The making of Cucuteni Alternativ - Experiential Museum Târgu Frumos

CUCUTENI ALTERNATIVE MUSEUM ARTS LAB 3.0 • ASIRYS

alternativ

The making of

CUCUTENI ALTERNATIV ALTERNATIVE MUSEUM FEBRUARY 2022, TÂRGU FRUMOS AS PART OF THE ARTS LAB 3.0 PROGRAM ASIRYS

CUCUTENI ALTERNATIV

INDEX · WHO WE ARE · WHAT IS AN ALTERNATIVE MUSEUM · ABOUT CUCUTENI CULTURE · THE PROCESS

DEMET DURDU CERAMIC AND GLASS ARTIST, TURKEY

GHEORGHE CIOBANU NAIVE PAINTER, ROMANIA

KRISTA LIPSKA

BODYPAINTER, LATVIA

KÜBRA AKARSU ARCHITECT, TURKEY

LEIRE SÁENZ QUEVEDO VISUAL ARTIST, BASQUE COUNTRY

MIHAELA DANIELA PODARIU PROJECT COORDINATOR · CUCUTENI ALTERNATIVE MUSEUM · THE FUTURE OF THE PROJECT

WHO WE ARE

CUCUTENI CUCUTENI CUCUTENI

We are a team of six people with completely different backgrounds who came together to create and develop this project. The team is formed by four international artists, (who are, at the same time volunteers in ASIRYS), one Romanian naive painter, and the coordinator of the project.

We believe that there is great importance hidden for every society in its ability to live by knowing its past and using that to create a stronger future. That is the reason why it is important for youth and everyone else to learn about Romanian history, its cultural heritage through the arts in a non-formal way and create a connection with it. Through examining findings in this area, the examples made to keep the culture alive by having ideas are of great importance; learning to appreciate arts and acknowledging the importance of passing that on to future generations. In other words, knowing the roots and where people came from, knowing what has been done in the past takes them further in every aspect.

It is really important to acknowledge every person’s ideas, so they can be and grow as strong members of society with confidence and freedom of expressing, creating, and overcoming obstacles. And now, Cucuteni Alternative project offers people an opportunity to be a part of the creation process as a team member, developing communication skills and the ability to express themselves. Also, that way they are more efficient at learning and finding new methods of problem-solving as an individual and as team members.

Our intentions are to make Cucuteni more recognizable, attract attention to it and relive the culture. It is not less important to ensure that the local youth live and explore their culture, and it is our commitment to make this project sustainable.

For all the reasons we mentioned above, a motivation to create a modern museum that activates senses and allows each visitor to feel and experience the concept of bringing history into nowadays appeared. We thought this project would give us a space where artists and visitors blend together, and where they can share knowledge in order to achieve an understanding of the cultural heritage’s high value.

WHAT IS AN ALTERNATIVE MUSEUM

Alternative: relating traditional norms.

to

activities

that

depart

from

or

challenge

When we started working on this idea, we came to the conclusion that if we wanted to create a museum, it needed to be a different one. From the beginning, we thought about different ways of reaching out to people, especially, the youngest ones, and making them feel like they belong to Cucuteni. For us, it was really important to create a safe space, where people could be part of the whole experience. We didn’t want our place to become a serious, boring environment, where people would go and leave with the same feelings. We wanted this project to have a space for everyone, to involve the visitors actively in the experience, in order to create feelings and to engage them on learning in an alternative, fun, and accessible way, and of course, for free.

The name of our museum is Cucuteni Alternativ because our goal is to do things in a different way, making sure that art is accessible for everyone and historical evidence is being kept alive, bringing back the importance of cultural heritage in modern perspective, so it creates an environment, where art is interacting with visitors, in a place where they can learn, experience and feel.

CUCUTENI CULTURE In Iași County, the most important cultural heritage is offered by an ancient civilization, which existed for 2000 years, between 5000 BC. and 3000 BC, called the Cucuteni culture. According to biblical chronology, the Cucuteni-Tripoli civilization began in the days of the creation of the earth, or at least in the days of Noah and the Flood.

The origin of this culture has been attributed either to tribes from the dark periods of the Stone Age (Paleolithic) or to mythical peoples ("ancient Aryans"), or, at best, to the pre-Cimmerians (the Cimmerians being indicated by Herodotus as the older inhabitants of the North Pontic lands). There were also completely fanciful theories, such as those about the Dacian or Slavic origin of the population. Shortly after the discovery, some of the most famous archeologists of the time were involved in solving the problem of the origin of civilization with painted pottery, the most common opinion is that the Cucuteni civilization is a result of influences or relocations of the cultural nomads of Asia Minor (Turkish territories nowadays), reached east of the Carpathians, through Greece and the Balkans.

The Cucuteni culture is distinguished by beautifully painted pottery, with spiral motifs, exposed on the entire surface of the vessels.

Divided into 3 stages of existence, Precucuteni, Cucuteni A, and Cucuteni B, the Cucuteni culture stands out by the variety, symmetry, and complexity of the compositions. The artists of those days were innovators, who left behind tens of thousands of burnt earthenware vessels and figurines, revealing the effervescence of an extraordinary spiritual life, which paints many questions and mysteries.

Apart from pottery, archeological research has shown that every few years, the people of Cucuteni burned their houses, and after everything turned to ashes, they built others on top.

The overall impression of Cucuteni Culture is the stability, creative force, originality, and a special aesthetic sense. And yet, there are important questions with no clear answers, but more hypotheses and opinions in controversy.

DEMET DURDU CERAMIST AND GLASS ARTIST

When I first came to Romania, I started by researching the history of Romanian ceramics. As a result of my research, I started to apply small Cucuteni patterns in my works. One day we went to Cucuteni village where I met Ionela Sandrina Mihuleac, an amazing ceramist.

After seeing Cucuteni and meeting its artists, I had new ideas. It helped me to form a new perspective for the Alternative Cucuteni Museum. Cucuteni is a peaceful world in lush nature, whereas artists can only think and produce. The perfect studio, in an immaculate nature...

It leads to the Copper Age, where the Cucuteni-Trypillian civilization flourished. One of the brightest civilizations of prehistoric Europe.

We can notice the importance of the pottery at that time because it is decorated expertly by skilled hands. We can see that the Cucuteni pots became a very important craft. The pots that are still being produced nowadays can be produced in the same way without deforming their shape. Ceramics works with spiritual drawings on which we can completely see the natural and clay structure. There is also a Cucuteni female model belonging to this culture. There are spiritual patterns on the thin waist with large hips, varying according to its anatomy. Although it appears as a soft form, it also has sharp turns. Actually, if we consider the pottery at that time, they showed an innovative approach. They tried the forms and searched for patterns.

In addition to spiritual patterns, they also included symmetrical patterns in their designs. The emotions I feel when I take the female figure in my hand, are freedom, peace, innovative approach, fertility, mystery, rhythm in patterns... As they embrace spiritual drawings, tribal music will also come suddenly to our ears. Because the body can complement each other in a way that we can use to all our senses. We touch, see, and hear. While examining the forms, I can imagine how it was done, I can hear the sound of that fire while it was baking in the oven. They don't forget to paint the beverage containers. We can see the examples again.

As a ceramicist, seeing new forms and new techniques feeds me incredibly. The fact that societies have their own cultures sheds light on the future, encourages, and offers examples. It enables us to connect from the past to the future. Our original forms, which we produce with our innovative approaches, will light the future. We will continue to produce, research, and try without giving up on this quest.

We decided to establish the Alternative Cucuteni Museum to encourage young people and all people. In order to keep this culture alive, I made exactly the same original ceramic works and we will exhibit them in our Alternative Cucuteni Museum. The murals, decorations, paintings, brochures, presentations of the museum came from the talented hands of other friends. We all did our best.

We are excited to leave a museum to the future.

GHEORGHE CIOBANU NAIVE PAINTER

I started to cooperate with SUPER TINERI a long time ago, I think there are already 10 years. One project that I remember is when over 40 young people from 8 countries came to my studio and we spoke about the Rroma community in Europe. I shared my experience about the Rroma people that crossed my village when I was young. I was dreaming to run away with them, and to enjoy freedom, and becoming a full-time artist. But life had other plans for me. In that project, I made a painting presenting the Rroma community in a traditional Romanian village.

So when Mihaela Podariu called me I was expecting the same topic.

But she proposed to me to approach through painting, Cucuteni heritage. I was thrilled! What a chance to speak and share a glimpse of what Cucuteni culture was for these lands!

I am willing to visit a museum dedicated to Cucuteni culture! And I saw two films and the SUPER TINERI team took care to give me different materials to read about, but what I think is that it is really hard, even for an archeologist to describe the daily life of Cucutenian people. This is why artistic work is so important because we can shape and give more personality to our history!

Cucuteni culture was amazing! Their way of painting those ceramic vessels is incredible. It is really difficult to do those shapes and symbols, you need to be an experienced artist. Can you imagine how reach and beautiful, their connection with nature, what types of vibrations had those people?! They should be a brand for Romania, especially for our region!

During the process, I worked with 5 amazing girls, 4 of them from other countries, such as Latvia, Turkey, and Basque Country. I tried my best to share my knowledge with them and to create together something important for Cucuteni. I must confess it wasn’t an easy process, were moments in which I did not have any clue other than my village, how to represent the Cucuteni civilization.

I am happy I had this chance, to work with young people. It’s fantastic how they were so engaged in this research, and how they appreciated a lost civilization that lived 5000 years before Christ.

Cucuteni ceramic is a peerless treasure of history. It is an honor to cooperate on such a great project! Cucuteni conquers the world through art and not by war or other powerful means. Their messages are alive after so much time, and our work as artists is to transfer their precious memory to the public.

KRISTA LIPSKA BODY PAINTER AND MAKE UP ARTIST

The process of creating the Cucuteni Alternativ museum has been challenging and full of experiments, searching for the right solutions and pieces I can cherish in the creation of the exhibition.

It all started with an idea from the organization where I am volunteering, that it is time to do a creative museum for one of the world’s oldest civilizations – Cucuteni culture.

My creating process was to make sure that I have seen enough historical materials to be able to extract the main essence of Cucuteni culture, their symbols, use of them, and get inspired for creating my own pieces to contribute to the alternative museum concept. While I was reading about this amazing and oldest confirmed European civilization, I found out that I am really attracted to their patterns and pottery. Nevertheless, all their mysteries are magically binding my mind and bringing up the urge to find out more. After visiting the University Museum in Iași and seeing all these amazing creations and historical heritage, I got my first wave of inspiration. As a body painting artist, after seeing charming sculptures of woman bodies with tribal markings, I was certain that I must do inspired pieces on my team's bodies.

It all started with face painting pieces, we become one tribe, working for everyone’s good. I was really intrigued, by how my sketches would turn out on each face, but the results were even more pleasing than I was expecting because my imagination playing around with Cucuteni symbols found a perfect way to emphasize everyone's own beauty and create a spark in the eyes because it was wonderfully matching the personality of each model. The upcoming challenge after this was to bring into existence big pieces I was craving to paint so strongly. That took long hours of patience and working with body relief to recreate with my own touch woman bodies covered in patterns. And I am sincerely grateful to all my 3 models for courage and strength to be my canvas and to Leire, who was in charge of making sure that all execution is being documented and reaching the highest quality before looking into the eyes of the audience in the Alternative Museum. Nevertheless, all of us need to keep in mind that for creating an alternative museum, first of all, there is a must to acknowledge historical heritage and traditions, consequently finding extraordinary in ordinary. This path is a key to breaking the borders of our own imagination and stepping out of cages in a nourishing environment provided by the support of other artists.

This whole adventure is started, so it can reach the future and proceed to grow and bloom at its fullest. First stones of foundation will be there when the next generation comes; it’s only up to artists how thoughtful and creative new ideas will be tied into the museum's prolongation.

KÜBRA AKARSU ARCHITECT

I was really scared when this project first came out. Because, unfortunately, we do not protect our history and culture enough at the moment. I thought 'While I did not know my own culture very well, how can I do to research and understand the most important culture of another country and come up with a project and tell it to other people'. For this, when we first started to visit the museums, everything was complicated. Yes, there were symbols, ceramics were in the foreground, but what did they mean? After the documentaries I watched and some articles I read, I started to understand more clearly and my excitement increased. Now, working in a different culture started to feel enjoyable, not scary to me. Coming from across borders, I was going to introduce my own culture to the people here and work from my own perspective. And maybe that would reach more people than I thought.

Then I started researching what to do. The Cucuteni village exhibited in Iaşi was connected to me as it was an alternative museum. I had decided on my first piece. But I wanted to include more architecture. Since architecture is both a design and a technical profession, I decided to include both aspects. I was going to examine the technical details of the Cucuteni houses and how they have been modernized until today. If we want to understand a culture and have information about it, the first thing we should look at is the designs of their houses, the materials they use, and their interior decorations. And that's why I did a technical study about the houses of that time. Now there was the design field of architecture. Based on the fact that we live in Targu Frumos, where Cucuteni was born, I imagined what the houses would be like if we w e r e a t t h a t t i m e . B a s e d o n t h i s d r e a m , I l i k e d t h e i d e a o f ​a d d i n g some color to the modern concrete houses here. And I decided to turn them into a Cucuteni home. In other words, I created a bridge that connects the past and the future, and I did pleasant work, albeit digitally.

Apart from my personal work, as a whole team, we aim to reach and spread this work to many generations. We cannot build our future without knowing the past. I hope we can convey this message to all the people we reach.

LEIRE SÁENZ QUEVEDO VISUAL ARTIST

The process of creating Cucuteni Alternative has been incredibly challenging and enriching for me. In the beginning, I felt quite lost.

Even though I loved the idea of the project, there were many things I was unsure about.

I didn’t know almost anything about the subject, which was really scary, but in the end, this gave me the opportunity to learn about something completely different and to do it without having any preconceived ideas, at the same time I got the chance to learn and connect more with Romanian culture.

When I think about the beginning stages of the project, I remember also being worried about the fact that we had to build the museum from scratch and just between us. I thought we would not be capable of such a thing, but slowly, we started to shape the project in a way it could be achievable for the whole team.

With all fears aside, I loved every step of this journey. We started to do some research on the topic in the first weeks, when we visited two museums in Iași, completely based on Cucuteni. There, we did not only have many visual references to start to inspire our works on, but we also had the chance to have conversations with people who are really close to the subject, and that enjoyed our presence and were glad to answer all of our questions.

At the same time, we were working on the museum and the art pieces for it, I also documented the process of its creation. I enjoyed doing this because it allowed me to take a closer look at the work and the way of working of my partners. When I hold a camera in my hands, it gives me the chance not only to capture but to observe and understand what is happening in a different way.

The part of the process I enjoyed the most, was to be able to create alongside my team and learn from and with them. Being focused on just this project, allowed us to work in a creative and artistic atmosphere. I also loved when I started noticing similarities between my pieces and the elements of the Cucutenian ones.

Learning about this part of Romanian history and culture was incredibly important for the girls and me. It gave us the opportunity to get a closer look at the history of this country, which has been our home for the past few months.

MIHAELA DIANA PODARIU PROJECT COORDINATOR

For many years, I did not consider myself an artist, but more a manager or an entrepreneur. My background is so complex and multidisciplinary that it is hard to find a red line. Some of my first memories as a child are that I always gather my cousins and close friends in the attempt to engage them in a play, in an event, in an imaginary radio show. Of course, I ended up most of the time alone because they were overwhelmed by the lack of resources and unknown. I have still vivid in my mind that for many years my biggest dream was to have the capacity to organize whatever crossed my mind.

During my studies in economics, I continued volunteering and, at some point, I discovered the world of NGOs and non-formal education. And this is how my dreams come true. I organized so many events until I was burned out, I traveled so much, that I got tired, which I never thought will be possible. But all of the experiences I had, led me to another path, of building sustainable communities. I learned the path of solidarity.

From Ancient times, I like the Greek philosophers who somehow were the first activists. Plato criticized the arts for having negative influences, such as corrupting people through emotions and weakening character. He appreciated art for the ideal or spiritual beauty instead of the beauty coming from the material world. At the same time, Aristotle developed the ideas of Plato, and asked himself the question: 'how can we teach our citizens to be better through arts?'.

How I can build a better Târgu Frumos through arts? How can I engage youth to be better citizens using the local heritage treasures?

All these questions and experiences were for me the starting points of the Cucuteni Alternative project. Even though my team struggled sometimes, for me to build Cucuteni Alternative was a natural process. I have tried so many roads and shapes before, that I believe people's creativity is limitless. Therefore Cucuteni is endless.

For me, art means freedom, the freedom of making mistakes, of experimenting, of sharing. In this first exhibition, we navigated the Cucuteni world without strict plans and we used all the opportunities encountered on the way to learn, to develop, to create, all in the name of solidarity!

CUCUTENI ALTERNATIVE MUSEUM

THE FUTURE OF CUCUTENI ALTERNATIV

In the next 7 years, we aim to transform Târgu Frumos into the town of experiential museums. Why? To increase the quality of life of young people from our small community.

To achieve this aim we plan: to involve 1000 Romanian and international artists; to encourage young people to appreciate and value the local cultural heritage; to promote solidarity, diversity, and learning! to develop partnerships with all kinds of institutions and organizations for reaching higher results.

The first project we start with is Cucuteni Alternative, an experiential museum about Cucuteni culture.

The Cucuteni civilization lived for 2000 years (5000 - 3000 BC) on our lands.

There are many questions that arise about their lifestyle, but what stands out is their art. Our project Cucuteni Alternative approaches the art of Cucuteni, bringing the beauty of it in the lives of today's people, inviting them to fill up the unrevealed questions with creativity, values, and community development ideas.

The first exhibition will take place on 6 February at ACT House.

Every year we will have at least three events, therefore until 2029, there will be 21 artistic exhibitions, exploring all kinds of approaches and being open to including the proposals of any artist.

The project website is cucuteni.supertineri.org, and there will be available an English version too, on en.cucuteni.supertineri.org.

Another two projects we will develop in the next years in Târgu Frumos are the Experiential Rroma Museum and Jewish Memorial Open-Air Museum.

In these 7 years, we plan to involve at least 250 European volunteers through the European Solidarity Corps programme of the European Union.

TO BE CONTINUED...

A material funded through the European Solidarity Corps, a programme of the European Union.

The European Union support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the E.U or Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.