Radio România Internațional

Category: Inside Romania

  • Traveler in the Easter Tradition

    Traveler in the Easter Tradition

    The Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum is a special place. It is a breath of fresh air in a bustling city. It is a joy in every season to see nature in all its splendor, while living the atmosphere of villages of yore. It is a place where people of all ages can find their roots, while on holidays we can discover ancestral traditions. We stopped over there to talk to communications director Mariana Balaci about the Traveler in the Easter Tradition workshops:


    “As every year, this year we are trying to make our own decorations and jewelry, clothing, and we are trying to learn from traditional craftsmen how to paint Easter eggs and how to work with handmade thread, including embroidery. This year especially we tried to hold workshops up until the Sunday before Easter, aimed at children 6 to 12, organized each Sunday, in the idea of providing the opportunity to spend quality time with family in the village museum. So, children attend the workshops, while parents take a nice Sunday stroll through the Village Museum. We are glad that this year too we have quite a demand for organizing this series of workshops, and we are glad that these kids are willing to learn, and that parents are eager to initiate them in the arts of traditional crafts, learned from the traditional craftsmen and the fine artists we work with.”




    Children are expected here to prepare for the most important celebration in Christianity, taking part in lessons for wax engraving on eggs, the technique of double strand weaving, and making decorative objects out of natural or recyclable materials, such as corn husks, pressed flowers, seeds, thread, wood, or cardboard.



    Iuliana Balaci, communications director with the Village Museum, added:


    “We are in the seventh edition of the Traveler in the Easter Tradition, and we are happy that with each edition we are pulling in more traditional artists and fine artists, and we are trying, as much as we can, based on the early and continual education principle, to teach children to love traditional arts, to love this immaterial heritage, and talk about it, and as a result of this communication to have more kids subscribe. Every time, even we say that there are 10 kids in a given workshop, we always have 12 or 15 who wish to take part in this series of workshops. Basically, every Sunday until Easter we have workshops for weaving, woodwork, corn husk weaving, and egg painting. The Traveler in the Easter Tradition series is on every Sunday, and they continue during the Palm Sunday series, when we also hold egg painting lessons, but also workshops for baking holiday donuts, Lazarus Saturday cakes, bread, and Lent cakes. So, here we have a prolonged edition upon request from our audience, which we took in, organizing more activities than the ones we started off wishing to hold.”




    Iuliana Balaci continued:


    “Each Sunday until Palm Sunday we have 10 children at a minimum, lets say well have about 15 per workshop, so we will have about 60 kids each Sunday, plus those who will come to the demonstration ones, so lets say 100 children. For us, 100 children at the Traveler in the Easter Tradition events is added value, and each kid who attends them is a teenager and a young person we have won on the side of traditional arts and events, which we promote with love.”




    Even if everyday life does not allow us to make our own household objects, as was done in the past, knowledge of the craft can open the door for reinterpreting, for creating a sustainable way of life. The Village Museum in Bucharest remains a place for finding oneself, but also a permanent source of inspiration and beauty. Iuliana Balaci conveyed through us an open invitation:


    “We await you eagerly, everyone who want to visit, from young to old, at the |Village Museum, a village in the middle of a noisy capital, a village in which the trees are already in bloom, a village that is waiting for its visiting public and the young public, for a pleasant stroll, for discovery and rediscovery of heritage, and to learn useful things. We conclude the Traveler in the Easter Tradition event with spring, and more importantly Easter traditions, continued with the Palm Sunday series, organized by our museum on April 16 and 17. Then we will have a lot of surprises, many beautiful things we have prepared for the public at large. Obviously we are paying close attention to the kids, for which we have prepared additional workshops. Therefore, pay attention to our museums Facebook page, and to the official website of the museum, www.muzeul-satului.ro, where we will publish information about these events.”




    For the time being, unfortunately the workshops are not set up to accommodate children with special needs, because the teachers do not have expert training for that domain.

  • Business Women in a Gala Atmosphere

    Business Women in a Gala Atmosphere

    The Forbes Woman Gala this spring has a new edition for recognition of women in a continuously developing business environment. We talked about this event and about Romanian women in business with Raluca Michailov, owner of Forbes Romania, who said:


    “This is the 11th edition, both for the project in the Forbes Romania Review, and the award gala. It was organic, in the sense that we at Forbes Romania try to support as many communities as we can. For instance, we have the under 30 community, and we try to reward young people under 30 with exceptional achievements, and with this gala we try to put the spotlight on ladies who do do extraordinary things in society and are not all as visible as they should.”




    The Forbes Woman Gala is not only a way of recognizing the involvement of women and their active role in a developing business environment, but also the preface to the eighth edition of the Top 50 most influential women in Romania, published by Forbes Romania. Raluca Michailov added:


    “Like every year, the top list is made up of 50 ladies, who are not just business women, we have ladies who do handle businesses, but we also find here personalities such as Mirela Nemtanu, director with the Hope House Hospice, Gabriela Alexandrescu, and, last but not least, Her Majesty Queen Margareta. The businesses we emphasize are of two kinds. First of all we are very much interested in Romanian entrepreneurship, and here I could quote Ms. Anca Vlad, who is the founder and leader of the FILDAS group, who is a female name on the global list made by Forbes USA in for 60s and over 60s, but we also deal with smaller businesses, such as consultancy, business, and acquisition, such as Mihaela Mitoiu and Ioana Filipescu. We are not limited to entrepreneurs, because a lot of extraordinary ladies are in various positions, generally management in corporations, ladies who influence the environment they work in.”




    We asked Raluca Michailov if the number of business women in Romania is growing:


    “In the pandemic, our data is not up to date, but we believe that there has been a drop in numbers, because we all know that not all the ladies are as adventurous as the gentlemen, and maybe they preferred a position that does not involve such risk as entrepreneurship. I wish we had more, but I believe the number is growing, which is a good thing.”




    After the third edition of the Forbes Woman Summit, the most important summit in Romania, which brought to the Zoom virtual platform the most important female voices in Romanian society and business environment, Forbes Romania applauded and rewarded the ladies that knew how to make their name famous at the highest levels, also in the arts and creative areas, who are role models in Romanian society.




    Raluca Michailov described the atmosphere at the Gala:


    “It was a surreal atmosphere, because there was so much good emotion, because we were glad to see each other again, in spite of all that happened, and still happens. Being women, we pulled up our sleeves, and thought what we could do. There were things that were said, and that get done, because they dont remain at the verbal level, of helping and supporting. Our mission, our purpose is to show that businesses are as we see them, they are not just about money, but about the influence you can have on the environment, on the world you are trying to control, and we want this to be a very good influence.”




    This was an effervescent atmosphere for an effervescent environment, run by women. Here is Raluca Michailov:


    “I would like the female segment, and not only, I would like for Romanian female personalities to be more visible, more united. I hope that from now on the Forbes Gala will honor the ladies who do special things, and leave a mark on society.”




    This is an encouragement for women of all ages to find their place in business or society, fulfilling their creative role.

  • Twinning on St. Theodore

    Twinning on St. Theodore

    Today we are going to southwest Transylvania, to Hunedoara County, to Hateg Country, a distinct ethnografic area, chasing an ancient custom. Here we find the Hateg Country Dinosaur Geopark, a UNESCO site, promoting local identity, which comprises unique values.




    One such example is the custom of Twinning on St. Theodore, an event recently held by the Womens Association of Santamaria Orlea, in partnership with the Geopark, as we were told by Silvia Szakacs Mikes, president of the association:


    “Most of our projects had the geopark as a partner. The geopark is a catalyst of energies, and a promoter of everything going on in Hateg Country, everything worth promoting, both in terms of nature, and in terms of culture. One of the aims of the geopark is education, which is done in an organized fashion. In every school there are geo-exploration clubs, which run beautiful projects throughout the year. There, children learn what the geopark is, they learn about their area, they learn nature values, about the natural and cultural heritage, they not only get to know them, but promote them too. One of these projects was the twinning.”




    Silvia Szakacs Mikes told us what this Twinning custom means:


    “It is an ancient custom, it goes back into the fog of deep past, it is a custom that brings joy to kids. Twinning in fact means tying friendships, and is also a competition. In the last few years we have managed to revive this custom. What is Twinning in fact: it is a beautiful custom, for which we prepare special braided bread loaves, called St. Theodores loaves, made of bread dough, which is rolled into long thin rolls that get braided. Specific to these is the so-called crest, which is shaped like a flower, made out of the same dough, except it is tougher, it has more flour, to be able to retain its shape. This dough is rolled out and cut in strips, which are then laid on top of the loaves and pinched into shape. They are then put into the oven to bake, and after they are done they are set aside for the following day, because twinning happens on Sunday morning. They are made very carefully, the crests are then very carefully taken off the top by mothers, and then they are decorated with flowers of all kinds, depending on what is available that day. They are also used so that the crest can float on the water. This event is incredibly full of energy. It gives fantastic joy to the kids, you should see their faces, they are beaming with emotion!”




    As happens every year, the kids made the loaves decorated with crests made of dough. Then they were baked in the households of the organizers, because unfortunately the old style bread ovens no longer exist. After they are baked, the loaves are savored by the children, but the crests, adorned with spring flowers, were taken to the river and set on the water, according to tradition. Here with details is Silvia Mikes:


    “This is a competition, the crests are laid on a plank of wood. In olden times, they were laid on the mai. The mai is the wooden mallet used to beat the water out of laundry when laundry was washed on river stones. They are laid out in a row, and a parent puts the plank or the mai on the water, and the first crest to fall off, it is the big husband. This is a great point of pride, and the others enjoy watching the crests float down the river, because the leader now changes, depending on how the water flows. We managed to teach them to make their own crests. They are actually taking part in kneading the dough. They see how it is kneaded, how it rises, they made their own crests, and were beaming with pride. This seems extraordinary to me, because we are passing down traditions, we are reviving them, and they get to hand them down too. In addition, they enjoy working together, and friendships are sparked. I remember that my nana, at a venerable age, still called her best childhood friend her wife, because they had twinned as kids. It is one of those beautiful customs that is worth carrying on.”




    The child whose crest flows down the river the fastest is proclaimed the big husband, or the big wife. Their first duty as such is to gift to the other kids juice or sweets. It is said that friendships tied on this day are lifelong.




    Our interlocutor told us that, as a child, she personally took part in the St. Theodore Twinning, and that the only difference between then and what happens now is that there are fewer children in villages. In spite of that, the joy is just as great, so it is possible for such customs to be treasured by the little participants of today, making them desire to pass it down later to the coming generation.

  • Grandparents’ School

    Grandparents’ School


    Raised in the village of Geoagiu de
    Sus, in Alba County, in a community with respect for traditions, where people
    would gather in the evenings to sew, weave, learn traditional songs and games, Mariana
    Mereu has taken it upon herself today to promote the traditions of the place. The
    association she set up to this end has taken part in tourism fairs, exhibitions
    and conferences. The owner of an impressive ethnographic collection, Mariana
    Mereu has organised . Mariana Mereu turned
    her home into a grandparents’ school, a place where the elderly pass on their
    skills and knowledge:


    Mariana Mereu: Ever since I can remember, I have preserved and taken care of
    everything old, I haven’t thrown away anything we had at home, from the old
    loom used by my grandmother and my mother to old spinning and sewing items. I love
    doing that, it’s what I would like to do all day long, and I would like anyone
    to learn how to do these things. I worked hard and I organised workshops here
    in the village.


    Mariana Mereu was sad to find that
    it is foreigners who appreciate local traditions more than anybody else:


    Mariana Mereu: Last year a family came here from France,
    and I showed them how to work with a loom, a spindle, a distaff, and they even
    went to Maramureş to learn how to make hay. They paid people to teach them to
    use a scythe. This is what it’s come to! Few young people today know how to
    make hay, nowadays we have machines to do it. And maybe they would if they got
    paid, because after all they need to make a living.


    Mariana Mereu speaks passionately
    about growing hemp, spinning and weaving, and says she wants to teach others as
    well, to bring back to life a tradition that is becoming history. She makes
    cloths and traditional costumes out of hemp:


    Mariana Mereu: This is the 7th year I’m growing hemp. I learned how to
    work with hemp from a woman who passed away in the meantime, she had some hemp
    in her attic and this is how I started. It’s hard work, and it’s also difficult
    to get the permit to do this, just when you think everything is in order
    something else comes up. Processing hemp is quite difficult: you have to dry
    the plant tied in small bundles and then retting follows, where you keep the
    hemp under water for a week, to help separate the stem from the fibre. Then you
    take it out, wash it and dry it again, whiten it, then you move on to breaking,
    scrutching, spinning and weaving. The process is not necessarily complicated, but
    it’s time consuming and it’s hard work. However, to see something come out of
    your own hands, to turn a plant into a traditional blouse, it’s a miracle!


    Something Mariana Mereu regrets is
    that, when the girls and women try to sell the products they have learned how
    to make, these items are not properly appreciated:


    Mariana Mereu: We make wool socks with hemp fibre, but if
    you ask 10 euros for a pair, people say it’s too much. But a pair of socks is
    not made in one day! And this is something you can wear around the year, if you
    cut the wool or hemp fibre you can see it’s empty inside, like spaghetti. You don’t
    sweat or get cold wearing them, they keep warm in the winter and cool in the
    summer.


    Since she is passionate about hemp,
    Mariana Mereu has also initiated a festival called the Hemp Day, which reached
    its 4th edition last year. Locals and tourists alike found out more
    about the entire process that begins with a hemp seed and ends with traditional
    cloths and folk costumes. And Mariana Mereu hopes she will get more support for
    her efforts to promote traditions:


    Mariana Mereu: I’m still hoping the authorities will
    finally wake up and pay people to teach and to learn these crafts. I’m told
    that in other countries they do that, old people are paid to teach and the
    young are paid to learn, and this is how people are motivated to keep
    traditions alive-not to be ashamed about being peasants or about being
    Romanians, not to forget their language, their traditional costumes. As the
    saying goes, a nation’s culture should be worn proudly, like one’s Sunday best .
    I encourage everybody to at least try to pick up a spindle and see how it
    works, because if you don’t know how much work goes into making something, you’ll
    never be able to appreciate it properly.


    Mariana Mereu and the members of her
    association are putting their faith in the tourist potential of the village,
    and are working hard to make Geoagiu de Sus a stronger presence on the region’s
    list of tourist attractions. (A.M.P.)

  • M City

    M City

    Sometimes you see people actually stopping in a metro station. They take their phones out, they scan the QR codes on the walls, or just look around, smiling. We are in a metro station in Bucharest that thousands of people pass through every day. They usually rush through, with no respite, eager to catch the next train. This is presumably one of the aims of the artists from the VAR Cultural Association when they decided to use the metro stations as a contemporary art gallery.




    Andu Dumitrescu, an artist and coordinator for the M City project, told us about where the idea came from:


    “I dont think its an unusual idea, given how Bucharest looks, because this is what we are talking about. We felt the need to create a project in the visual area, close to the city of Bucharest, which is polluted from all directions, especially visually, and we thought of the best place to put artists, where we could show what quality contemporary art means, and we picked the metro, where visibility is at a maximum.”




    So far, the artists have created works of art in two stations of the Bucharest metro, but there will be more subterranean galleries in the future. We asked Andu Dumitrescu why they chose the metro, and what the steps were to carry out the project:


    “We thought this was the best venue for making contemporary art better known. We tried to transform the city under the city into a subterranean art gallery. And I must confess, it is not easy. In order to display in a station, and we are at the second one, we work about two or three months, starting with discussions with the artists, everything is volunteer based, each artist going down to the stations voluntarily, and I think this is a proof of respect towards the city. Just as our project is a proof of respect. Then come the discussions with our partner, Metrorex, around each work separately, to establish where every one is placed, and under what conditions. We are referring to passenger security, of course. After that comes the implementation, the technical part of acquiring the materials, we set a work schedule, which is usually between 23:30 and 5 in the morning. And even if we work for a month, the schedule is very tight.”




    At the Roman Square station, the most recently adorned, the artists worked for 7 nights. Andu Dumitrescu gave us the details:


    “We called on young artists, seniors at art university, and the newly graduated, and we had many that signed up. We evaluated our possibilities, and picked out 14. Right now there are 13, but we also have a ceramics artist. However, his process for making the art is complicated. There is also an issue with supplies, because of the pandemic, and this is why it will take a while to set up his work in Roman Square.”


    The themes are inspired by the present, as told by our interlocutor, who invited us to visit the metro:


    “I would tempt your listeners with the project itself, and I would recommend they follow closely our association, the VAR Association, which is the producer and creator of the concept. All artists are very good, I couldnt possibly recommend one work over another, I think all the works are very well integrated in metro spaces. We have two spaces we are present in, Izvor and Roman Square, and what follows is Eroilor station.”




    Andu Dumitrescu also reviewed for us the techniques used in the works of art:


    “This is not mural painting, it is not just mural intervention. This is not what the project in itself is about. It is about every area of contemporary art, be it installations, because in Roman Square, where we have a small installation, there are many mural graphics works, of course, there is photography, and soon ceramics. Also sculpture, at Eroilor station we will have several objects. There is also an augmented reality work, a poster, which, once scanned, becomes animated. Using the phone, one gets on Istagram, and can watch the object. There are also illustrations, which is in the graphics area. We also have something that is almost a fresco, technically speaking. We tried to cover the entire station, on both landings, and in both entrance areas.”




    When we went down into the Roman Square station, we were struck by a table with two black and white TV sets, one large one, and one portable, painted colorfully, next to which there are old fashioned knick-knacks.




    Going down to a metro station has become more tempting, thanks to the artists who wished for everyone to gain more appreciation for contemporary art.

  • Disabled skiing

    Disabled skiing

    A project to make skiing available to
    disabled persons was launched by an association called Caiac Smile, a group of people
    who love sports and want to make it accessible to everyone. They started out
    with adaptive rowing and have now moved on to skiing. Starting from the idea
    that everyone would love to be able to ski, Caiac Smile Association created
    adaptive ski equipment for people with locomotor disabilities that enables them
    to go smoothy down the ski slopes.




    Ionuţ Stancovici, the president of
    the Caiac Smile Association, told us how it all began:




    We created the Caiac Smile
    Association in order to promote canoe-kayak slalom as a competitive sport. Working
    with children, I remembered seeing a video a few years back about a person with
    disabilities from the US who said he loved rowing. He was saying it’s the only
    sport where he feels he is just like everybody else, because in rowing we mainly
    use the upper body. So, we started working with people with disabilities, and
    they all said the experience was great and became regular members of the club. Then
    winter came and the season of winter sports. The disabled members of our club wanted
    to continue doing sports over the winter and we started to look into ways of
    making it possible for them to ski. The adaptive equipment on the market was
    very expensive and we couldn’t afford it so we used a normal wheelchair instead,
    removed its wheels and attached it to skis.




    While in terms of equipment they
    used a makeshift adaptive wheelchair, in terms of working with people with
    disabilities, the Caiac Smile Association employed the professional techniques
    used in the West. Ionuţ Stancovici, the president of the Association explains:




    We used this adaptive equipment in
    2019 in Maramures and Satu Mare and was a big success. Then I went to Austria,
    where I trained for 10 days on how to teach people with disabilities to ski and
    came across some wonderful cases there, families who were able to enjoy sports
    together again thanks to adaptive equipment. It was very inspiring! I decided to
    try to do this in Romania, as well. When I came back, I taught some of the club’s
    members with special needs to ski by themselves. We took the equipment we
    created to other places around the country and we started to get more and more
    calls. So, we began a countrywide fund-raising campaign to buy the latest
    models of mono skis so that they can be available in resorts around Romania.




    The winter sports season has already
    begun this year. We asked Ionuţ Stancovici, the president of the Caiac Smile
    Association, about their schedule:




    We’re in Cluj now, before that we
    were in Vatra Dornei. The tournament is under way. The equipment has arrived,
    we’re getting it from France, the whole project was a success. We began the
    fund-raising campaign last November and with the help of several companies we’ve
    already managed to buy 13 mono skis. Thanks to the many people who got involved
    in this campaign to raise funds, we’re now able to travel all over the country
    to promote this sport in Romania. The mono skis are available at different ski resorts
    such that wherever they live around the country, disabled people can reach them
    quite easily.




    The disabled associations from
    different regions of Romania are invited to encourage their members to take
    part in activities tailored to their needs. Ionuţ Stancovici:




    Everyone who wants to get involved
    in our project is invited to go to our Facebook page and find out how they can
    help, with donations and not only. They can also check out our schedule and
    come and find us, to ski with us or to help as volunteers. Volunteers who are skiers
    themselves can help disabled people who cannot use their arms, while volunteers
    who can’t ski can help by driving people to the resorts or help with the meals.
    The important thing is for everyone to enjoy themselves. Everything we do, whether
    it’s sports or our charitable work, is done with enjoyment and fun. Come and
    have fun with us!




    Given the success of the project to
    endow ski resorts in Romania with adaptive skiing equipment for people with disabilities,
    the Caiac Smile Association, which initiated the project, also wants to promote
    the use of kayaks for disabled persons on a number lakes around the country. (CM)

  • Life as an exhibition and exhibition as life

    Life as an exhibition and exhibition as life

    They are artists from Romania and
    Germany and decided to spend some time together during the pandemic as an alternative
    to the searching of an artist confined to an isolated space. And when 12
    artists spend time together speaking, cooking and working the result cannot be
    but an exhibition.




    Born out of life
    the exhibition itself is an illustration of life as it was felt by the group:
    private versus collective, general versus individual, spare time versus working
    hours. Curators Catinca Tabacaru and Daniela Palimariu talked to us about the project
    and the Staycation exhibition.




    Catinca Tăbăcaru: Staycation has been born out of the present pandemic, because we artists,
    like everyone else, had to find our own space to relax and be ourselves. We
    thought it as a meeting space and didn’t see it as an exhibition at first. It all
    started with a symposium we staged in July when six artists from Berlin and six
    from Romania got together and jointly with Daniela Palimariu from Sandwich and
    Rachel Monosov from CTG Collective we created a situation in which we stayed
    together for one week. 12 creative artists, one week together; we lived
    together, cooked bread and walked through the Vacaresti delta. We talked and
    talked, about the world and what is happening to the environment, about the
    pandemic and all.




    Daniela
    Pălimariu told us how the team involved with the aforementioned project got
    together.




    Daniela Palimariu: Each of the three partners in this project, I, Catinca and Rachel proposed
    a number of young emerging artists, some from Bucharest, some from Berlin. Some
    of them I knew pretty well, about the others I was just curious. Anyway, the
    group eventually started to take shape and some bonds were created. The
    relationship between us grew steadily because we had this time between the
    symposium in July and the exhibition that we have now. We wanted to bring
    together artists from various environments, with different approaches,
    committed artists, who want to get involved in this on a long term. Their
    commitment is visible in the way they work, they communicate, their
    professionalism. Those very young are highly educated and we can continue to
    develop this relationship on a long term.




    The
    aforementioned artists found the best ways to cooperate and communicate as Catinca
    Tăbăcaru told us:




    Catinca Tabacaru: I have participated in similar projects of this kind, which most of
    the time ended up in some frustration or tension of one kind or the other. However,
    this time because we were able to choose the artists ourselves and we wanted
    them to be smart, ambitious but with a good heart, we relied very much on this
    idea of slowing down a bit. We all had the feeling that life is hectic nowadays
    so we decided to take things easily for a while. We went together to the
    market, bought organic food from farmers, cooked some meals and tackled various
    issues, from private to general. We went for a stroll in the Vacaresti park,
    which was quite a slice. One of the artists who was from Taiwan got us together
    in a special kind of meditation, where we tried to experience some sort of collective
    rest and even collective dreaming if possible. It was an interesting experience
    one cannot quite often have as an adult. Children often sleep together, but we
    as adults not very often, you know. So we created an atmosphere where we can
    feel and listen more than we can talk or do, although it turned out to be a lot
    of talking eventually.




    Yen Chun Lin,
    Isabella Fürnkäs, Lexia Hachtmann, Bethan Hughes, Lera Kelemen, Barbara Lüdde,
    Catinca Mălaimare, Rachel Monosov, Daniela Pălimariu, Ana Pascu, Ioana Stanca,
    Ana-Maria Ștefan are the other artists involved with the project. The outcomes
    of their meetings will be on view by February 12th at the Catinca
    Tăbăcaru and Sandwich Malmaison Gallery. But what is the public going to see
    there? Here is Daniela Pălimariu again:




    Daniela Palimariu: The other space is Sandwich of Space, an extension of the Sandwich gallery
    opened in 2016 and the works on view here are various in both spaces. These two
    galleries have been fitted with size-specific installations but they also have
    on view paintings, sculptures, ceramics, video installations and a performance offered
    by Catinca Malaimare. There is only one
    exhibition but with two locations, which I might say aren’t different
    conceptually. Of course most of the works stemmed out of our summer experience as
    well as the relationship created back then. Many have specifically hinted at
    our group and the experience we enjoyed together, as the number 12 recurrently
    appears in some works and so do various images we shared back then. However,
    these aren’t very clear, very specific as every artist was left the freedom to
    interpret that experience as they wanted and that became visible in the works.




    The exhibition
    is the most visible part of the project and comes as a conclusion of the
    symposium held in the summer of last year, where the participants met and were
    introduced to the host-city Bucharest. However, the most important thing is that
    these young artists managed to find a functional way of surviving during a
    pandemic without losing themselves.


    (bill)

  • A taste of Dobruja

    A taste of Dobruja

    There are 14 ethnic minorities living together in Dobruja, a region located between the Danube and the Black Sea. Dobruja is also home to the largest Turkish-Tartar minority in Romania, due to the fact that this province had been under Ottoman rule for more than four centuries. The area is also home to communities of Lipovan Russians and Ukrainians, who live in a number of localities here.



    Our story begins on the bank of Golovita Lake, near the Romanian Black Sea coast, in a village called Vișina, which stands out due to the cultural events held here. It all started after Bianca Folescu, who used to live in a city, decided to buy a holiday home in the village of Visina. Quite unexpectedly, this new home opened her taste for local traditions. Bianca Folescu and she tells us more about it: ”This was not a sudden decision. Everything happened in time. The first step was to buy the house in the village of Visina for me and my children, a quiet place to relax on weekends. Little by little, I fell in love with this place, its traditions and customs and I started to understand what living at the countryside meant and, more importantly, that the simplicity of life here was a treasure I was about to discover. That was the moment when I first considered moving here for good. Of course, the entire household was extended, so spending a lot of time here was not only something I loved doing, but something that was needed. It was not an easy decision to move from the city to the countryside, and it brought along many changes, but I think it was one of the best decisions of my life.”



    Bianca Folescu gave up the comfort of the city for a simple way of living. She learned to make the fire in the stove, got to know her neighbors better and learned everything she could about the community. She has central heating now and the other villagers took her example: ”This was not a village with any notoriety so I tried to steer the activity of a Bulgarian dance ensemble that was till keeping traditions here in the village, to make it more visible. Things have developed in time. It is a very beautiful ensemble, made up of women and children, so I had great interaction with an important part of the villagers.”




    Bianca Folescu also became a promoter of local gastronomy: ”I took part in certain events and I organized events centered around local gastronomy. There is a mix of ethnic communities here, so I did not stop at Bulgarian gastronomy alone, but I also included Tartar and Romanian dishes. The challenge was, however, to find all sorts of products, with various names, which are easy to make. Dishes based on vegetables and pies are such examples.”




    Refurbishing her own house, the interior in particular, gave Bianca Folescu the idea of opening a small museum in a house close to hers: ”The museum has five rooms, each with its own specificity. The village of Visina is in the middle, then there is the Bulgarian room, then the Lipovan room, the Dobruja room, because the Romanian community forms the majority, the Oriental room, for the Turks and the Tartars and, finally, the Aromanian room. Each room is decorated in the particular style of the ethnic groups it represents, combining original objects, found in the respective communities, with new objects, that imitate the original ones. ”



    The furniture objects, the curtains, kitchen towels and tools exhibited in the household were donated by the villagers. Bianca Folescu learned a lot from the local craftsmen, from embroidery to pottery and traditional architecture, and she started collaborating with folk art museums in Constanta and Tulcea. (EE)



  • EcoCapra

    EcoCapra

    In Romania, the winter holidays involve traditions such as caroling with the Bear or the Goat, which in certain areas is referred to as a deer or a bison.




    Today we are going to talk about such a goat, but a different one, the eco-goat, EcoCapra, a manifesto project for participation through art. The eco-goat is made of recycled materials, adapting the traditional figure to present reality, the need to responsibly recycle plastics. We talked about the project with Alina Tofan, actor and eco-performer:


    “We have been trying this project last year too, the eco-goat, it is a reaction and manifesto against excessive consumerism and the waste we produce during the holidays. It is made mostly of plastics, but not only. Last year it was made out of plastic waste we already had, this year it was made out of holiday gift packages. It is a happening in itself, we carol the project partners, we adapted the traditional caroling test and brought it into a greener area, as a manifesto against such things.”




    The project actually did change the traditional lyrics to better convey their ecological message, as Alina Tofan told us:


    “Last year we also did a video performance, we filmed on the Black Sea shore, and it was very interesting that we were at the seaside on the very first day of the new year. There were loads of people on the boardwalk in Mamaia and Constanta, and they saw us, and so the Goat became a manifesto. The children reacted best to this idea, and understood it. They kept saying: Look, its made of plastic. The message being: Look, we are consuming too much. This year we went to a major market in Bucharest and took pictures in places that we deemed emblematic for waste and pollution during the holidays, like the places where Christmas trees are sold, packed in plastic, we also took pictures of us in places with loads of plastics, crowds of holiday shoppers rushing to the mall or the market, with bags full of shopping. We wanted to capture precisely the essence of things, because we just pass by all the the waste we leave behind, without even realizing. This will be captured in photographs. We obviously have also met traditional carolers, people in traditional clothing caroling the bear, and there was a dialog between my photographer partner and them. We told them how we wanted to highlight the fact that the plastic goat was meant to show how we are wasting too much. It was a dialog between two forms of performance, and I think that was very valuable.”




    In the traditional goat carol, the goat dies, and asks the people who are being caroled for gifts that would bring it to life. In a similar fashion, the EcoGoat asks people for plastic bottles to come back to life. During caroling, people are asked to give empty plastic packaging, as we were told by our interlocutor:


    “This is appreciated and encouraged, as an original idea. Sometimes we were stopped in the street, and asked if we could maybe sell such a goat, because it seems more interesting to carol with an eco-goat. Unfortunately, this is seen only as a fashionable trend. However, it is a good thing that it reaches our collective awareness, the fact that we pollute, that we consume too much, and the simple fact that the goat is made of plastics, materials we consume, is an alarm signal, which hopefully will become a part of everyday life.”




    Alina Tofan added:


    “This is just a part of a larger project run by myself and Georgiana Vlahbei, our collective is called Plastic Art Performance, we work under the Macaia Association. We generally dabble in eco-performance, eco-art, sustainable practices in the arts, and we try to contribute not only in changing mentalities, but also work on the spiritual level. We operate with concepts such as eco-spirituality, ecotrophy, concepts that we unfortunately find only in English. We are now attempting to translate and adapt them to the Romanian cultural space.”




    The project, co-financed by the National Cultural Heritage Administration, proposes a public dialog and questions practices, representations, and uses of plastics, both on the individual and social levels.

  • Life stories discovered in 2021

    Life stories discovered in 2021

    We discovered in schools the nutrition education program “Taste carefully, enjoy the moment”, which was initiated after identifying a global trend among young people to choose snacks instead of good meals or, on the contrary, to avoid them completely, for fear of gaining weight.



    Florentina Baloş, the ambassador of the program “Taste carefully. Enjoy the moment” told us: “Taste carefully. Enjoy the moment” is about eating carefully, intentionally and about how we can focus on the present, so that we can really feel the taste of the food and enjoy it, because snacks are part of everyday life. This is a project of the One Hundred Percent Romanian Association launched in partnership with ANPC (the National Authority for Consumer Protection) and with 5 high schools from Bucharest. Studies have shown that young people prefer snacks to nourishing foods and then the questions “What do we eat?”, “Why do we eat?” and “How do we eat?” somehow go unanswered, because they eat chaotically. Many times, we dont know what we eat because not all of us know what the labels say, if we havent done some research in advance. And the purpose of the project is to inform and educate. “



    Another project which was achieved with much enthusiasm took us to the commune of Augustin, in Braşov county, in the south of the Baraolt depression. Augustin is a commune with 1,900 inhabitants, many very poor and half of Rroma origin, where two teachers laid the foundations of the Edubuzz project or the educational bus. Natalia Ginghină and Adrian Secal are the teachers who created Edubuzz, a charity project for which Simona Halep also donated her birthday.



    Adrian told us about Edubuzz that: “Its a kind of after-school. We thought of a space that would be outside the school and as close to the children as possible, so that they can stay there after school. There are many children who are not enrolled in school or who no longer attend classes. It is a community where the absenteeism and dropout rate is quite high and there are many children who do not attend classes. And thats why we thought of offering them the opportunity to continue their schooling or to just learn, because some of them may have never attended school so far.”



    Natalia Ginghină added that: “The idea occurred to us out of the need to spend more time with the children, besides regular classes, and to offer them more activities which we could do together. But after we built the bus and found this location, the bus is no longer just for the children who are in school, but also for those kids who dont go to school, for some reason. Its an after-school, but not just an after-school, its actually a school that may turn into a playground.”



    The Hora factory in Reghin, central Romania, the biggest producer of musical instruments in Europe, this year celebrated 79 years of existence. Although the pandemic has brought changes in terms of demand and orders, the factory managed to come up with three new products.



    Here is now at the microphone the company’s technical manager Dorin Man: “Our factory has developed three big production lines: a guitar line, another line for the production of violins, violas, cellos, double basses and other instruments of this kind, such as the psaltery. This line produces a wide range of bowed string instruments for all kind of players, from beginners to professionals. Another line is devoted to a special kind of instruments, what we call here ethno instruments, like the balalaika, the bouzouki, the psaltery or others. In this category we produce here the cajon, which is a percussion instrument, the Stroh violin, which is specific to the region of Bihor, in western Romania and we have also upgraded the electric guitars that we produce here. We have launched to the market two new types of electric guitars.”



    Another story with people who make a difference to the places they have come to settle, is that of the Dutch journalist and writer Janneke Vos de Groot, who came to Romania together with her husband 15 years ago and settled in the town of Iernut. The two managed to live in the natural surroundings of the area and even contributed to the development of tourism in the region. Janneke Vos de Groot has written six books about Romania mainly about the area where she presently lives with her family and the books she wrote have inspired many other tourists to come and visit our country. As she told us, she serves as a guide for the tourists coming to visit these areas.



    Janneke Vos de Groot: “I usually go with them showing around beautiful cities in Romania like Brasov or Cluj. But when I ask them what they liked most during their stay, they invariably reply, the life in the countryside at Oarba de Mures. Here we see how simple people live and work. Usually, the women in the village cook a vegetable soup and other local dishes for the group of visitors and that creates a special atmosphere. Not even the House of Parliament in Bucharest is that popular with the tourists coming here as the special lunch that we have in Oarba de Mures!”



    Romania has lots and lots of delightful stories for our listeners and we promise to find them and bring them to you in this new year as well.

  • Bears with cameras

    Bears with cameras

    At the end of November, WWF Romania launched
    the online campaign Bears with Cameras. The campaign is part of a wider project
    aimed at monitoring large carnivore species in Romania, conducted by WWF and
    its partners as part of the LIFE# EuroLargeCarnivores project. Nature
    loves can follow on social media the first recordings made from the point of
    view of carnivores themselves, with the help of special video cameras equipped
    on their collars. The recordings were made over August-October using a number
    of brown bears in a pilot activity. Gavril Marius Berchi, project manager with WWF
    Romania, told us more:


    People know
    little about the social life of bears due to certain difficulties that prevent
    long-term research of their behavior. By means of a European project, EuroLarge
    Carnivores, we wanted to study these aspects more closely. We managed to equip
    three video collars on three species of brown bears: a 4-year male that
    frequently enters the area of Târgu
    Mureș, and who had to be relocated to Călimani Mountains, and two younglings, a male and a female, each
    one-year old or so, who live at the Bear Again orphanage in Harghita County.


    Gavril Marius
    Berchi also told us what they saw when they retrieved the video collars.


    We noticed
    the young bears can fend for themselves. They are basically orphans, each
    abandoned for various reasons. They can procure their own food, they socialize
    and live together. After they get released into the wild, they will live together
    for a while, then they will separate and live in isolation. As regards the
    third bear, the adult male, what was interesting to notice was that he didn’t
    return to his original place, and travelled a distance of some 500 kilometers
    in Romania.


    When talking about the management of large
    carnivores, it’s important to know that once relocated, bears don’t return to
    their original place and can travel large distances over short periods of time,
    which makes any census a difficult task, Gavril Marius Berchi told us.


    According to our data, the bear had destroyed
    a few bee hives. He travelled over 500 kilometers in Romania, then he crossed
    the border into Ukraine, all within the space of a month and a half. He spent
    another month and a half in Ukraine, at which point we lost connection. The
    only damaged he caused was to a few bee hives in Romania and Ukraine.


    The emitter on the bear’s collar might have gone
    haywire, or possibly the bear was shot, so the data was incomplete.


    Apart from the information we got about the
    social behavior of the bear, we also wanted to get more information regarding his
    use of various natural bear habitats, the territory he transited, the routes he
    took, the obstacles he came across, the functionality of green corridors, because
    we have a number of ongoing projects aimed at identifying possible green
    corridors in the Carpathians, and we are very interested to see which of them
    can become functional. Additionally, we would have wanted to see the bear’s
    interactions with other species or human settlements. Unfortunately, the bear
    got lost in Ukraine.


    Bears are attracted to areas with easy access
    to food in populated areas, especially where settlements with a poor waste
    management or where animals run out of food due to the extensive exploitation
    of natural resources (for instance mushrooms or wild berries). Accordingly, the
    bears are perceived as a threat. And since the winter holidays are drawing near,
    we can choose a Christmas present and buy a WWF plush animal. All purchases will
    help protect Romania’s wildlife. Gavril Marius Berchi told us more about this
    initiative:


    Our conservation projects lack the necessary
    funds, and for certain activities we don’t always get to cover all the expenses.
    So, by buying a plush animal, the donor gets a toy, and we manage to cover some
    of our costs.

  • Workshops Without Frontiers

    Workshops Without Frontiers

    EU civil society plays an active role in achieving climate neutrality, which the union committed to reaching by 2050 as part of the European Green Pact. In order to encourage initiative in this area, the European Social and Economic Committee has launched its awards for climate action in April, in order to emphasize the importance of climate policies in all parts of society. The committee hopes that the awards would inspire people to become part of the solution, encouraging them to change systems, norms, and behaviors that have brought us to the brink of a climate crisis.




    These awards, in their 12th edition, is granted to people and NGOs for excellence in civil society initiatives. Each year has a different theme, which covers an important area of ESEC activity. The Romanian NGO Workshops Without Frontiers won third prize this year. Workshops Without Frontiers promotes a fair transition to a low carbon economy, and resilience in the front of climate change.


    Damien Theiry, managing director for Workshops Without Frontiers told us about it:


    “Workshops Without Frontiers applied in June 2021 for the Climate Action Award from the ESEC, which recognizes in Europe the members of civil society who are most active in climate change action. Workshops Without Frontiers is an insertion social enterprise, we are in Bucharest and Dambovita, we are dealing with vulnerable people who are far from the labor market. These people with multiple vulnerabilities are hired by our association for a maximum of two years, we teach them work skills, then help them into a job. We have three workshops. The first, set up in 2008, is called Educlick, we are authorized collectors of electronics and appliances. We are the only organization of its kind in Romania authorized by the Ministry of the Environment, in order to give this waste a second life. We chose to refurbish computers, they are better targets for renovation, and we donate them to schools in rural areas, which have no computers at this time. In the last 13 years, we donated more than 22,000 computers, meaning we have helped over 10% of schools in Romania with refurbished machines. We have 15 jobs at the Educlick workshop for restoring computers, and Workshops Without Frontiers has so far helped over 300 people.”




    Damien Thiery, managing director for the organization, told us what other workshops they have:


    “The second workshop is Remesh, a tailor shop, where we mend advertising banners. They are made of reinforced PVC, which is very harmful to the environment. These banners are being burned, or dumped, which is very harmful. We turn them into products, its called upcycling, turning waste into beautiful products that can be purchased on our website for events. A third workshop is a social farm, Bio&co, in Ciocanari, in Dambovita County. We are in a small town, with an 80% Rroma community, and provide jobs to the people of the community. We grow 80 kinds of vegetables, certified organic, and we supply them farm to table to consumers in Bucharest.”




    Damien Theiry reacted enthusiastically to the award they got:


    “For us it is a huge sign of recognition, to get a European level award, from the ESEC, especially in the climate action area. It is exactly what its been doing for 13 years, and we will continue to do more, now that we have secured the award.”




    The awards were announced in a ceremony held on December 9, at the end of the ESEC plenary session in Brussels. The total money value in prizes was 50,000 Euro, shared by the five winners. The other winners were, alphabetically, Associació Catalana Enginyeria Sense Fronteres, the Estonian Fund for Nature, Grootouders voor het Klimaat (Grandparents for Combating Climate Change), and Prostorož, an non-profit office for urban planning that mobilizes citizens in Ljublijana with the project Hot Spots. The first prize is worth 14,000 Euro, with the next four winners getting 9,000 Euro each.

  • The Romanian traditional apparel and its history

    The Romanian traditional apparel and its history


    Piety overwhelms visitors as they enter the Namaiesti Monastery’s
    Ethnographic Museum. Namaiesti is a village in Arges county, located in central-southern
    Romania. And piety prevails there not because we’re speaking about a monastic museum but mainly because hundreds of days of work are behind each and every
    item on display. We get into the atmosphere of the fairy-tales, we’re being welcomed
    by wedding pageantries, and welcoming us are hundreds of dummies clad in traditional
    apparel from head to toe. Nun Lucia Nedelea is the Reverend Mother of Namaiesti
    monastery. She told us how the museum came into being.

    Reverend Mother Lucia Nedelea:


    The idea kind of crossed my mind, to get a small
    museum started, it’s just that I didn’t have that much to fill it with. And then
    I went to my mom’s, since I was aware I hailed from family with quite a tradition
    behind it, and where the traditional costume held pride of place, I told mother
    what I wanted to do and then mom told me she would give me all her costumes
    that were left in the house, save for one, which she wanted to be dressed in,
    at her own funeral ceremony. I told her that’s what tradition was all about, it
    was the Romanian people’s identity card, that people had to be promoted, admired
    and carried forward. I told her that, first and foremost, for me, that costume
    had an artistic value, then it had a sentimental value, I went as far as telling
    her it even had a spiritual value. For me it was like an icon. I think I told
    mom many other things back then, so much so that she gave it to me, and then I
    asked her, when she and her elderly ladies gathered in their little church, I wanted
    her to ask them who would like to donate and I told her that those who donated,
    their names would be written in the monastery’s founders ledger and they would
    be mentioned during the sacred liturgy. And mom talked her grannies into doing
    that.


    The groom, the bride, their sisters, their brothers, the parents,
    the grandparents, the godparents, the priest and the deacons, all dressed up,
    are gathered in the room re-enacting the first wedding.

    Reverend Mother Lucia Nedelea:


    For the first wedding we’ve got the following (traditional
    costumes) 130, 150, 150, 130, 160, 150, 160 years old. And have headdresses, marame, in
    Romanian, a thin gauze countryside women cover their head with, when they have their
    traditional costume on, they’re even 200 and 150 years old. I have a couple of such
    headdresses manufactured here by several nuns, it’s a bunch of artists that we
    had here, they were masters of the needle who took the fame of all that abroad.
    You will also see in the church the holy shroud, an embroidery in gold and silver
    thread commissioned by Queen Marie and manufactured by the nuns here, in the monastery.
    Her Majesty ordered it, bought it and then donated it to the monastery, so that
    the nuns can also handicraft similar masterpieces


    And then when she found out she also had the priestess’s old apron,
    she staged a second weeding, that of the priest’s son, another impressive show
    of traditional costumes, with lavish embroidery, worked in sleave, everything
    of an indescribable beauty. Once donated, all those garment items were very
    well preserved, so that their initial brightness could be restored.

    Reverend Mother Lucia Nedelea:

    For one given item, we intervened 5, 6 times or so;
    we did the washing using rainwater, with home-made soap, it didn’t come out as
    we wanted to, right from the first try, then we tried that for the second and
    the third time around, until we got them the way we wanted to and brought them
    to the stage you’re now seeing they’re in.


    Also with her mother’s help, nun Lucia Nedelea put the peasant sandals on the dummies’ feet and then she began to write the illustrated verse
    story of the dummies’ weddings.


    As soon as we’ve staged the first wedding, mother
    reminisced about her childhood, when she had written a couple of lines and she
    sang me a little song, when I got home, telling me why didn’t I try to compose
    a few lines for the weddings that we’d done, a poem, no matter how short it was.
    And that’s how the idea crossed my mind and I began with the first wedding,
    then I staged the second one and after I’ve finished writing the poems, the verse
    presentation of the museum, I mean, I tried to write a first poem for Saint Basil.
    And I wrote a book in verse, that of the lives of the saints, and with God’s
    help and if am still healthy, I shall begin the second volume.


    We recall that the Romanian peasant embroidered blouse was awarded the gold medal at the World Exhibition held in Paris in 1909 and occasioned by the inauguration
    of the Eiffel Tower. And, since the peasant embroidered blouse was also among
    the exhibits, the nun continued to introduce to us the one-of-a-kind exhibits in
    the museum.

    Reverend Mother Lucia Nedelea:

    This is the traditional embroidered blouse that won
    the gold medal back then, And here, I have created a little corner for my women
    predecessors. And here is the Reverend
    Mother who got me admitted to the monastery, 46 years ago. She is clad in a
    gown of genuine mohair, woven here, at the monastery, and which is more than a
    hundred years old. And what we have here, is a historical personality, that of nun
    Mina Hociota, who activated here during the inter-war period. She was an utterly special person; she literally broke the pattern of
    the ordinary woman. She was charismatic, she was brave, strong, intelligent and
    selfless. During World War One, she was on the frontline, in the trenches, she
    took out the wounded, she had them sent to hospital, to the infirmary, or she medicated
    them on the spot. Her medical knowledge was thorough, and later on the
    physicians in the area used to call on her because of such knowledge. For all
    her merits, she was awarded the Commemorative Cross of the 1916-1918 War, which
    was a Romanian commemorative medal instated by King Ferdinand on June 8, 1918,
    and awarded to all those who participated in World War One, she was raised to
    the rank of knight, she was a second-lieutenant and even had a short stint as commanding
    officer. For all that, she was awarded quite a few medals, distinctions and patents,
    of which the most important was the Star of Romania, which is the oldest national
    order that has so far been awarded to three women personalities alone.


    The museum in Namaiesti, Arges county, also displays the villagers’
    daily attire and women’s traditional costumes, according to rank and status,
    with the young women wearing lively-coloured headwear while the married ones
    wore flowered headdresses against a black background. As for Reverend Mother Lucia Nedelea,
    she is glad to spin the yarn of each and every costume, in verse. And when she
    does that, the world of the museum is brought back to life, again and again.

    (Translation by Eugen Nasta)

  • Rural museums in virtual format

    Rural museums in virtual format

    Muzeedelasat.ro is a free online
    platform available in Romanian and English and which can be accessed from 1st
    December. The team of the project has four members: Cosmin Murărașu, project manager
    and 3D scanning technician, Ionuț Teoderașcu, visual editor and photographer, Nicoleta
    Felea, copywriter, PR and writer, and Silvia-Alexandra Nistor, translator. Ionuţ
    Toderaşcu tells us more about this platform:




    Muzeedelasat
    is a new platform launching on 1st December dedicated to museums in
    the rural area. We’ll begin with the eight counties in the Moldavia region and
    we’re planning to cover the whole country and provide a map of all museums in
    the rural area. The platform contains virtual trips and documentary material we
    gathered on site. The project began in fact in September this year, when we
    went to each museum to scan the interior of the building. The virtual tour is
    like a video game, you can explore every room, zoom in on a certain exhibit, examine
    it in detail, which in fact makes you want to visit it in person and walk the
    streets of the village. We are passionate about Romania’s rural areas and we
    believe they deserve to be known better.




    Each museum was scanned, photographed
    and documented before a virtual 3D tour is created using high-tech equipment
    integrated into Google Street View, Google Maps and Google Earth, containing a
    series of photographs, short descriptions and short presentation videos. Ionut Toderaşcu
    says the first stage of the project is dedicated to the museums in the Moldavia
    region, in eastern Romania:




    28 museums are included in this
    first stage, from each village in Moldavia. To give you a few examples, one
    such place is the Vatra cu Dor traditional household in Galaţi county, a place which is also perfect for young people. It’s not
    just a museum, but a place where an interactive relationship is being built
    between the hosts and the young people who come there and want to know what
    village life was like in the past. In Vrancea, we have included museums like the
    Ion Roata memorial house, where we meet Sevastiţia, an old lady who takes care
    of the house, including repainting it from time to time. Everywhere we went we
    discovered people who love what they do and as a visitor, it’s special kind of
    feeling, one you don’t normally get when you go to a museum in a city. You end
    up talking to the people, they tell you about their life, and the history of
    the museum. Our list also includes bigger museums, such as the Alexandru Ioan
    Cuza museum in Ruginoasa in Iaşi county, which is a very imposing building,
    almost like a castle. In Neamţ county, for example, we included Popa House,
    where visitors can explore village life as it once was and see the traditional
    masks and art objects created by Mr Popa.




    We asked Ionuţ Toderaşcu to name one
    particular museum that he liked:




    I probably enjoyed best our visit
    to the George Enescu memorial house in Botoşani,
    but that’s also because the weather was beautiful when we went there. The museum
    is a bit out of the way, in the middle of nature, and there was such a special vibe
    around that place. The Alice and Dumitru Rosetti Tescanu museum in Bacău is very
    involved in the cultural life and hosts various events every year, being very
    welcoming hosts.




    As for
    the exhibits that most intrigued him, Ionuţ Toderaşcu said:




    I think it was also in Tescani, the objects that belonged to George
    Enescu. Knowing who Enescu was and being in those rooms, seeing the violin he played
    on, it’s a special feeling. By what we do, by these virtual tours, we want in
    fact to make people want to explore those places in person.




    The four members of the team involved
    in the project to promote Romania’s rural museums enjoyed every minute of their
    travels around the country to document these places, as Ionuţ Toderaşcu
    remembers:




    It was like a marathon going to all
    these museums. We explored all 28 of them in 20 days, scanning and taking
    photographs for the virtual tours, travelling over 5,500 km. There was a lot of
    work involved, and after gathering the information we spent another few weeks
    processing it. We wanted to launch on 1st December because of the significance
    of this holiday for Romania [as national day] and also because it gave us time
    to be ready with the whole content.




    Besides memorial houses that
    belonged to well-known figures from Romania, the platform also invites us to
    get to know places like the Miron Costin Dowry Chest Ethnographic Collection in
    Neamț county, the El Greco Ethnographic Museum in Suceava county, the Bucovina Salt
    Museum in Bacău county, and many, many others. (CM)

  • History Through Dance

    History Through Dance

    Many buildings in Bucharest have a history that is often unknown. However, when a military building ends up as a space for culture, after being a jail and an industrial space, it is paramount to inform the visitors of its history. This would be a summary of the history of the Malmaison building, which is now a space for contemporary art. The most recent event is the performance installation called Isolation in a Series of Liminal States.




    Alex Radu, the founder of the SAC contemporary art space, co-producer of the installation, talked to us about it:


    “I had been in dialog for two years with Simona Deaconescu, in order to put together a performance or installation. Last year we were talking about a lecture-performance, about embodying knowledge and curator practices around it. This year, once we opened to the public the Malmaison workshops, the history of the building was very important to us, and Simona proposed the theme, isolation and the body in a state of isolation, anchored initially in history, since this building used to be a jail. This was the starting point. The idea was to have an in situ performance installation, anchored in the history of the place. I am talking about WWII, when this was a special detention and interrogation center for people suspected of espionage, first Russians, then British, and then it became a detention center for the so-called enemies of the people during the communist period. It came to be a jail for Coposu and Iuliu Maniu, who opposed the communist takeover in Romania.”




    The building was financed by Gheorghe Bibescu in 1847. It caught fire, and when restored, another floor was added. Known at the time as St. George building, named after the church across the street, it was renamed the Cuza building. Here is Alex Radu with details:


    “This was the first cavalry barracks in Bucharest, then ruler Al. Ioan Cuza renamed it Malmaison, in honor of Napoleon III, who had a castle of that name in France. That was because at that time all the know how for organizing military schools and courts was imported from France. The building was just that, first a military school, then court, and then it was turned into a jail.”




    The edifice was turned into a detention and interrogation center by the communist regime in the 50s, and it is where major political figures were held, such as Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Coposu, and later communist leaders fallen into disgrace, such as Ana Pauker. The stern design of the building and the idea of bodily isolation brought together a diverse team who collaborated to express the meaning of this edifice, with the performance installation Isolation in a Series of Liminal States. Here is Alex Radu:


    “A multidisciplinary team worked on this performance installation, choreographer Simona Deaconescu, composer Vlaicu Golcea, two architects, Justin Baroncea and Maria Ghement, a graphic artist, Ramon Sadic, five performers, and a historian. He did a great job, digging into archives for the historic items we use to illustrate as a reflection of the people who have been through here, in the detention center, in isolation, along the times. We also have an anthropologist on the team.”




    The documentation also covered the years after 1977, when the building housed a chemical industry research center, according to Alex Radu:


    “This performance will definitely dig deep. Simona and the performers manage to expand these moments, when the body is not simply movement and performance, it becomes image. This repeats itself in other interventions. The sound, designed by Vlaicu, is not simply sound, it becomes space itself, an immersive space for both performers and visitors. The unbridled intervention by Ramon Sadic, right on the walls, in crayons and scribbles, is equally performative, and the intervention of the architects, that idea of wearing vests with text from those memoirs of detainees, brings in visitors to what we call real time composition. It was a collective effort, a collective act of creation.”




    In a reality that forced us to look differently at bodies and isolation, the spectator can witness a visual, architectural, and performative effort that connects the complex history of Malmaison with the present, elements such as keeping a body in a state of alert, as well as a different reflection of time, which we were not so aware of before the pandemic.