in Bucharest as kids. The Baron had a reputation for his talent in story telling. Puiu used him in a documentary film Strada Fetești Nr. 4 which he made together with Răzvan Rădulescu when they were students. Before I went to Bucharest in 2002 I had bought a camera and that evening was the first time I used it. First we went to a place behind Obor Market, a small company that was a bit strange. It looked good both on the outside and on the inside but it wasn’t very clear what kind of activity they were into. The Baron was some kind of night guard or bouncer at that place and he took us to the basement where they had a room where they trained women to become pole dancers in order to be sent to work abroad. At 22.00 he finished his shift and we wanted to go to his place, but it seemed like he
giorgiana: Why have you decided to show it then? Ștefan: I chose to show it afterwards because I think that the material is interesting as a document. The most interesting part of the film is its quality as a first-hand account and it is in fact the Baron who makes the work interesting, while my efforts are quite insufficient. I chose to show it for its quality as an eye-witness account of the ninties. giorgiana: I agree with you that the Baron’s story is very good, almost too good. It’s like you wanted to tell a story of the ninties and you chose this guy because he had made a synthesis of the stories of the people that he met during his time in the West and packaged them in a 21
nice way, thanks to his talent in storytelling. Can you identify with the Baron at any level? Is his story, on a certain level, your story?
naive idea about the West. And in this I guess there is a resemblance to the Baron: he left to find women, I left to find galleries. Once I got here I realized that things were not so simple. The world doesn’t stand waiting for you, the great artist, and people don’t wait in line to meet the newly arrived handsome Romanian man.
Ștefan: Oh yes, yes of course there is a link between the Baron and me, and I recognize myself in the attitude of the Baron because we belong to the same generation. We were born the same year, even the same day if I’m not mistaken, and we share this way of seeing the West and leaving the country with a lot of naive expectations. Both he and I left Romania about the same time in the early 1990s in an almost nonchalant way and totally unprepared. One difference was that I went to live with my parents, which meant that I got a great deal of help, while he left on his own. He left because he heard from one of his neighbours that Holland is the ideal place to be since women there are crazy about Romanian men – it’s enough to go there and women will run after you. This is probably one of the reasons but there were lots of people leaving at that time, almost all people between twenty and thirty years old – perhaps even older – who left then did so because they still had this desire from Ceaușescu’s time. Quite a few people who left and perhaps arrived in the West without a very clear plan had no one to go to. At the same time their expectations about what would happen in the West weren’t met. In the Baron’s case, the expectation was that Dutch women would run after him, so he and his friends started to improvise in order to subsist, perhaps just to have some fun in the new environment. Because money was scarce they started to steal. Of course not just anyone starts to steal – it takes a certain kind of guts to do it. But the conditions were good for that because the West was not prepared for the East either. From another point of view this was a way to get a status in the group, to demonstrate your boldness. If someone in the group didn’t steal he was eventually marginalised.
giorgiana: In the film there are some parts where I laughed my head off despite the harshness of the conditions in which the Baron and his friends find themselves. The guy comes across as racist and sexist, yet still I couldn’t dislike him. Are his detachment and self-irony saving him?
giorgiana: Archive of Pain is perhaps the most comprehensive project you have been involved in so far. Twelve video interviews, each with a duration of almost one hour, a book with essays, interviews and so on and a web site. This project was made together with film director Cristi Puiu and graphic designer Arina Stoenescu. How did you share the project?
Ștefan: He is not a negative character by any means. His way of telling the story in a relaxed and sincere way with self-irony makes you like him. I guess he is aware of these things and he knows that in this way he can keep the listeners’ attention. I think that we have that in common, but this is something that belongs to an Eastern European way of talking about things in a straightforward manner.
Ștefan: In the beginning I was responsible for the web page and the installation, Cristi Puiu for the film part, and Arina for the catalogue, but we all influenced each other and the project as a whole is the result of our close collaboration. The objective was quite naive from the beginning. I thought that we could make an archive on the Internet which would contain hundreds of interviews with ex-political prisoners.
giorgiana: Your works often build on narratives set simultaneously at a personal level and at a more abstract level of Ceaușescu and communism for instance. How do you think about narrative as a way of aquiring knowledge and presenting things?
giorgiana: Why was it interesting for you to make a project about ex-political prisoners in communist Romania?
Ștefan: Romania went through some tremendous changes after 1989 and I think that what happened to me is what happened to a lot of artists after periods of crisis, like WWII for example, when quite a few of them thought that their role was to talk about the atrocities of the moment. When Ceaușescu’s regime came to an end I thought that it was important for these things to be told, and at the same time talking about them was educational both for the viewer and for me. I belong to a generation that was taught a manipulated version of history in school. One can of course say that history can be manipulated anywhere. But what drove me was a desire to understand some things and appropriate them, make them my own, so to speak. I tried to structure and present them and this is why some of my works are quite pedagogical. In part this is due to the fact that I live in Sweden and I’ve always felt the need to talk about these things in a clearer way since my audience lacked certain information. Not all the audience, but the great majority, so I had to take that into account and this is why I became interested in telling stories, on the one hand, and in video as a medium, on the other hand, because it is most suitable for telling stories. The meetings and talks that I used to have in Bucharest with a group of artist friends, regular visitors to my studio in the period 1991–93, were another important part of the formation of my narrative style. Among these friends I would single out Cristi Puiu as having had a particularly strong influence. It was then that I got interested in documentary, a form that was almost totally missing in Romanian art. At that time the general trend was to copy Western art in an artificial way without mak-
giorgiana: But your story after leaving Romania shares none of these details or dynamics from the Baron’s story. What motivated you to leave? Ștefan: Indeed: we took different paths. The point we had in common was really that we were equally unprepared, but when I left I had a very specific goal in mind. In 1994 I was a student of fine arts in Bucharest and I was starting to get bored because nothing was really happening anymore. The first two years were filled with a great deal of enthusiasm, but then it all started to slow down so in my third year I decided to go to Sweden for three months. My thought at that time was to get back and I think that a lot of people who left in the 1990s weren’t thinking of leaving for good because there was no reason to do so. If you left Romania during Ceaușescu’s time and chose to live abroad, then there was no going back. So at that time a choice to leave had to be permanent. But for me it wasn’t like that. This was to a certain extent due to my prospects as an artist. I was interested in finding galleries where I could exhibit. But in a way I also had a distorted and 22
ing connections to the local context, with a few notable exceptions of course. It took more than ten years for things to form and start to develop naturally both in film and art. It took eight years before I started to make Archive of Pain.
Ștefan: I think that if you see Archive of Pain as a strictly historical piece then this might be an issue, although nowadays, that is eight years after it was first shown, it’s even less probable that anyone would doubt that it is a work of art. Our project is packed with historical information and it also has a documentary character which might be misleading up to a certain point in the sense that one can take it for some kind of research or something of that sort. Besides the obvious informative character, our point was to present some of the feelings and emotions that these people had been through and this is why the films are quite long, you as a viewer have to spend a long time with these stories, the point is not to make it easy for the person watching the films. When we first showed the work we had built these metal boxes which you had to step into and the room was totally dark – the point being to make the viewer suffer along with the interviewees. From my point of view this is enough to qualify the work as an artistic act. In addition to the historical data, which provide a sort of background, viewers receive some of the emotions of the people caught in the middle of those historical events at the same time as they are put in a situation of unease. giorgiana: The documentary character of some of your films is obvious. I’m thinking first and foremost of The Passage which was shown in cinemas during Tempo Documentary Film Festival in Stockholm last year but also Dacia 1300 – My generation. You seem to want to work at the border between art and documentary film. I wonder if you are consciously making a negotiation part of the work the negotiation, that is, about where documentary comes to an end and art begins.
Ștefan: This is something that members of my generation have in common, namely that someone in the family, usually in the grandparents’ generation, was put in jail for political reasons and then the parents had to suffer the consequences also. In my family it was my grandfather who was a rich landowner in a village close to Bucharest. He was chased by the militia for five years, a period during which he was hidden in different places. My mother was kicked out of school because of this. So this was an important part of my generation’s history that we only had fragmentary knowledge of. What I actually had in mind when I made Archive of Pain was to make way for subsequent projects. I always like to plan things well in advance and I can say that already then I had Dacia and The Passage in mind, in a totally different way than they later came into being, but they were there. And I felt that the story cannot begin with me, it should begin with the stories of my parents and grandparents. Now there is a lot of material and a lot of people have been working with these issues in different ways, but when we did our project people were not so interested in it. Maybe it was too early at least in the art field. Even in the West people were not ready for or interested in a critique of communism.
Ștefan: My films are better seen in art galleries rather than in cinemas, although some of them have been shown in theatres. If I show a film in a cinema, as in the case of The Passage, I reach a broader audience, but I prefer to show my films in galleries because the perception of time is different there. In a theatre time is managed in a different way, the pressure of the public is different than in a gallery. The film that I’m working on now is a documentary film called My Beautiful Dacia. I’m making it together with Julio Soto with whom I’ve worked on other projects. This film should be finished in August 2009 and it is meant to be presented mainly in cinemas. The idea is the same as in the other films, namely to investigate the recent history of Romania, but it is presented in a more spectacular way, a more cinematic way if I may say so. giorgiana: I have noticed that both in your works and during the working process you often involve neighbours. This appears as something common to the new generation of filmmakers in Romania as well – the neighbour as a recurrent figure in Romanian culture. What is your perception of the neighbour in your films?
giorgiana: In his review in 7 Meno Dienos when Archive of Pain was shown for the first time at the Vilnius Contemporary Art Centre in 2000 in Lithuania, Anders Kreuger questions why Archive of Pain “has to be art” and goes on to comment that he doubts whether the mere facts that Archive of Pain is the work of an artist and it is displayed like art allow us to think of it as art. What do you think about his comments?
Ștefan: In Romania the neighbour is quite an important person in everyday life. The neighbour is someone that you know, you know where 23
giorgiana: And still, after seeing the film, the connection between the two of you seems to be quite strong. He reveals a lot to you.
you have him and he knows in his turn where he has you. So the rules of communication are very clear and you also have a lot in common, a common history. This is something that I play with in Dacia 1300 – My Generation. In our block of flats at No. 9 Suren Spandarian St., almost all the apartments had their entrance doors wide open during the whole summer. The block had ten floors and was divided into three buildings. We were a lot of kids living in the block. In my building there were 15 but if I remember correctly in the whole block there were over 30. We used to play from morning to evening behind the block. We played a lot of games; football was king of these games. There were a few neighbours who were quite colourful, like Mr Doiculescu who lived on the first floor. He had a Skoda 100 which he worked on every single day. When he was ready with it he would break it on purpose and he would start all over. Mr Ialomiţeanu from the third floor stood all day in the window smoking Carpaţi cigarettes. He never went anywhere; he would stand non-stop in that kitchen window. Everyone knew that he was one of the secret police informants who lived in the block. Mr Bacria from the fourth floor used to warm up the water in the bath tub with an electric immersion heater and when the power was cut and the entire neighbourhood was left in the dark we could only hear his farts surfacing with a metallic sound through the water in the tub, much like the sounds of a submarine in the depths of the ocean. And that made us laugh a little bit at the situation. Doru Istudor alias MS, who played the drums in several bands in the ’80s had a small collection of nails from his small finger which he kept in a jewlery box in order to make a necklace. Since I moved to Stockholm my family and I have lived in several flats. Now we live in an apartment building with eight floors at no 4, Nickelgränd. I don’t know what my neighbours are called. We only greet and sometimes smile at each other. We talk when we meet in the laundry room. But if we cross paths beyond a radius of 100 meters from where we live, we don’t even greet each other.
Ștefan: Initially the plan was that the entire film should be about him. Together we would travel to Sweden, Romania, and Chile and we would meet his friends there. But because after a while he couldn’t take the filming anymore, and eventually he couldn’t stand me, he pulled out of the project. It was quite unexpected because he had said that he would go all the way, because this film was important, at the same time as he was telling me that this was not a film about him, but a film about myself. But he was prepared to go all the way even if he disagreed with that and with my way of working since he had a background as a filmmaker himself. In the end, I had to find another solution for the film. giorgiana: Earlier you were saying that when you were working with Archive of Pain you already had in mind Dacia and The Passage and that it was important that this project came first since it told the story of the grandparents of your generation. I guess that what you are after is to create a chronology in your art. With each piece you make you add another chapter of collective memory to your timeline. Can you say something about this strategy of yours? Ștefan: I’m interested in looking at events of recent Romanian history from the point of view of ordinary people at the same time as I am telling my own history. I am interested in how people remember these events and situations in which history has thrown them: their feelings and reactions. I for one have had enough of the official versions of what happened, figures and data don’t talk to me in the same way as people’s own stories. When working with this I needed to reconstruct history, my history, from the beginning. That is why I thought it was important to start with Archive of Pain, which deals with the period from the beginning of the Communist regime in Romania, because those people’s stories had and still have an influence on my present. Then I made The Baron, 22.02.2002 which was about the early nineties and the people who – just like me – had left Romania thinking that the West was somehow waiting for them, for us. Dacia 1300 deals with the history of the Dacia automobile from its creation in 1968, which is the year when I was born, until 1989. It also touches on the nineties, especially in the film. Afterward, I made The Passage in which I deal with the history of Chilean refugees coming to Romania from 1974 to 1989. In this film I take up more directly the issue of immigration and the fear to fail to adapt to another country, to be at home in another land. The main character of the film, Pedro, finds himself in a crisis in relationship to
giorgiana: I see. So in other words trust in your neighbour is something taken for granted and that is of course the reason for which Dacia 1300 seems so casual. Was the working process for making The Passage as smooth and easy going? Ștefan: Actually working with Dacia was very different from the work with The Passage. Before I started with that project I spent almost a whole year with Pedro Ramirez. We would meet and talk weekly, often several times a week. He used to spend weekends together with me and my family, when we would eat together and go to the movies. Although by the time I started shooting we trusted each other and had built a certain history together, when the camera appeared between us, I felt that our relationship didn’t work anymore and that the camera had created a huge distance between us.
The Golden Age for Children (2008) pop-up book 24
tures revealing the privacy and intimacy of human beings, in this case yourself.
his home country Chile. Somehow I have that fear as well, although I have never lost my connection to Romania since I always travelled and worked there. Pedro, by contrast, was always dependent on Sweden. Anyway, after The Passage I made Ophelia’s Death, which came out of a need to distance myself, to work with some issues outside of the cycle of works that deal with history. With Northern Lights I returned to the series, but I changed the format. Northern Lights is about my years after I moved to Stockholm and consists of a series of photographs and a diary. This is perhaps the most obviously personal story among all my works.
Ștefan: If you look at the last chapter, “1989”, I’m talking about the anti-revolution banners I have made. This is evidence of how relaxed and disconnected I was at that time. The truth is that I had applied to the authorities to leave Romania and I was waiting for the results at the time. In fact it was precisely the revolution that opened up my eyes to political and social awareness. My views then were very superficial although I was about twenty years old. What preoccupied me then was just admission to the art academy and painting. Very basic focus, not very elaborated.
giorgiana: With a few exceptions like Ophelia’s Death and Northern Lights you are going back to the same period of time over and over again with the help of your neighbors’ and others’ memories in order to reflect on current versions of history, and to understand in a more nuanced way how a multitude of existences – memories of experiences – form history. How do you reflect on this?
giorgiana: Speaking about focus, how did you get the idea for the book The Golden Age for Children?
retrospect I think that nostalgia is an important part of how my generation and I feel about that period. Of course this feeling is not directed towards the system, but rather towards the holidays at the seaside, the sand between our toes, the Iris concerts, the butter and the cherry jam, all in all that period of our childhood and youth which coincided with Ceaușescu’s regime.
could have been more mechanical so that in certain parts you would hear my voice and in other parts his voice, but I abondoned the idea. giorgiana: What are your plans with the book? Ștefan: Already in October the book will be presented at Periferic 8 Art as Gift and at Umeå Bildmuseet as part of the exhibition The Map: Navigating the Present. In December we are organising the launch of the book at Carturesti book shop in Bucharest and I hope that we will be able to do the same in Stockhom and New York early next year.
giorgiana: How did you establish the extent to which the book should be your story and the extent to which it should be Ceaușescu’s story?
Giorgiana Zachia is a curator and since 2006 she is the deputy director of the Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm, Sweden. Previously she assisted with the coordination of the project “Art Feminism – Strategies and Consequences in Sweden from the 1970s to the Present” produced by Dunkers Kulturhus, Liljevalchs Konsthall and Riksutställningar.
Ștefan: The structure that I had in mind from the beginning and the amount of information I wanted to fit in there changed very much during the working process. I didn’t decide that half of it should contain statements about me and half about Ceaușescu. It was more about tuning it to sound well. At some point I got the idea that the structure
Ștefan: This is the first time I make a work that is also addressed to children. When I was in Romania I heard all kinds of stories from my friends and family that their kids didn’t know anything about how it had been before or during the revolution. I always thought that my kids are different and that at least Iona who is now 13 years old has a clear idea about how things were. One day he was fiddling with the computer and at some point he pulled up a photo of Ceaușescu and asked me ‘Who is this old guy?’. Then I realized that it was necessary to create some material about Ceaușescu’s regime packaged for children. This is how the idea of the pop-up book came up. I noticed that when people take the book they first look at the central pop-up scenes, then they discover the other interactive parts, then they start to read the texts and only the third or their fourth time do people start to read the letters.
Ștefan: To me these works are first and foremost trying to recount, as honestly as possible, a story. This honesty is of course constantly challenged during the making of the work, so the result is never going to be an objective one. I am perfectly aware of that, but I also believe that this is perhaps a very valuable undertaking and that is why it is worth trying to use a variety of media in order to tell a story about yourself and some things which you know well…. And I am trying to tell them over and over again because some things I forget or they get distorted and in the end what is left are the things that really made an impression or that for some reason got stuck in my memory. giorgiana: Some people’s reactions, especially Romanians’, to your artist book The Golden Age for Children were, half jokingly, that what you’re actually doing is to try and create a cult of your own personality. What do you want to say to these critics?
giorgiana: So once again you expect the viewers or in this case the readers to take their time, be patient, and gradually dig into the multiple layers of the book.
Ștefan: I certainly don’t think that this is a narcissistic work or having anything to do with creating a cult of personality for myself. The book has come out of a need to go deeper into a story about myself, into my story. It’s only superficial to talk about the book in that way. When you start to expose yourself like this you become vulnerable to a lot of things. I feel very vulnerable now since I have no shelter to take refuge in; my shield is down. Of course my sense of decorum is never going to let me say absolutely everything, I think. That could lead to major conflicts both in my family and elsewhere. There is a filter, but it is important for me that the filter should remove as little as possible.
Ștefan: Well yes, I sort of urge people to take their time, in this world which gets speedier and speedier, I encourage them to spend time with it and their children. giorgiana: So the pop-up form is merely a convention or have you seen children react to it? Ștefan: Yes, the kids that have seen it were really caught by it. I think it really works as a book for children as well. But it is true that at least in Romania as far as I could see it was the people of my generation and their children who were most interested in the book. giorgiana: And what was their reaction? Ștefan: I think that their reaction was strange, well strange on the one hand but quite understandable on the other: to get nostalgic about that period when seeing the book. This was not at all my intention, but in
giorgiana: I think that this is one of the strong points of the book, namely that the two discourses are put next to each other. On the one hand Ceaușescu’s flawless, megalomaniac, supreme cult of personality which bluntly opposes the way in which you, on the other hand, talk about yourself in simple sentences, with not necessarily flattering pic26
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The Golden Age for Children at Botkyrka konsthall
Labyrint Press An exhibition project often begins with a thought that is tested and visualized with the idea of later being placed in an exhibition. Sometimes an exhibition’s host institution applies a critical process, while other times a work is site-specific, inviting the audience to participate in understanding the work’s relationship to its environment. Many times a book is produced after the artistic process, revealing additional knowledge and, if printed after the opening, documenting the exhibition. The artist Ștefan Constantinescu does all this, but also something different. Invited to exhibit at Botkyrka konsthall, an art institution in southern Stockholm, Sweden, he starts with a book, and from this beginning a whole exhibition unfolds. Symbolic objects and gadgets such as a white stork and seven black cars on a velvety background accompany the book The Golden Age for Children, which almost manically plays with interactivity in the form of pop-up pages. The story behind the project is that Ștefan Constantinescu once had a talk with his young son after the child failed to recognize a portrait of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. Ștefan decided to tell his own story and the last forty years of Romanian history in a playful and appealing manner addressed to young children. The Golden Age for Children at Botkyrka konsthall is successful in creating a desire to experience more, to know more. Exhibition visitors have said they returned home to intensively research the exhibit’s subjects on the Internet. Moreover, The Golden Age for Children also relates to the art institution of Botkyrka konsthall. The institution has a publishing house, Labyrint Press, supporting the production and distribution of artist’s books. Constantinescu’s work intelligently follows this line of thought and writes itself into the living history of the institution. You will continue to find The Golden Age for Children within the archive of Labyrint Press, which since the opening of Ștefan Constantinescu’s exhibition will remain open to the public. Hopefully you as a reader will enjoy traveling through Ștefan Constantinescu’s thoughts as much as I have.
The exhibition project The Golden Age for Children with artist Ștefan Constantinescu opened at Botkyrka konsthall during the fall of 2008. Through Ștefan’s autobiography, we as visitors had the opportunity to take part in a difficult and exciting life journey. The journey included a young boy’s development into adulthood and travel from Ștefan’s homeland Romania to Sweden, in parallel with Romania’s contemporary history. The core of the exhibition consisted of a pop up book with the same title as the exhibition, The Golden Age for Children. With the richly illustrated book – which vividly recounts Ștefan’s life story – as the foundation, a larger exhibition project emerged. There were exhibitions at Botkyrka konsthall and at the Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm, a film screening at the Multicultural Centre in Fittja followed by a talk with the artist, and “The courage to tell your story,” an educational program at Botkyrka konsthall that focused on pupils from 13 to 18 years old. It is always an exciting challenge to develop an educational program from an art exhibition. The Golden Age for Children gave us the opportunity to bring storytelling into the gallery, giving it a central role in our educational program. By letting school children start out with their own life story and create a timeline based on important and crucial events, meetings, and people that have influenced their choices in life, we managed to bind the exhibition’s theme together with the children’s activities in the educational workshop and in some cases also in their classrooms. The pupils were able to describe important experiences and encounters that had inspired them and in some cases evidently affected their everyday life, sometimes engaging serious and sensitive issues such as being forced to move from one country to another. The book The Golden Age for Children inspires a desire to know more about Ștefan Constantinescu and the land of Romania, but it also inspires a desire to tell one’s own story, something I think is of great significance when people encounter each other and when they encounter art.
Joanna Sandell is a curator and writer, currently director at Botkyrka konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden and editor in chief of the artist’s books publishing house Labyrint Press. She has worked with contemporary art in relationship to public space and new forms of art distribution since 2002.
Miriam Andersson Blecher is currently curator of Program and Education at Botkyrka konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden. Previously she has worked as a curator at the Jewish Museum in Stockholm. The Golden Age for Children (2008) installation, Botkyrka konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2008 29
Epoca de aur pentru copii la Botkyrka konsthall
Labyrint Press Un proiect expoziţional începe de multe ori cu o idee care este gândită și vizualizată în vederea introducerii ei într-o expoziţie. Se produce uneori o critică instituţională, alteori o lucrare site-specific în care opera de artă este relaţionată cu spaţiul, sau publicul este invitat să participe la o relaţionare cu expoziţia din punct de vedere estetic. O carte este realizată de cele mai multe ori printr-un efort care aprofundează cunoașterea, documentând suplimentar expoziţia. Artistul Ștefan Constantinescu face toate acestea și ceva în plus. Expunând la Botkyrka konsthall, o instituţie de artă situată în Suedia, în partea de sud a orașului Stockholm, el începe cu prezentarea cărţii popup, în jurul căreia se construiește o întreagă expoziţie. Simboluri, cum ar fi o barză alb-negru sau șapte mașini negre pe un fundal roșu de catifea, servesc drept gadget-uri pentru cartea Epoca de aur pentru copii – o carte care, cu consecvenţă aproape maniacă, se joacă cu interactivitatea în forma de pagini pop-up. La originea proiectului se află faptul că Ștefan Constantinescu a avut la un moment dat o discuţie cu fiul său, pornind de la ideea că acesta nu l-a recunoscut, într-un portret, pe dictatorul român Nicolae Ceaușescu. Ștefan a decis astfel să-și spună propria poveste, punând-o în contextul ultimilor patruzeci de ani de istorie a României. Povestea a avut nevoie de o punere jucăușă în scenă, deoarece Ștefan Constantinescu a făcut apel în proiectul său și la copii. Și într-adevăr, cartea devine un succes pentru că generează necesitatea de a experimenta mai mult, de a cunoaște mai multe. Există vizitatori ai expoziţiei de la Botkyrka konsthall care au continuat experienţa trăită căutând intens pe google despre tema expoziţiei. Mai mult decât atât, cartea Epoca de aur de pentru copii are o relaţie directă cu instituţia de artă Botkyrka konsthall, deoarece această organizaţie are o editură, Labyrint Press, dedicată cărţilor de artiști și care asigură sprijinirea producţiei și distribuţiei de cărţi ale artiștilor. Lucrarea lui Ștefan Constantinescu urmează într-un mod inteligent această linie de gândire și se înscrie în istoria în curs de formare a instituţiei. După deschiderea pentru public a expoziţiei lui Ștefan Constantinescu, veţi continua să găsiţi Epoca de aur pentru copii în arhiva Labyrint Press. Sperăm că, și în calitate de cititori, vă veţi bucura să călătoriţi alături de ideile și amintirile lui Ștefan Constantinescu, așa cum am făcut și eu.
Proiectul expoziţiei Epoca de aur pentru copii al artistului român Ștefan Constantinescu a fost prezentat la Botkyrka konsthall în toamna anului 2008. Pe baza autobiografiei artistului, vizitatorii au avut prilejul de a lua parte la o dificilă și tulburătoare călătorie prin viaţa artistului. Un voiaj care, în același timp, descria transformarea unui copil în adult și strămutarea din România în Suedia în paralel cu istoria recentă a României. Nucleul expoziţiei a constat în cartea pop-up cu același titlu – Epoca de aur pentru copii. Pornind de la acest volum bogat ilustrat, care povestește viaţa lui Ștefan într-o manieră dinamică, s-a conturat proiectul unei expoziţii, care a fost montată atât la Botkyrka konsthall, cât și la Institutul Cultural Român din Stockholm, fiind însoţită de o proiecţie de filme la Centrul multicultural din Fittja, discuţii cu artistul și o serie de programe educative în cadrul Botkyrka konsthall intitulate „Curajul de a-ţi spune povestea” și adresate elevilor între 13 și 18 ani. Să concepi un program educativ în relaţie cu o expoziţie este întotdeauna o provocare formidabilă. Epoca de aur pentru copii ne-a oferit ocazia să facem din relatarea unei istorii miza centrală a programelor educative. Lăsând elevii să-și povestească viaţa și să alcătuiască o cronologie din evenimentele importante, din întâlnirile și personajele care le-au influenţat opţiunile, am reușit să coordonăm tema expoziţiei cu activităţile copiilor din cadrul atelierului de creaţie și chiar, în unele cazuri, din timpul orelor de curs. Școlarii au avut posibilitatea de a povesti și de a descrie amintiri importante și întâlniri ce îi inspiraseră în anumite momente sau le afectaseră viaţa cotidiană, iar în unele cazuri chiar aspecte sensibile și grave, precum mutarea dintr-o ţară în alta. Cartea Epoca de aur pentru copii stârnește impulsul de a vrea să afli mai multe despre Ștefan Constantinescu și despre ţara lui, România, dar, în același timp, te stimulează să îţi formulezi propria poveste. Aceste impulsuri sunt cruciale pentru întâlnirea între oameni, dar și pentru întâmpinarea artei. Miriam Andersson Blecher este curator de Program și Activităţi Pedagogice la Botkyrka konsthall, Stockholm, Suedia. Înainte, ea a lucrat în calitate de curator la Muzeul Evreiesc din Stockholm.
Den gyllene eran för barn i Botkyrka konsthall
Labyrint Press Den 18 november 2006 öppnade Labyrint, en stor internationell utställning med artists’ books, konstverk i bokform, på Botkyrka konsthall. Över hundra konstnärer eller konstnärsgrupper från hela världen ingick, bland annat från Japan, Rumänien, Turkiet, Israel och Singapore. Från Sverige medverkade konstnärer från Norrland till Skåne. Ett motiv i arbetet med utställningen var att arbeta internationellt utifrån en begränsad budget. Resande konstnärer och curatorer agerade kurirer och bar med sig verk i handbagaget. Öppna insamlingar, så kallade “open calls” annonserades på webbplatser och via kontakter i ett flertal länder och konstnärer ombads att lämna in sina artists’ books i samband med vernissage på Botkyrka konsthall. Labyrint formgavs som ett cirkulärt bibliotek med novellerna Trädgården med gångar som förgrenar sig och Biblioteket i Babel av den argentinske författaren Jorge Luis Borges som inspiration. I Labyrint fick också besökaren en uppfattning om vad som inspirerar unga konstnärer i Italien till att jobba med boken som utgångspunkt eller vad som driver en curator i Tokyo att göra utställningar i bokform. Under utställningsperioden erbjöds workshops där besökaren fick prova på att göra böcker själv. Labyrint aktiverades också med föreläsningar, performance och händelser där boken som konstverk stod i centrum. Katalogiseringen av artists’ books genomfördes med en tanke om öppenhet. Besökaren skulle få röra vid boken och ta del av den så länge hon eller han så önskade. Därför kunde vissa verk också lånas hem genom Tumba bibliotek som är granne med konsthallen. Det cirkulära biblioteket gavs en icke-kronologisk struktur och bokmärken med konstnärsnamn och titel som angav verkets identitet möjliggjorde att besökaren kunde lägga tillbaka ett verk på en ny plats i biblioteket. År 2007 lades grunden till artist’s book förlaget Labyrint Press av Joanna Sandell och konstnären Pia Sandström. Labyrint Press stödjer produktion och distribution av artists’ books i Sverige och internationellt. Förlaget har även en underetikett, Labyrint konsthall, vars publikationer förhåller sig till Botkyrka konsthalls utställningar och projekt. Labyrint Press erbjuder mentorskap och stipendier samt produktionsoch distributionsstöd till konstnärer som vill ge ut egna artists’ books. Under 2009 återuppstår utställningen Labyrint i utvidgad form i Botkyrka konsthall.
Utställningsprojektet Den gyllene eran för barn med konstnären Ștefan Constantinescu tog plats i Botkyrka konsthall under den tidiga hösten 2008. Utifrån Ștefans självbiografi fick vi som besökare dyka ner i både en svår och spännande livsresa. En resa som både beskrev en ung pojkes utveckling från barn till vuxen man och resan från sitt födelseland Rumänien till Sverige, parallellt med Rumäniens nutidshistoria. Utställningens kärna bestod av pop up boken med samma titel som utställningen Den gyllene eran för barn. Utifrån boken som så rikt illustrerade Ștefans berättelse växte ett utställningsprojekt fram; både en utställning i Botkyrka konsthall och en utställning på Rumänska kulturinstitutet, en filmvisning på Mångkulturellt Centrum i Fittja med efterföljande samtal samt ett pedagogiskt program i Botkyrka konsthall, ”Mod att berätta”, som framför allt riktade sig mot högstadiet och gymnasiet. Det är en spännande utmaning att arbeta fram ett pedagogiskt program till ett utställningsprojekt. Den gyllene eran för barn gav oss i konsthallen möjlighet att ta fram berättandet som en central del av vårt pedagogiska program. Genom att låta skolelever utgå ifrån sin egen livsberättelse och skapa en tidslinje som både tog upp viktiga händelser, möten och personer som påverkat deras val i livet lyckades vi binda ihop temat i utställningen med det som eleverna arbetade med i verkstan och även i vissa fall fortsatte med i klassrummen. Eleverna fick möjlighet att berätta om viktiga minnen och möten som inspirerat och i allra högsta grad påverkat deras vardag, ibland känsliga och svåra saker som till exempel att tvingas flytta från ett land till ett annat. Boken Den gyllene eran för barn väcker lusten att vilja veta mer om Ștefan Constantinescu och om Rumänien som land men den väcker även lusten att själv få berätta, något jag tror är av stor betydelse i mötet med varandra och i mötet med konsten. Miriam Andersson Blecher är curator för Program och Pedagogik vid Botkyrka konsthall utanför Stockholm. Hon har tidigare arbetat som curator vid Judiska museet i Stockholm.
Joanna Sandell este curator și scriitoare, actualmente director al Botkyrka konsthall, Stockholm, Suedia și redactor șef al editurii Labyrint Press. Din 2002 ea a lucrat în domeniul artei contemporane în relaţie cu spaţiul public și noile forme de distribuirea artei.
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Joanna Sandell är curator och skribent, och arbetar som konsthallschef för Botkyrka konsthall utanför Stockholm. Hon är även förläggare för artist’s book-förlaget Labyrint Press. Hon har arbetat med samtidskonst i förhållande till det offentliga rummet samt nya former av konstdistribution sedan 2002.
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Curriculum Vitae ștefan constantinescu was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1968. He lives and works in Stockholm and Bucharest.
studies 1998 Master of Fine Arts, Royal Academy of Arts, Stockholm, Sweden 1996 Bachelor of Art, Romanian Art Academy, Bucharest, Romania
selected solo exhibitions 2008 The Golden Age for Children, Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden Curators Joanna Sandell and Miriam Andersson-Blecher Archive of Pain, The Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm, Sweden Producer Giorgiana Zachia 2007 Thanks For A Wonderful, Ordinary Day, Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania Curator Oana Tănase 2006 The Passage, H.arta Gallery, Timișoara, Romania The Passage, Gallery Posibila, Bucharest, Romania 2004 Dacia 1300 – My Generation, The Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Bucharest, Romania Curator Tom Sandqvist Dacia 1300 – My Generation, Vector Gallery, Iași, Romania Dacia 1300 – My Generation, H.arta Gallery, Timișoara, Romania Dacia 1300 – My Generation, Malmö Art Museum, Malmö, Sweden Curator Tom Sandqvist
2003 Dacia 1300 – My Generation, ID:I Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden Curator Tom Sandqvist 2000 Archive of Pain, co-authors Cristi Puiu and Arina Stoenescu, Venue: Sala Dalles, Bucharest, Romania Curator Tom Sandqvist Archive of Pain, co-authors Cristi Puiu and Arina Stoenescu, Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, Lithuania Curator Tom Sandqvist 1997 Graduation exhibition, Galleri Mejan, Stockholm, Sweden
selected group exhibitions 2008 The Map: Navigating the Present, Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden Curator Jan-Erik Lundström Periferic 8 – Art as Gift, Biennial for Contemporary Art, Iași, Romania Curator Dóra Hegyi Dada East? Romanian Context of Dadaizm, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Polen Curators Zofia Machinicka and Adrian Notz There and Here, wip:konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden Curator Karolina Pahlén 2007 Dada East? The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire, Färgfabriken, Stockholm, Sweden Curator Adrian Notz 2006 Dada East? The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, Switzerland Curator Adrian Notz indirect speech, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany Curator Alina Șerban 32
2005 Minnesbilder, Skulpturens Hus, Stockholm, Sweden Curator Viveca Lindenstrand On Difference #1. Local Contexts – Hybrid Spaces, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany Curators Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler 2004 Blick 2004, Kunstverein Munich, Germany and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden Curators Maria Lind, Anna LivionIngvarsson, Cecilia Widenheim 2003 Narration in Swedish Contemporary Art, Norrköpings Konstmuseum, Norrköping, Sweden Curator Marianne Hultman 2002 Public Art TransEuropa – Position: Romania, MuseumsQuartier, Quartier 21, Vienna, Austria Curator Susanne Neuburger 2001 Just What Is It…, Gallery Atelier 35, Bucharest, Romania
selected screenings, artist talks 2006 Screening of The Passage within Politics of Space – conference in the context of the exhibition On Difference #2: Grenzwertig, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany Curators Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler Artist talk – parallel event within Chaos: The Age of Confusion, Bucharest Biennial 2, Bucharest, Romania
film festivals 2007 The Passage, Tempo Documentary Festival, Stockholm, Sweden 2006 The Passage, Transylvania International Film Festival, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
The Passage, festivalul cARTfilm, Iași, Romania The Passage, Göteborg Film Festival, Göteborg, Sweden 2004 Dacia 1300 – My Generation, 8th Annual Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Paris, France
filmography 2009 My Beautiful Dacia (in production), co-director Julio Soto Producers The ThinkLab Media, Madrid, Spain and Hifilm Productions, Bucharest, Romania 2005 The Passage, 62 min. 2003 Dacia 1300 – My Generation, 62 min. 2002 The Baron, 22.02.2002 (based on a concept by Cristi Puiu), 45 min.
public collections Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania Malmö Museum of Contemporary Art, Malmö, Sweden
publications 2008 The Golden Age for Children, The Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm, Labyrinth Press, pionier press, Stockholm, Sweden 2006 Northern Lights, IDEA arts+society, No. 23, Cluj-Napoca, Romania 2003 Dacia 1300 – My Generation, Simetria, Bucharest, Romania 2000 Archive of Pain, pionier press, Stockholm, Sweden
selected articles 2008 Simona Nastac, “New Media, New Europe”, Eikon – International Magazine for Photography and Media Art No. 63 2007 Sinziana Ravini, “An Archive of Pain in the Palace of Oblivion”, Site No. 21 Alina Șerban, “Dada East? The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire”, Flash Art No. 258 Simona Nastac, “Ștefan Constantinescu”, Flash Art No. 256 2006 “Focus Romania”, Flash Art No. 251 2005 Ulrika Stahre, “Så kort är ett liv – och så långt”, Aftonbladet 24 November 2004 Susanne Neuburger, “Ștefan Constantinescu: Dacia 1300 – My Generation”, Springerin No. 3
Pauli Olavi Kuivanen, “Konsten har blivit mer tillgänglig”, Norrköpings Tidningar 24 October Måns Hirschfeldt, “Globala vyer”, Bildbyrån, P 1, Sveriges Radio 1 December
selected grants 2008 Media Desk Broadcast Grant for My Beautiful Dacia, co-director Julio Soto The Swedish Arts Grants Committee Project Support for The Golden Age for Children 2007 Romanian National Film Board Grant for My Beautiful Dacia, co-director Julio Soto 2004 The Swedish Arts Grants Committee Project Support for The Passage
Martin Schibli, “Med rumänsk folkbil till det förflutna”, Helsingborgs Dagblad
The Swedish Arts Grants Committee: Two-Year Working Grant
Jelena Zetterström, “Jelena Zetterström ser Ștefan Constantinescu”, Sydsvenskan 30 March
2002 The Swedish Arts Grants Committee Project Support for Dacia 1300 – My Generation
2003 Andreas Engström, “Centraleuropeisk ‘professionalism’ i den svenska idyllen?”, Nutida Musik No. 4 Milou Allerholm, “Framtidens bil”, På stan Dagens Nyheter 31 October Milou Allerholm, “Konsten att berätta”, Dagens Nyheter 31 October Cristina Karlstam, “Berättelser i ung svensk konst”, Uppsala Nya Tidning 24 October Bo Borg, “Konsten som berättar”, Norrköpings Tidningar Ulrika Stahre, “Tomheten vinner”, Aftonbladet 4 November
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1999 The Swedish Arts Grants Committee Project Support for Archive of Pain The Swedish Arts Grants Committee: Two-Year Working Grant
The Golden Age for Children
The Golden Age for Children (2008) pop-up book
p. 35 The Golden Age for Children, installation, Periferic 8 – Art as Gift Biennial for Contemporary Art Iași, Romania 2008 34
Behind the Curtain (2008) fabric, wood installation, Botkyrka konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2008
The Golden Age for Children (2008) installation, Botkyrka konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2008
The Golden Age for Children (2008) installation, Botkyrka konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2008 36
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The Golden Age for Children (2008) installation, Botkyrka konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2008
p. 38 Memories with stuffed animals (2008) photo stuffed animals, Sovata, Romania 1976 34,5 x 26,5 cm 39
Build your own Dacia 1300! (2007) paper, wood, metal, plastic installation, Botkyrka konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2008
Gadget 2: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday (2008) plastic, acrylic, flock coating, wood size: 75 x 10 cm x 10 cm installation, Botkyrka konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2008
Gadget 1: swimmer (2008) mixed media, plastic, wire, metal, acrylic, electric motor 15,6 x 6,5 x 5,8 cm installation, Botkyrka konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2008
Gadget 3: hammer (2008) wood, iron, acrylic size: 30,3 x 9,5 x 3,5 cm installation, Botkyrka konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2008 40
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Northern Lights
Northern Lights (2006) photo (Nikon FM2), text IDEA arts+society, No. 23, 2006 42
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10.01.2006–27.03.2006
10.01.2006–27.03.2006
N-am mai visat ceva de mult. Îmi place sæ dorm øi nici nu mai apuc sæ visez sau poate cæ m-am ramolit într-atîta, încît dimineaflæ nu mai ræmîne nimic gravat pe hard disk. Mi-am propus de ceva timp sæ mæ scol dimineafla la ora 6, dar nu reuøesc sæ-mi respect planul. M-am trezit o datæ, am fæcut cafeaua, micul dejun øi m-am bægat din nou în pat. Vreau sæ fac atîtea, dar parcæ timpul nu-mi mai ajunge. Totuøi, la somn nu pot renunfla. La primævaræ, cînd va fi luminæ de la 3.00 dimineafla, cred cæ nu va fi o problemæ sæ mæ scol mai devreme. De obicei, mæ scol la 7.30, mæ duc la baie, mæ spæl pe dinfli, mænînc, vorbesc cu Kuki øi cu bæieflii, îl îmbrac pe Iancu øi apoi fugim la grædiniflæ. Mæ întorc acasæ øi este deja ora 9.00. Mæ apuc de lucru. Pierd o græmadæ de timp pe internet. Sînt bolnav de internet. Chiar acum, am primit un e-mail de la Gunilla de la Arbetsförmedlingen Kultur (forflele de muncæ, secfliunea de culturæ). Voi începe un curs pentru øomeri, pe 6 februarie. De cînd a apærut problema delocalizærii locurilor de muncæ, este foarte greu sæ gæseøti o slujbæ în Suedia. Toate slujbele fug în Europa de Est sau, chiar mai departe, în Asia. Sînt curios sæ væd unde se va ajunge.
It’s been a long time since my last dream. I like sleeping and I fail to dream or maybe I’m just so decrepit, that the morning leaves nothing on the hard disk. I’ve been planning for sometime to wake up at six in the morning, but I cannot stick to the plan. There was one time I woke up, I made the coffee, the breakfast and I turned in again. I want to do so many things, but it seems that I’m running out of time. However, I can’t give up sleep. In the spring, when light starts at 3 in the morning, I don’t think that waking up earlier will be a problem. I usually wake up at 7.30, I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, eat, talk to Kuki and the boys, I dress up Iancu and we hurry to the kindergarten. I return home and it’s already 9.00. I start working. I waste a lot of time on the internet. I am internet-sick. I just got an email from Gunilla from Arbetsförmedlingen Kultur (working forces, cultural section). I’m starting a course for the unemployed on February 6. Since the problem of delocalization of jobs appeared, it’s very hard to find a job in Sweden. All jobs leave for Eastern Europe or even further, for Asia. I wonder where it will end.
De obicei îmi vine sæ povestesc despre România, dar acum am sæ povestesc despre Suedia. Nu øtiu de ce, dar îmi este mai uøor sæ vorbesc despre România. Îmi este pur øi simplu la îndemînæ s-o fac, poate øi pentru cæ de aici, din Suedia, am suficientæ distanflæ. M-am întors din România de o sæptæmînæ øi încæ nu înfleleg unde mæ aflu. Noroc cu Gunilla, asistenta de la Arbetsförmedlingen Kultur, care mæ ajutæ sæ revin cu picioarele pe pæmînt. Deøi lucrez sau cel puflin mæ agit de dimineaflæ pînæ seara cu tot felul de lucruri, scriu øi ræspund la e-mailuri, lucrez la proiectele mele, am totuøi senzaflia cæ nu fac nimic. Uneori lucrez doar din rutinæ, færæ sæ mæ gîndesc sau sæ înfleleg ce fac. Asta mi se întîmplæ de fiecare datæ cînd mæ întorc aici, am nevoie de cîteva sæptæmîni de readaptare. Cum ajung pe aeroport, mi se face ræu, uneori am febræ. Cred cæ este o reacflie a organismului, un fel de autoapærare, creierul vrea sæ mæ avertizeze cæ, gata, s-a terminat, acum trebuie sæ te trezeøti din „beflie“. A început sæ-mi fie greu sæ mæ miøc. De fapt, îmi este greu sæ mæ întorc la problemele curente. Îmi este fricæ sæ nu greøesc, sæ n-o iau pe tobogan, în jos. Obstacolele sînt la mine în cap øi nu este neapærat vorba de ceva exterior. Orice miøcare în spafliu mæ doare foarte tare, orice despærflire este o durere. Este o durere fizicæ, o obosealæ enormæ, mæ dor oasele, carnea, capul. Nu reuøesc sæ înmagazinez toate informafliile. Timpul are o altæ dimensiune, totul se dilatæ. Am observat cæ dacæ stau aici, mæ simt mult mai bine fizic sau, mai bine zis, nu am øocul revenirii la realitate, care este atît de dureros.
Northern Lights (2006) photo (Nikon FM2), text IDEA arts+society, No. 23, 2006
Cîteva chestii refuz sæ le înfleleg. Noi locuim la etajul 5, într-un bloc de 8 etaje, în Grimsta, zonæ care aparfline de Vällingby, una din suburbiile Stockholmului. În interiorul blocului øi pe o razæ de aproximativ 50 de metri în jurul lui, ne salutæm respectuoøi cu tofli vecinii, dar cum aceastæ zonæ este depæøitæ, cum, brusc, nimeni nu te mai salutæ. Este ca øi cum regulile jocului sînt valabile doar pe un anumit teritoriu. Eu am avut întotdeauna probleme cu salutatul. Obiønuiesc sæ-i salut pe tofli cunoscuflii øi îmi place sæ fiu salutat øi, de aceea, înnebunesc cînd cineva se face cæ nu mæ vede øi nu mæ salutæ. Mæ simt pæcælit, adicæ a primit ceva færæ sæ dea la schimb, mi-a luat abuziv salutul. În ce priveøte salutul, îl dau la schimb: dau un salut pentru un alt salut. Poate cæ sînt eu meschin øi ar trebui sæ fiu mai generos, sæ nu mæ mai aøtept sæ primesc ceva de la ceilalfli. Trebuie sæ mæ mai gîndesc la asta. S-a blocat internetul! Sînt dependent de cæsufla mea poøtalæ electronicæ. Gata, a repornit, dar n-am primit niciun e-mail. Într-o zi primesc în medie cam 20–30 de e-mailuri, însæ doar 5, poate, îmi sînt adresate, restul sînt reclame. Lunea øi marflea primesc cele mai multe e-mailuri, vinerea nu primesc e-mailuri de la instituflii, iar sîmbætæ øi duminicæ primesc doar reclame.
p. 45 Northern Lights (2006) detail of page 42 IDEA arts+society, No. 23, 2006 44
A fost straniu în România, nu am avut sentimentul cæ m-am întors acasæ, ci doar cæ m-am întors într-un loc drag, pe care îl cunosc foarte bine, dar nu este la mine acasæ. Am simflit ce simt de obicei cînd ajung, de exemplu, în Italia; acum exagerez puflin. Vreau sæ spun cæ am ajuns undeva unde cunosc aerul, mirosurile, atmosfera, forfota din jur, dar totuøi ceva lipseøte. Din maøina lui Claudiu, cu care am plecat de la aeroport, totul îmi pærea cunoscut øi în acelaøi timp stræin, recunoøteam locurile, stræzile, clædirile, øi totuøi le simfleam foarte diferite. Deøi era Cræciunul øi în aeroport, în toate benzinæriile øi prin oraø se auzeau eternele colinde ale lui Hruøcæ, eu nu am simflit nimic din tot ce îmi închipuiam cæ trebuie sæ simt. N-am mai fost de Cræciun în flaræ din ’94, de cînd m-am øi cæsætorit, øi plænuiam de mult sæ fac Cræciunul øi Anul Nou în flaræ, cu cei apropiafli. Am simflit cæ România s-a înstræinat de mine øi cæ îmi este aproape la fel de stræinæ ca øi Suedia. Mæ gîndesc la tofli aceia care refuzæ sæ se mai întoarcæ, chiar în vizitæ, la ei acasæ, mæ gîndesc, de asemenea, la ce voiau sæ-mi spunæ tofli aceia cu care vorbeam øi pe care nu-i înflelegeam atunci cînd am venit în Suedia, inclusiv pe pærinflii mei. Nici acum nu øtiu dacæ
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I usually feel like talking about Romania, but now I will talk about Sweden. I don’t know why, but it seems easier to talk about Romania. It’s just handy to do so, perhaps because from here, from Sweden, I can put myself at some distance. I returned from Romania for a week and I still can’t figure out where I am. Lucky with Gunilla, the assistant from Arbetsförmedlingen Kultur, who helps me get my feet on the ground again. Although I work or at least toss about from dusk till dawn about a lot of things, I write and answer to e-mails, work on my projects, I have the feeling that I’m not doing anything. Sometimes it’s just the routine, without thinking or understanding what I am doing. This happens every time I return here, I need several weeks to readjust. As soon as I arrive at the airport I get sick, sometimes feverish. I think it’s an organic reaction, a kind of self-defense, the brain wants to warn me, No more, it’s over, now you have “to sober up”. It has become difficult for me to move. In fact, it’s hard for me to return to the daily problems. I’m afraid of making mistakes, of sliding down the drain. The obstacles are in my head, it’s not necessarily something exterior. Any spatial movement hurts a lot, any departure is painful. It is a physical pain, an enormous tiredness, my bones, my flesh, my head hurt. I fail to store all the information. Time gains another dimension, everything expands. I noticed that if I stay here I feel much better, physically speaking, or, to be more precisely, there is no shock of returning to reality, which is so painful. There are some things I refuse to understand. We live on the fifth floor, in an eight floor building in Grimsta, an area belonging to Vällingby, a Stockholm suburbia. Inside the building and in an area of about 50 meters around it, we respectfully salute with all the neighbours, but once outside this area, suddenly nobody salutes you anymore. It seems like the rules of the game apply only on a particular territory. I always had trouble with saluting. I use to salute all my acquaintances and I like being saluted; that’s why I go mad when someone pretends not to see me and doesn’t salute me. I feel betrayed, I mean he received something without returning the gift, he abusively took my salute. Regarding the salute, this is like a trade for me: I exchange a salute for another. Maybe I’m just being mean and I should be more generous, not expecting to receive anything from the others. I need to think it over. The internet is not working! I am addicted to my electronic inbox. All right, now it’s working again, but I didn’t receive any e-mails. I receive about 20–30 e-mails per day, but only 5 are addressed to me, the rest are advertisements. I receive the most e-mails on Monday and Tuesday, on Friday I don’t receive e-mails from the institutions, and on Saturday and Sunday I only receive advertisements. It felt strange in Romania, I didn’t have the feeling of returning home, but to a place dear, very well-known to me, but not my home. I felt the same thing I usually feel when I go, for instance, to Italy; maybe I’m exaggerating just a little. What I mean is that I arrived in a place with a familiar air, smell, atmosphere, but something was missing. From Claudiu’s car, who took me from the airport, I could recognize the places, the streets, the buildings and nevertheless felt they were very different. Although it was Christmas and one could listen to the perennial Christmas carols of Hruøcæ at the airport, at every gas station and in the city, I haven’t felt anything
Ophelia’s Death
Ophelia’s Death (2006) silver plated bronze, wood 45 x 45 x 25 cm Kunsthalle Fridericianum Kassel, Germany 2006 (courtesy of Kunsthalle Fridericianum)
Ophelia’s Death (2006) 5 min. video Kunsthalle Fridericianum Kassel, Germany 2006 (courtesy of Kunsthalle Fridericianum)
Ophelia’s Death (2006) 5 min. video Kunsthalle Fridericianum Kassel, Germany 2006 (courtesy of Kunsthalle Fridericianum) 46
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The Passage
The Passage (2005) 62 min. video (Sony PD 150) stills from video 48
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The Passage (2005) 62 min. video (Sony PD 150) stills from video 50
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Dacia 1300 – My Generation
Dacia 1300 – My Generation (2003) 62 min. video, book, school desks installation, Norrköping Art Museum Norrköping, Sweden 2003
Dacia 1300 – My Generation (2003) 62 min. video, book installation, ID:I Gallery Stockholm, Sweden 2003 52
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Dacia 1300 – My Generation (2003) 62 min. video, book installation, Malmö Museum of Contemporary Art Malmö, Sweden 2004 54
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The Baron 22.2.2002
The Baron, 22.02.2002 (2002) (based on a concept by Cristi Puiu) 45 min. video installation, The Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm, Sweden 2008
Archive of Pain
Archive of Pain (2000) in collaboration with Cristi Puiu and Arina Stoenescu video, book, web site, metal booths installation, Sala Dalles Bucharest, Romania 2000
p. 59 Archive of Pain (2000) in collaboration with Cristi Puiu and Arina Stoenescu video, book, web site, metal booths installation, Sala Dalles Bucharest, Romania 2000 58
p. 60 Archive of Pain (2000) in collaboration with Cristi Puiu and Arina Stoenescu video, book, web site, metal booths installation, The Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania 2000
Archive of Pain (2000) in collaboration with Cristi Puiu and Arina Stoenescu video, book, web site, metal booths installation, The Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania 2000
Archive of Pain (2000) in collaboration with Cristi Puiu and Arina Stoenescu video, book, web site installation, The Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm, Sweden 2008 61
Acknowledgements: arctic paper dummyshop (munkedal) botkyrka konsthall (stockholm) the centre for visual introspection (bucharest) idea arts+society (cluj-napoca) igloo magazine (bucharest) the institute for the investigation of communist crimes in romania (bucharest) map dummyshop (stockholm) the multicultural centre (stockholm) the municipal museum of bucharest omagiu remix culture magazine (bucharest) pavilion magazine (bucharest) pionier press (stockholm) pogany art (stockholm) the romanian cultural institute of stockholm the ministry of culture and religious affairs: promocult 2008 (romania) the romanian television archive (bucharest) scanpix (stockholm) the sport museum (bucharest) the swedish arts grants committee vector > art and culture in context magazine (iași) xenter (stockholm)
Adrian Andreescu Doina Anghel Raluca Barb Ioana Măgură-Bernard Andreea Cârnu Dan Bălăneanu Viorica Calmâc Adriana Malfatti Chen Mihai Ciobanu Mihai Coliban Constantin Constantinescu Iancu Constantinescu Iona Constantinescu Luigi Cora “Baronu” Paul Coșeru Ana Dević Goran Drenkov Doru Dricu Eni Dricu Gertrud Dumitrescu Ann Edholm Björn Ernstson Andrea Faciu Arne Falang Cătălina Gavrilescu Cristian Gavrilescu Mary Georgescu Vlad Andrei Gherghiceanu Mihaela Ghergiceanu Karl Hallberg Lars Heydelke Ana Iacob Ovidiu Ioanid Brita Johnson Dan Johnson Catrin Lundqvist Bogdan Marcu Cristian Marina Ioana Marina Horia Marinescu Zoltán Márton Mihaela Mihai
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Andreiana Mihail Raluca Mihu Ciprian Mureșan Simona Nastac Ninni Nylén Georgeta Olaru David Vera Oliva Radu Olteanu Corina Oprea Nongkran Panmongkol Andreea Păduraru Alina Pătru Sorin Păun Veronique Păun Voichiţa Petrescu Alexander Peroutka L. Allen Poole Anca Popa Liviu Popp “Gege” Anca Puiu Cristi Puiu Pedro Ramirez Matei Sandu Veronica Sava Dan Shafran Alexandru Solomon Ada Solomon Julio Soto Nini Stoenescu Alexandru Stoica Radu Stroe Raluca Stroe Ruxandra Stroe Henrik Sundling Ana Szel TatianaTipa George Vasilache Thomas Wester Alexandra Zachia Göran Ärnbäck Kuki