Radio România Internațional

Category: World of Culture

  • Cultural community centers in rural areas

    Cultural community centers in rural areas



    The Culture Atlas is the title of a volume that has been recently launched. The volume re-topicalizes a problem that needs to be solved as soon as possible. Specifically, it is about the reactivation of the cultural community centers in the rural regions across Romania, crucial elements of public infrastructure, education and culture. The volume seeks to assess the state of culture in the countrys rural area, looking into such aspects as the level of distribution of the infrastructure elements or the specificity of the cultural events, among many other issues. The National Institute for Cultural Research and Training affiliated to the Ministry of Culture is the initiator of the volume. The book was completed with the assistance of the National Statistics Institute. The Manager of the National Institute for Cultural Research and Training, Carmen Croitoru, was one of the guests in our program.



    Carmen Croitoru:



    “It is an initial endeavor, it is part of the program we started a couple of years back, actually we sought to count what happens in culture, and had it not been for the most precious help we got from the National Statistics Institute, we wouldnt even have dared to initiate such an undertaking, but we began to investigate and map those elements of cultural infrastructure, which are the first consumption barrier and also the first barrier of access to culture, in Romania.”



    Carmen Croitoru went on to provide a couple of data on the making of the volume, on the prospective solutions to the problem, reminding everybody of the founder of Romanian sociology, Dimitrie Gusti (1880-1955).



    “Allow me to give you a couple of technical pieces of info about the team of the Atlas: it is a research study with a two-year timeframe, when it was initiated and completed, those were years of data collection, of documentation, of statistics, they were field years, the field work that we did was just like in the time of Dimitrie Gusti, and we were very happy because of that, we could see for ourselves how that kind of sociological research could be reenacted. And yet, come to think of it, we were not necessarily brimming with joy, because all that was a giveaway for a rather worrying state of things. In Romania, we have several institutions based in the rural regions that ought to provide culture. As for what happens afterwards, youre about to see for yourselves in this book, since what the institutions are tasked with, that doesnt always come through. Basically, it is one of the widest-scope mapping initiatives were also trying to expand to other categories of institutions. Weve accomplished that also with a view to implementing a public policy proposal targeting the cultural community centers, because solutions still exist for that. There still are a great many NGOs that have already taken cultural intervention initiatives, all they need is a wee bit of support so that they can meet their task.”



    The president of the National Statistics Institute, Tudorel Andrei, spoke about the perks of that kind of research, touching upon a couple of relevant statistical data:



    “If you want the things you do to come along the proper way, you need to have a correct measurement, you need to have a reflection of reality, nay, you need to have a database that can be updated on a daily basis. Otherwise, were about to be going back to square one every time, we start building up and we dont know where we stand and were not going to know where we will eventually end either. And what can I say, as a statistician? What do we notice? That the population of Romania, beginning with the 1970s, in the rural areas, its proportion has decreased very little. The ratio we have is pretty much the same, accounting for 46 to 50%. Our neighbors ratio stands at less than 20%. So the proportion of our rural population is twofold. There is another truth revealed by the statistical figures, many children want to leave, but, sadly, the population we have in the rural regions is ageing. There are many counties, especially those around Bucharest, but also those around the big cities, where the population is over 48, maybe 50 years old, on average. So what is that particular cultural service the local community or the Romanian state must offer to an ageing population? Which is also a big problem: the cultural service must be tailored according to the age bracket of the people inhabiting a certain region. “



    Another guest in our program, the manager of the National Romanian Peasant Museum, Virgil Nițulescu, shared his views on the issue.



    “This kind of work, we should have had it for many years now. Tis a pity it is only now that we have such a data base at our fingertips, and such an analysis, cause thats what the National Institute for Cultural Research and Training does: it carries surveys and paves the way for the launch of various public policies. The Institute has offered an exhaustive survey, I daresay, or a very well-structured one, at any rate, a thoroughgoing analysis on the state of the cultural community centers in the rural regions. So this is the point we need to start from, in a bid to see what we next need to do, because the current situation is rampant on a national scale. It is only in a limited number of communities countrywide where the cultural centers are in a very good condition, having a remarkable activity, they are, I daresay, thriving, yet the overwhelming majority of Romanias rural settlements are deprived of a functional cultural infrastructure and we should not forget that some of our fellow citizens live there. And the Romanian state, and, apart from the Romanian state, the public local authorities, should offer equal opportunities to all Romanian citizens, irrespective of the place people live in.”



    The Manager of the National Library of Romania, Adrian Cioroianu, highlighted the two main causes of the current situation. Dr Cioroianu revisited sociologist Dimitrie Gustis contribution, yet he presented it as a lesson for our times.



    “There are two things I should like to remind you of: in history, as a rule, any given effect has more than one cause. What we have, as we speak, concerning this disastrous situation of the cultural involution in the rural areas, is the outcome of several causes. On one hand, the causes are political, or rather, what we have is the excessive politicization of certain things that should not be politicized, such as education, culture, healthcare or safety. Ageing is another cause of all that. This is a real cause scientists or statisticians speak about, yet not only do we not do anything about it, we do not even discuss what measures could be taken against it. We speak about Gusti and about that auspicious year 1921, when Romanias condition was critical in certain respects, yet it was thriving as regards the countrys birthrate. Honestly, Europe is ageing on a large scale, perhaps that is the main problem of the modern world. And yet, does not the very type of society we live in changes? The solution for that, from my point of view is not the return to Gusti. Gusti, for the 1920s, was a visionary, but we need to identify todays visionaries for tomorrows world.”


    (EN)




  • Exhibitions in 2022, hosted by the Bucharest Municipality Museum

    Exhibitions in 2022, hosted by the Bucharest Municipality Museum

    A string of painting, sculpture and graphic art exhibitions whose eventual aim is to put to good use the rich heritage of Bucharests Art Gallery Collection will be mounted by the Bucharest Municipality Museum all throughout 2022. Brought to the fore for art lovers will be artists house-studios, but also costume collections, rare documents, traditional art and photographs of old Bucharest. The beginning of the museum is linked to the decision of Bucharest Town Halls Communal Council, issued in late July 1921, whereby the suggestion was put forward, for the foundation of a communal museum. In 1956 it was officially decided that The Sutu Palace (a historical monument built in 1834) would become the headquarters of the museum. In 1959, the History Museum of the City of Bucharest was reopened to the public. The museums history and fine arts sections merged, and that is how Bucharest Municipal Citys Arts and History Museum came into being. In 1999, the institution regained its initial name, the Bucharest Municipality Museum. At the moment, part of Bucharest Municipality Museum are 14 museums, collections and memorial houses. One such museum is “Theodor Aman. ” The museum awaits its public for a temporary exhibition, to be inaugurated on April 7th. The museum will be open to the public until March 2023. From May 27, on the premises at the Frederic Storck and Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck Museum, an exhibition will be opened, themed “From Cape Kaliakra to Balchik. A painting itinerary.”



    Elena Olariu is the deputy director of Bucharest Municipality Museums Art, Restoration and Preservation Centre. She will now be speaking about those exhibitions, to be opened soon on the premises of Bucharest Municipality Museum.



    “The Theodor Aman Museum is one Bucharests most beautiful museums, playing host to painter Theodor Amans collection, it was also his house, a lot of people must have visited the museum already. Those who are not familiar with it, I invite them to seize the opportunity, the house is superb. It is an old house we preserved, in a bid to keep the interior just as it was decorated when the painter was still alive. Then again, apart from the permanent exhibition, in April, an exhibition will also be opened, themed Aman in plein air. Which means we present what the artist painted outdoors. Our lady colleagues were very inspired when they picked up the theme, as it is an opportunity to see the gardens Theodor Aman painted. In the month of May we will have another exhibition, just as interesting, venued by the Frederic Storck and Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck Museum. Paintress Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck travelled to Balchik many times, there she met Queen Marie of Romania, a close friend of hers. Therefore, the exhibition will present Cecilia Cuțescu-Storcks works, inspired by those places. Ours will be an artistic journey, we will also have the chance to see the interior of the house, with a couple of novel works belonging to the Storck family house, we hope it will be an interesting exhibition. Actually, each year we stage small-scale exhibitions on the premises at the Storck Museum, and this time I decided we should focus on Balchik as well.”



    In late April this year, the Sutu Palace in Bucharest will play host to the exhibition themed “Phanariot Princely Documents as part of the Bucharest Municipality Museum Collection”. Starting May 18, the Sutu Palace will also be the venue for an exhibition themed “The Romanian principalities. Landscapes of the 19th century European engraving”. The exhibition puts to good use the heritage of the Bucharest Municipality Museums Prints and Imprints Collection. Also, the exhibition seeks to introduce visitors to the Romanian atmosphere of the 19th century. More than 50 works will be exhibited, depicting places in the Romanian Principalities captured by foreign engravers, and bringing center-stage elements of urban and rural architecture. Two exhibitions will be opened in August, as part of the Donations and Donors series. The Sutu Palace will venue the “Ioana Gabriela and Alexandru Beldiman Donation”, while the Nicolae Minovici Museum will play host to the exhibition themed “Under the Sign of Royalty: the Photographs of a young princess.” Elena Olariu is the deputy director of Bucharest Municipality Museums Art, Restoration and Preservation Section. Here she is again, speaking about this coming Septembers exhibition hosted by the Sutu Palace, themed “Painter Gheorghe Tattarescus Family, Faith and Home. “



    “It will be an exhibition dedicated to Gheorghe Tattarescus house, so we will exhibit several objects from that house. These are objects that have been restored, and that was accomplished thanks to my colleagues who succeeded to restore a great part of the Gheorghe Tattarescu Memorial House, and Im speaking about objects but also about paintings. We will have on display ceramics, painted icons, books, artists personal objects, several paintings of a small exhibition, so that the public can see those wonderful objects that have also been restored. They will be presented as an absolute first, which is also an opportunity to make the work of our colleagues in the Restoration section known to visitors. Perhaps very few people know that most of the exhibited objects also go through the restoration labs, where our colleagues work, and the work they do is less well-known to the public, yet it is a kind of work we have been trying to bring center-stage, via those types of exhibitions.”



    In September and October, 2022, the Bucharest Municipality Museum, though its exhibitions, will put to good use the creation of three women sculptors: Elena Surdu Stănescu, Henriette Cihoschi and Doina Lie.


    (EN)




  • “Occasional Spies,” a new documentary by Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu

    “Occasional Spies,” a new documentary by Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu

    The director, film producer and executive director of the Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF) Oana Giurgiu returns with a new documentary, after her 2015 Aliyah DaDa. Occasional spies is based on true facts and testimonies, and recreates the story of unusual espionage acts that had a decisive influence on how WWII unfolded: the story of ordinary people recruited from among young Zionists in Palestine, sent back to their home countries in Eastern Europe, including Romania, to get information on the Germans.



    The documentary premiered in 2021 and won an honorary jury mention in the Romanian section of the 2021 Astra Film Festival in Sibiu. A guest of RRI, Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu said she had spent a lot of time researching, and that the story had a starting point in a scene from her first movie, Aliyah DaDa.



    Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu: This is a story from WWII, more precisely the year 1944, a year with a lot of turmoil and unexpected changes, a year when the war seemed to be drawing to a close and solutions were being searched to find out the fate of the Allied prisoners of war in Eastern Europe. And at that point somebody in a secret service had this really bold and unusual idea, to recruit ordinary people and send them to Eastern Europe, because this mission could not have been accomplished by British or American spies, they would have been caught immediately. So this idea came up, to recruit spies from among the people who had managed to immigrate to Palestine before the war. In short, the plot of Occasional Spies is similar to a real-life version of Inglorious Basterds and I have to admit that Quentin Tarantino’s film was an inspiration for me. The story is fairly unknown in Romania and equally little known in the other countries where the events took place. Unfortunately, we are used to learning in schools about our local and national history, placed in a broader international context, but we are never told how certain political or military decisions affect the countries around us, our immediate neighbours.



    In orderto retrace the story of the occasional spies, the director Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu resorted to a series of photos made by Alex Gâlmeanu. Letiţia Ștefănescu was in charge of editing, the sound design was entrusted to Sebastian Zsemlye, and the original score was written by Matei Stratan. The film was shot in Romania, Israel and Slovakia.



    Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu: I am an occasional film director. It was the same with my first film, because I set out to tell many impressive, rich stories, which I felt deserved to be known. In this particular case, of documentaries concerning stories from the past, the problem is that the images provided by film archives, the only ones you have access to from the respective period, are rather scarce. Moreover, a war was going on, which means that the images one can use in a film of this kind are more often than not frontline footage and diaries kept by those involved. I was trying to illustrate the personal backgrounds of my characters, so I had to come up with a solution to bring these images to life, so I chose these series of photographs. It was a tremendous amount of work, which I would never do again. I have been working with the editor Letiția Ștefănescu for a long time now, and we usually share a lot of the work in a film, I cannot claim sole authorship. But with this film, I must mention all those who took part in making it. Alex Gâlmeanu, the author of the photographs, is an amazing artist, the original score was written by Matei Stratan and actually the entire soundtrack is a work of art in itself. Sebastian Zsemlye was in charge of the sound design. And I truly believe that Occasional Spies is a demonstration of what team work should be.



    The cast of the film includes the actors Paul Ipate, Daniel Achim, Ioan Paraschiv, Mihai Niță, George Bîrsan, alongside many amateur actors. Istvan Teglas, Ionuț Grama and Radu Bânzaru also contributed voiceover for the characters. (AMP)

  • Radio Romania Culture Awards

    Radio Romania Culture Awards

    The 21st edition of Radio Romania Culture (RRC) Awards Gala was recently held on the stage of the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest, after two years of absence caused by the Covid 19 pandemic. Radio Romania Culture Awards Gala is the only event that grants awards in all areas of culture in Romania. During this anniversary edition awards were granted for the most important achievements of the Romanian culture in 2021. The Radio Romania Culture Excellence Award went to medical doctor Cătălin Denciu and the Intensive Care Unit team of the Piatra-Neamt County Hospital, as these people put their lives in danger to save their patients during a tragic fire in 2020. The special award for education went to the mathematics training platform MateX.xyz. The platform was created by 8 Olympiad participants with the aim of preparing poor 8th graders, online, for the National Assessment.



    The special prize for science was awarded to the founder of Graphs.ro, Dragoș Vana. His platform presented data on the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic in Romania, on a daily basis, as well as information about the anti-COVID vaccination campaign. Started as a personal project, with personal resources, in April 2020, Graphs.ro has become a reference source and an indispensable tool for tracking the evolution of the pandemic in Romania. The special prize for literature was awarded to the bookshop ‘La Două bufnițe – ‘At Two Owls from Timisoara, a large-scale cultural project, an example of cultural survival in the difficult days of lockdown.



    Here are Raluca Selejan and Oana Doboşi, the founders of the bookshop At Two Owls, upon receiving the Special Prize for Literature awarded by RRC: We thank RRC and the jury who nominated us for this award. It is an award that comes at a time when we were almost ready to put down our weapons after two very difficult years, but the award reminds us that a beautiful community was formed around our bookshop, that supports us when it is very difficult for us, without knowing that it is very difficult for us. We want to thank our parents who have always supported us and thanks to whom our bookshop has survived and all our friends. The pandemic has been a difficult time because in our country, as you know, books are not essential, bookshops are not protected by law, we do not have a law on a single book price, so the only ones who can protect this market and the books are the readers. We also want to thank the teacher and writer Daniel Vighi, who believed in us as few people believed in us when we were very young, who encouraged us to become what we are today and from whom we learned that in literature there is no weekend, vacation or holidays. Its from Daniel Vighi that we also learned that the greatest joy which literature brings is that moment of solitude when the reader meets the text, and that is why we hope to bring as many books as possible as close as possible to the readers. We are urging you to support physical bookshops because booksellers are very fondly waiting for you.



    Simona Popescu received a prize at Radio Romania Culture Awards Gala for her book ‘Cartea plantelor și animalelor – ‘The Book of Plants and Animals (Nemira Publishing House). Simona Popescu is the author of the poetry volumes ‘Xilofonul şi alte poeme – ‘Xylophone and other poems (1990), ‘Pauză de respir – ‘Pause for breath (together with Andrei Bodiu, Caius Dobrescu and Marius Oprea, (1991), Juventus, (1994), reprinted entirely in the collection Opera poetica (2021), and ‘Lucrări în verde. Pledoaria mea pentru poezie – ‘Works in green. My Plea for Poetry (2006). She wrote the novel Exuvii (1997; seven editions until 2021), a volume of essays, Volubilis (1998), and books of critifiction about the surrealist poet Gellu Naum, ‘Salvarea speciei. Despre suprarealism și Gellu Naum – ‘Saving the Species. On Surrealism and Gellu Naum (2000) and ‘Clava. Critificțiune cu Gellu Naum – ‘Clava. Critifiction with Gellu Naum (2004).



    Here is Simona Popescu: I thank the jury and I feel honored to receive an award granted by RRC. Thank you for stopping in my garden with an opening to the sea and to the ocean, the garden being a metaphor for my book. It is a book of over 300 pages, with dozens of plants and animals, which are, in fact, pretexts to talk about the wide world, about the human species, not just about plants and animals, and to touch upon several themes of literature, be they great, small or average. My good thoughts go to my good friends who were also nominated, Ștefania Mihalache and Miruna Vlada, and of course to all those who wrote good and very good poetry books, and also other books, in 2021.



    In the Prose category, Alina Nelega received an award for the novel ‘un nor în formă de cămilă – ‘a cloud in the shape of a camel (Polirom Publishing House) and in the Theatre category, Andrei Mureșanu Theatre in Sfântu Gheorghe received an award for the show ‘Consimțământ – ‚Consent by Evan Placey, directed by Radu Afrim. The film ‘Otto Barbarul – ‘Otto the Barbarian, directed by Ruxandra Ghițescu, received the RRC Award in the Film category, and the four solo exhibitions by Mircia Dumitrescu were awarded in the Visual Arts category. The prize in the Science category went to Răzvan Cherecheș, Director of the Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences, of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, for the campaign to promote the anti-COVID public health measures in Romania. In the Music category, Nicu Alifantis & Zan received an award for the album Dimov • Leoneed is love, and in the Education category, the Narada Association received an award for their projects that bring the technology of the 21st century closer to education. (LS)

  • #newTogether, a documentary produced by the Austrian Cultural Forum

    #newTogether, a documentary produced by the Austrian Cultural Forum

    During the lockdown introduced across Europe over the
    COVID-19 pandemic, the Austrian Cultural Forum in Bucharest invited 60 artists
    from Austria and Romania to reflect on their future in arts and on how their art
    and communities may see themselves transformed during and after the health
    crisis.


    The videos they submitted were posted by the Austrian Cultural
    Forum Bucharest on social networks. The success of the initiative prompted the
    ACF Bucharest team to entrust the distinguished theatre and film director Carmen
    Lidia Vidu with the production of a documentary using the video materials of
    the participating artists. We talked to Andrei Popov, deputy director of the Austrian
    Cultural Forum Bucharest and delegate producer of the documentary #newTogether,
    about the birth of this project that he initiated jointly with the ACF
    Bucharest director Thomas Kloiber:


    Andrei Popov: The project took shape the moment the pandemic was
    sweeping the world. It was then that myself and Thomas Kloiber, the head of the
    ACF Bucharest, asked ourselves about the usefulness our work still had, about
    the role of culture at a time when people have entirely different needs, some
    of them immediate, if we think back at that period. And because we couldn’t
    find a satisfactory answer to this question, which I continued to think about these
    2 years, we tried to find out the opinions of the main beneficiaries of our
    work, that is, the artists themselves. So we asked 30 artists in Austria and 30
    artists in Romania how they lived the respective period, when as you recall we
    were staying at home and had no solutions, nobody knew how to make progress in
    their work or whether progress in that work still meant anything. We asked them
    how they saw their own future, meaning both their personal lives and their
    artistic careers, after the end of the pandemic. This is how this 2-month video
    experiment was born. The artists recorded the videos during the lockdown and
    sent them to us. All these clips were made in that exact period, and they can
    still be viewed on the ACF’s Facebook page. At the end of this experiment, one
    of the participating artists, Mihai Zgondoiu, asked us if we didn’t want to
    make a film using this huge collection of several tens of hours of video
    recordings.


    This is how the documentary #newTogether came to
    be. Chosen to direct it was Carmen Lidia Vidu, an artist awarded by GOPO and
    UNITER, a strong feminist voice, an opinion leader who approaches social,
    political, cultural and civic themes. #newTogether
    is a form of dialogue while in isolation, a firsthand testimony. Our frailty,
    vulnerability, fear became a universal language, which we all spoke in 2020, during
    the Covid-19 pandemic, Carmen Lidia Vidu said about the project.


    Gabriel Bebeșelea, Tudor Giurgiu, Ada Hausvater, Radu
    Iacoban, Dan Lungu, Dan Perjovschi, Istvan Teglas, Alexandru Weinberger, Elena
    Vlădăreanu, Gottlieb Wallisch, Elise Wilk, Franzobel are some of the artists
    you can see in #newTogether. Andrei Popov, deputy head of the ACF Bucharest:


    Andrei Popov: Carmen Lidia Vidu reorganised the material, selected
    from the scores of hours of video the most relevant parts for the story and
    direction we had agreed on with Cristina Baciu, who did the animation, the
    soundtrack and the editing, and did an absolutely amazing job. Carmen Lidia
    Vidu and Cristina Baciu made this film which is more than a documentary or a proof
    of that moment that we all experienced. This 54-minute documentary is on the
    one hand a sort of dictionary of the ideas and states that we all experienced
    at the time, and on the other hand it is a reflection, or better yet, a double
    reflection. It is a mirror for the artists who took part in the project and faced
    the camera, and also a mirror reflecting our societies, whether we think of Romania,
    Austria or any other country. Because essentially we all lived the same
    experience, and one of the core merits of the film is that it highlights this. Moreover,
    what the director Carmen Lidia Vidu set out to do was capture both the verbal
    and the non-verbal, body language, which is why she selected fragments in which
    the artists convey messages by both these means.


    The documentary #newTogether has been already screened
    at the Timişoara National Theatre, at the Classix Festiva in Iași, and between
    March 1 and 15 it was available on the New York Segal Center Film Festival on Theater
    and Performance platform. (A.M.P.)

  • Romania’s veteran writers and their European standing

    Romania’s veteran writers and their European standing


    Critically-acclaimed novelist and journalist Gabriela Adamesteanu’s exceptional qualities as a fiction writer have from the early days of her career recommended the author as a canonic author in contemporary Romanian literature. Gabriela Adamesteanu turned 80 on April 2nd, 2022. Her birthday anniversary was celebrated at the Museum of Romanian Literature. Gabriela Adameșteanu is one of the best-known Romanian women writers and journalists; she is also a many-time award-winning author. Gabriela Adamesteanu compelled recognition with her maiden novel titled Wasted Morning (1984). The novel was reprinted seven times in Romanian and scooped the Romanian Writers’ Union Award. Also, it was translated into many languages. Wasted Morning was also turned into a play by the highly-acclaimed theater director, the late Catalina Buzoianu, in a memorable stage performance with the Bulandra Theatre in Bucharest, in 1986. Gabriela Adameșteanu’s most recent novel Fontana di Trevi, brought out by the Polirom Publishers in 2018, is the closing part of a trilogy, whose first volume, brought out in 1975, was titled The Even Progress of Every Day, while the second novel was titled Temporariness, and was published in 2010. Gabriela Adamesteanu is also the author of two short fiction volumes, Treat Yourself to a Vacation Day (1979) and Summer-spring (1989). She is also the author of The Encounter, a novel published in 2003. Her articles have also been collected in several volumes. The Romantic Years is the title of Gabriela Adamesteanu’s volume of memoirs, brought out in 2014. The Polirom Publishers dedicated an author series to Gabriela Adamesteanu. For fourteen years, over 1991 and 2005, Gabriela Adameșteanu was the editor-in-chief of 22, a political and social weekly publication edited by the Group for Social Dialogue. The Cultural Bucharest supplement was also initiated by Gabriela Adamesteanu, who coordinated it until 2013. At the event staged by the National Museum of Romanian Literature, literary critic and academic, Dr Carmen Mușat, the editor-in-chief of The Cultural Observer magazine, spoke highly of Gabriela Adamesteanu’s journalistic activity.



    Carmen Musat:



    Gabriela Adameșteanu is one of the personalities that set the trend for the independent press after 1989. Through her activity with the 22 magazine and the Group for Social Dialogue, Gabriela Adamesteanu proved authentic journalism was truly possible, genuine journalism does not sweep the serious problems of today’s society under the carpet, on the contrary, such journalism strips them bare and claims that debates be held, focusing on such problems. In my opinion, Gabriela Adamesteanu the journalist provides a key element for her prose, as I do not see a rift between Gabriela Adamesteanu the journalist and Gabriela Adameșteanu the prose writer. Quite the contrary, I think we’re speaking about continuity, to that end, and I am sure Gabriela Adameșteanu’s prose stood to gain from her activity as a journalist, just as Gabriela’s journalism has been deeply influenced by her profile as a prose writer. That extraordinary curiosity of hers, for everything related to the social dimension, to the day-to-day life, to the destiny of the human being as they grapple with history, politics and society, the topics of Gabriela Adamesteanu’s prose, whether we speak about the short fiction or the novels, are also the topics of her journalism. And I think that encounter between journalism and fiction is best illustrated by The Romantic Years. It is a volume which, apart from its autobiographical stuff, draws its inspiration from her activity as an editor-in-chief, as a trend-setter, someone who takes an interest in the problems of the city. It is at once a volume where we yet again find everything related to the narrative structure typical for fiction, everything related to the narrative style and techniques that are characteristic for Gabriela Adamesteanu’s prose.



    Here is Gabriela Adamesteanu herself, speaking about the backdrop against which she took over the coordination of the 22 magazine.



    Gabriela Adamesteanu:



    The magazine had that initial formula, to a great extent thanks to Stelian Tanase (historian and writer, the first president of the Group for Social Dialogue, the founder and the editor-in-chief of the 22 magazine. I stood for continuity but, and there’s no doubt about it, I added a lot to that myself. Yet the independent policy, the European integration program and the pro-Atlantic leaning have existed from the very beginning with the 22 magazine, at a time when the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the country’s administration did not consider that. In the summer of 1991, the magazine fared rather badly, it had a circulation of a quite great number of copies which didn’t quite sell, so the Group for Social Dialogue opted for organizing a project competition. Registering for the competition at that time was Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (a journalist and a civil society activist) whose format for the magazine was different than that of Stelian Tanase. And then I thought I should submit a project for the magazine and I was announced I was going to be the editor-in-chief. It was in September 1991 when I took over the coordination of the magazine.



    At the event staged by the National Museum of Romanian Literature, Carmen Mușat gave the audience an account of how she discovered Gabriela Adameșteanu’s writing in the 1980s.



    Carmen Musat:



    I discovered Gabriela Adameșteanu as a writer in the 1980s, in the dreadful 1980s when I was a student and when everybody lowered their voices as they were speaking, in admiration, about two books: Marin Preda’s The Most Beloved Man on Earth and Wasted Morning, by Gabriela Adamesteanu. Those were the years when a book was smuggled goods, if you did not have a connection in a bookshop it was hard to get hold of those books, the queues in bookshops were very long, and the lady bookshop keepers took advantage of that and sold those particular books together with other propaganda volumes. Wasted Morning was the talk of the party in various milieus of the society of that time. People talked about it at the university, the book was talked about in the men of letters’ knowledgeable circles, it was even discussed at the hairdresser’s. People kept talking about the authenticity of the book, about the fact that it was a book that managed to capture history’s twists and turns and what happened with the human beings in such circumstances. For Gabriela Adamesteanu the prose writer, it was essential for us to understand the way in which history on a large scale takes its toll on the small-sale histories, on the destinies of ordinary people who become victims of history, irrespective of their social ranking which could have otherwise made the difference.



    Between 2000 and 2004, Gabriela Adameșteanu was the vice-president and, later, the president between 2004 and 2006, of the Romanian PEN Center. She was also a member of the Jury for the Latin Union Prize (2007 – 2010) and honorary president of the first jury for the Romanian Goncourt Prize, in 2012. She is the recipient of the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres awarded by the French Ministry of Culture in 2013. Her books have been constantly reissued. Her volumes have been translated into 16 languages, and were brought out by well-known publishers. Gabriela Adamesteanu’s work is critically acclaimed, nationally and internationally.


    (EN)




  • Modern Art in today’s Romania

    Modern Art in today’s Romania


    What would a world look like, where contemporary art works could be purchased from the automatic machine placed in a subway station, in the office buildings hallway, or in a mall ? We can have a glimpse of that discovering Art machine, a project carried by the three contemporary artists, members of the Pink Pill group. It is a project encouraging the sound art consumption through the artists direct contact with the lay public, through an automatic machine with works of art. About what exactly the project is about, we sat down and talked to visual artist Alexandru Claudiu Maxim:



    “Art Machine is an art vending machine where you can find limited series of 100 small works created by artists. The works are original, they are handmade. It is genuine art. The dimensions are those of a calling card and for the sum of 10 lei, around 2 Euros, you can purchase a work from the artists you like or whom you want to discover. It is also a curatorial concept meant to set up a connection between contemporary artists and a public that is interested in getting to know the domain. It also works as a subjective catalogue, which we present and say: in our opinion, thats what is worth buying, as we speak. And there is also a game to be played, that of collecting miniature art, a game we consider necessary to develop a variety of ways to consume art. It can be found in the bookshop of mall in Bucharest. “



    What is the projects curatorial vision? How are ideas chosen, or the works and the artists who end up in the contemporary art automatic vending machine? Alexandru Claudiu Maxim once again:



    “The overall curatorial vision, as we speak, is provided by Marian Codrea, himself a visual artist and a sculptor. As for the other Pink Pill, members, that is Beaver and myself, we also contribute suggestions, but for their most part, its with him the discussions with artists are initiated. What I can say, though, is that were searching for daring, original artists, with a peculiar style, or proposals that tie in perfectly fine with the idea of a vending machine and miniature works. There were cases when we were searched on the Instagram by the very people who even now do not see themselves as artists, but who had very good ideas and some of them even ended up in the machine. Such an idea was Syd Buzoianus, who during the lockdown came up with the suggestion that we make a plain tickets collection whose destination were not only todays places alone, it also went way back, in the past, in certain cultural ages, but also in the future, to other planets, to states of happiness, ecstasy or to films. We grew mighty fond of that concept and we accepted it, for its originality. “



    We live in a world imbued with the social media, materialism, products, consumerism. Could it be feasible, that particular mix of the essence of consumerism (the automatic machine) and art in its own right, as an expression of cultural and moral values?



    Alexandru Claudiu Maxim:



    “In todays consumerism, I would include the project as a sound alternative regarding the consumption of art. It is a project enabling people to get access to original art, and not to copies that oversaturate already. Even though Art machine makes use of the consumerists presentation, its all about that particular kind of materialism in the sense of love and respect for the object, its also about care and its protection thanks to its being unique. As city-dwellers, I think we cannot escape consumerism, and the fight to get the publics attention is big. We believe this project should create communities of artists and art lovers. We target people who are open and eager to know many things, people, who, perhaps, are interested in contemporary art, but they dont know how to approach it, since the milieu is sometimes opaque. For them, “Art Machine” could be a gateway to that end. In March 2019 the first “Art Machine” prototype was made public, as part of the, “Pink Pill Pastila Roz – The Resolution Will Be Supervised”, project venued by the 030202 Workshop, an area coordinated by Mihai Zgondoiu. It was one of the first exhibitions, mounted by the Pink Pill group in Bucharest. Six months later, in September 2019, as part of “Art Safari”, at the super-contemporary art exhibition themed “Young Blood, Art of Your Time”, curated by Mihai Zgondoiu, “Art Machine” is a functional art object, with a professional machinery in it. The works it dispatched back then cost 1 leu, 10 or 50 Lei (that is between around 50 Eurocents and 10 Euro), actually according to visitors choice. We decided it should be up to them, as to how they think contemporary art is worth. There wasnt any difference in the work they got, it was only their perception of its value. Of the 700 works we got ready for them, with us, alone, with the Pink Pill, all of them were sold out from the very first day. And thats how the three of us became the art machine the produced works day in, day out. The idea was so good that other artists got involved, they helped us, there were also ordinary people, visitors of Art Safari, who had at the bar in the courtyard. small talk, and a felt-tip pen. In ten days, we succeeded to sell three thousand works and run out of ideas. Since August 2020, “Art Machine” își has been changing its trajectory towards todays direction, that of developing a community in order to propose a new way of consuming contemporary art. The number of artists who got involved in our projects is continuously growing. Initially, we worked with fine and graphic artists, in a bid to support this idea of original art. And here I can mention the Square Cat, Obert, Teodora Gavrilă or Irina Iliescu, but we also worked with photographers and directors.”



    Here is artist Alexandru Claudiu Maxim once again, this time sharing the creators vision of the projects future prospects:



    “We see the project as being developed in other cities as well, mainly in those with academic fine arts education programmes : Cluj, Timișoara or Iași. Pursuing the idea of creating communities, other “Art Machines”, that is, it should be curated by the people who know the place, with artists of the place. We also mull the construction of a new machine that can dispatch works with a size larger than that of a post card. “


    (EN)




  • Alternative music festivals in Romania, back on track

    Alternative music festivals in Romania, back on track

    The lay public’s quest
    for cultural events as social experiences has seen an upsurge after the
    COVID-19 pandemic, People are on the lookout for performances, festivals, fairs
    and other events. The weather outside is really fine, so the cultural events
    have been relocated to outdoor premises, in parks, gardens, public squares or
    other areas with a special destination. A telling example of that is provided by
    the Rocanotherworld Festival, held on the outskirts of Iasi, a city located in
    north-eastern Romania, nearby the Aroneanu Lake, which is an artificial dam
    lake in the Moldavian Plains. Alternative and electronic music, artistic manifestations,
    conferences, food and merry-making, all that is set to populate the green area
    on the lake shores in late June. Patricia Butucel is the director of the Rocanotherworld festival. She has
    given details on what Rocanotherworld actually is and on the surprises the
    organizers have in store for the public

    Rocanotherworld will reach its
    7th edition this year and we’re happy we can return to normal, to an
    event set to unfold just as it was before the pandemic, with no restrictions. The
    2022 edition has got a novelty ready for everyone: we shall have the festival
    on the shores of the Aroneanu Lake, it is a new and beautiful space which
    perfectly suits this year’s trend. The artists performing at the festival are
    local bands, but also national and foreign ones. We will also have a DJ on the
    electronic music stage and we’re happy we’re going to get the festival started
    with a really fine band, fresh, which is set to grow, and we’re dead positive
    it will earn its place among the top alternative rock bands, with Paul Tihan.
    We shall also have those of the Suie Paparude band, we will have the launch of
    an album, we shall have two album launches, actually, Man to the Moon, and Madalina
    Paval with an orchestra. Republic of Modova’s Zdob and Zdub will also come
    over, then we will also have Golan, Alternosfera, Kumm, the lineup we’re going
    to have will be so diversified, and as an absolute first we shall have a great
    international band, the Nouvelle Vague. And we’re delighted because of the
    start we’ve taken and because of this trend, an international one, that
    including the electronic music stage as well. There will be DJs from our
    country but also foreign DJs, from Portugal, we will also a woman DJ from
    Ukraine who has relocated to Romania. We will also have an acoustic music
    stage, we will have silent disco. We tried, like, to create a mix so that our
    public can have as diversified an experience as possible. Zdob and Zdub, we saw
    that they were, like, were we to make a chart, they were the favorites for our
    public, as for Alternosfera or the French artists, Nouvelle Vague, likewise,
    they are among the favorites for the Rocanotherworld public.


    Here is the festival director, Patricia Butucel,
    once again, this time speaking about the fans of the event, which will soon see
    its seventh edition, about the public and the community that has revolved
    around the festival.


    The Rocanotherworld public, we could say it mainly is a
    faithful public since there are a great many people who have been with us since
    the inaugural edition, in 2016. They proved they support us and that, actually,
    together we are a community. And that also happened in the pandemic years,
    since Rocanotherworld was held in 2020, but also in 2021, and we’re clearly
    speaking about the pandemic editions, with all sorts of restrictions and, no
    matter what the circumstances and the context was, people stood by us. Before,
    we used to speak about, I don’t know, some sort of reluctance when we meant
    festivals, now we can see people are much mop reopen, much more eager to attend
    events and especially outdoor events.


    But how did people prepare for Rocanotherworld? What are the challenges
    for the organizers and where is the festival’s 2022 edition heading to?


    There’s this relaxation and charging side of the event
    we want to offer to our public, but we also sought to organize an event which
    for them is safe, especially after what
    has happened in Bucharest as of late. This week I even went to see the local
    authorities with whom we met quite often, we had meetings with the Anti-Drug
    Squad, because we want the whole experience to remain a safe one, for our
    participants, but also for the volunteers, for the artists involved, and for
    all the people who will come to the festival.


    Starting last year, Rocanotherworld has embarked on the path of
    sustainability, and I’m saying that because we want to meet the Zero Waste set
    target. But that is something utopian, for the time being, however, it’s the
    least we can do, through organizing and positioning, to help people as well, to
    encourage them to have a sustainable behavior and a nature-friendly one as
    much as possible. So, as I was saying, as of last year, we have ticked our
    short, medium and long-terms goals. We began by the separate collection of
    waste. We used sustainable materials for the festival’s production and
    signaling system. We replaced the classical promotion, made with OH-type
    banners and advertising boards, with the digital OH side. We encouraged and
    facilitated the use of alternative means of transport, such as electric push
    scooters, bicycles or public transport. In effect, the entire planning of the
    festival, the entire organization, was based on prevention, reusing, redesign
    and recycling principles. What we’re going to do, actually, for 2022, we shall
    prepare 4 days of unique experiences for the Rocanotherworld public, there will be something
    people can live during the event. We will
    have daytime activities, there will be relaxation areas, games, we will have an
    escalation board, we will have silent disco, debates, acoustic stage, live
    music, electronic music stages, so we will try to create a universe where
    people can come and relax completely.


    (EN)

  • Radio Romania’s Radio Drama Desk, nominated for a Theater Union award

    Radio Romania’s Radio Drama Desk, nominated for a Theater Union award

    Three of Radio Romania’s National Radio Drama Desk productions
    have received nominations for Romanian Theaters’ Union
    Awards, the Best Radio Drama Category. They are A century of Romanian theater
    in Chisinau     –The revenge of forbidden memory, script by Mariana Onceanu, Radio
    Noir. Thrillers (Season1)     adapted for the radio by Mihnea Chelaru and The
    Case of Tudor Vladimirescu,
    written for the radio by Gavriil Pinte.


    Gavriil Pinte graduated from the Acting Faculty in
    Targu Mures and the Directing Faculty of Bucharest’s School of Film And Drama.
    He staged shows in theatres across Romania, in Bucharest,
    Satu Mare, Ploieşti, Baia Mare, Tulcea, Miercurea-Ciuc, Giurgiu, Sibiu,
    Constanţa, Oradea, Timișoara. Since 1999 Gavriil Pinte has been the artistic
    director of Radio Romania’s Radio Drama Desk and in that capacity he directed
    several radio drama shows. Gavriil Pinte is the recipient of many awards, among
    which the Theater Union Radio Drama Award, in 2002, 2003 and 2011. Gavriil Pinte staged
    shows taking up on the life and work of quite a few writers. Among them, A Streetcar
    Named Popescu, after poet Cristian Popescu’s life and work (the show was on
    in Bucharest and Sibiu, in a rolling streetcar), The Cioran Temptation, based on Emil Cioran’s life and work, A Guide to Retrocessed Childhood, based on the work of Andrei Codrescu, The Journey, taking up on Constantin Abaluta’s work, as well as an adaptation
    for the radio of poet Ioan Es. Pop’s work, titled so the last shall be the
    last as well.


    Gavriil Pinte’s most recent radio drama show is The
    Case of Tudor Vladimirescu.     It starts off from the personality of Tudor
    Vladimirescu, who was born in 1780. Tudor Vladimirescu was ruler
    of Wallachia and the leader of the 1821 Revolution, one of the events that
    marked the beginning of Romania’s national rebirth process. In 1821, under the
    heading The Supplications of the Romanian people, Tudor Vladimirescu made
    known the programme of the revolution, which first and foremost stipulated foreign
    powers’ refraining from interfering with the country’s internal affairs whatsoever,
    as well as the implementation of a series of reforms. It is arguably Romanian Principalities’ first document
    with a constitutional status. Sometimes Vladimirescu was idealized, he was
    mortified in certain stereotypes. We didn’t mean to create a pathetic show, yet the inkling of a parodical intention was also far from us, and so was any means
    of ironizing and have a derogatory take on the great pandour. What we were
    interested in was a hero who, before anything else, was a man. But a man who
    played a first-rate historical part and went on to become a national hero. The script captures episodes of Vladimirescu’s public
    life, intertwined with episodes of his private life, while jointly, they make
    what could quite aptly have been himself, a living human being.

    That is how,
    very briefly, director Gavriil Pinte conveyed his
    intentions of the radio drama show The Case of Tudor Vladimirescu.

    Gavriil
    Pinte.


    The radio drama show was
    preceded by a stage version of the show as initially, the show was staged on an
    island bordered by two of river Jiu arms, at the entranceway of the town of Targu
    Jiu. The show was performed on stage at night while the soundtrack was provided
    by a rock group, Bucium, lead by Andi Dumitrescu. Everything occurred live, I
    can call this show is a rock opera. The music of the Bucium group seemed perfect
    for the show, since rock is a rebel, revolutionary kind of music, and so was Tudor
    Vladimirescu as a historical character. We had many actors on the cast, there
    were 60 of them, and after that show we found it suitable to create a radio show
    as well. We were of course unable to have a 60-strong cast of artists for the
    radio production, but the recordings were made especially for the radio version.
    Likewise, the script was conceived of taking into account the specificity and
    the demands of a radio production while the recordings were made on the
    premises at the Theater in Targu-Jiu. I am happy the show has a radio version
    as well, as it is an important show for me, but also for the troupe in Targu Jiu,
    and I should like to take this opportunity and thank the artists for their extraordinary
    cooperation. Let me just add that the actors’ troupe as part of the Elvira
    Godeanu     Drama Theater in Targu Jiu is headed by Cosmin Brehuță, a wonderful
    man, a totally atypical theater manager for Romanian theater today. The radio
    script as well as the stage script do not claim their origin from the stereotypes
    that oftentimes make Tudor Vladimirescu’s image, unfortunately, but from the ancient
    tragedy, the Shakespearean drama, with a certain surrealist touch as well.


    The
    show staged by Gavriil Pinte was occasioned by the Tudor Vladimirescu
    Bicentennial. It was jointly created with the Elvira Godeanu Drama Theater in Targu Jiu. The cast includes, among other
    actors, Mihai Rădulea, Oana Marinescu, Cosmin Brehuță, Eugen Titu,
    Mădălina Ciobănuc, Monica Sfetcu, Georgiana Enache, Cornelia Diaconu, Adelina
    Puzdrea, Luminița Șorop.

    (EN)








  • Art Safari 2022

    Art Safari 2022

    The Dacia-Romania Palace in Bucharests Old Center is host to the 9th edition of the well-known culture and art event called Art Safari. Art Safari already has its own audience, from Bucharest, from all over Romania, and all over the world, as one of the great art events in Eastern Europe. Here, the contemporary meets the Classical, the modern, the retro, avant-guarde, and famous artists, which is a good depiction of the 2022 edition.





    We spoke about the exhibition with Art Safari director, Ioana Ciocan:


    “The 9th edition of Art Safari has six exhibition pavilions, which are open for visiting for three months. After that we take a small break, during which we of course change exhibitions, and on September 21 we open our door for the 10th edition, and anniversary edition, which itself will last three months. This year, very interestingly, we have six months worth of exhibition, three by three months, and visitors will be able to experience all kinds of art. The five exhibition pavilions are Irina Dragomir, a contemporary art pavilion dedicated entirely to this young artist. We refer to her as the superstar of contemporary art, she has very happy works, in vivid colors. In fact, this exhibition, curated by Alexandru Radvan, is called Red, Yellow, Blue, and it is very lively, very youthful, inspired by American pop art, with many self-portraits, but also with characters populating Irina Dragomirs dreams. The second pavilion, also within the bounds of contemporary art, has been brought over from Germany, authored by Barbara Klemm, one of the most important photography artists in the world, with an impressive career of over 70 years. The works brought from Germany are black and white photos, historic photos made when the Berlin Wall was brought down. They are also celebrity photographs, such as Madonna, Alfred Hitchcock, or Andy Warhol, but also photos that artist Barbara Klemm took during her two visits to Romania, in the 70s and the 90s. And, to stay in the area of international friendships, we move to the second story of the Dacia-Romania Palace, in order to introduce the third pavilion of the exhibition, the pavilion which is half from Israel, half from Romania. This is an exhibition dedicated to Marcel Iancu. This major exhibition presents architect Marcel Iancu, but also Marcel Iancu the visual artist. In fact, this exhibition contains the most valuable work of Art Safari, financially speaking, it is a work coming from the National Art Museum of Romania, and is worth 300,000 Euro. My favorite, an exhibition that comes from Spain, with the help of the Spanish Embassy and the Cervantes Institute, is dedicated to the two sacred monsters of 20th century universal art, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. The two are represented in Bucharest by graphic art, which represents their stage design for their the ballet The Three Cornered Hat, by their co-national Manuel de Falla. Romanias patrimony is represented by the works of Maestro Theodor Amman. This retrospective is curated by Elena Olariu, and is made in partnership with the Bucharest Municipal Museum. It will represent Maestro Theodor Amman in an original way, because we start the exhibition with the ballroom scenes, which were very fashionable in the 19th century. This is a marathon, which continues at night, because Art Safari closes its doors at 9 PM, only to open them at 10 PM, in order to receive the visitors that want a guided night tour.”





    Let us mention that Marcel Iancu (1895-1984) was a famous Romanian-Israeli painter, architect, and essayist, of Jewish extraction. In 1917, he graduated the Zurich Architecture Academy. He studied painting under the great Romanian painter Iosif Iser. He was one of the founders of the Dada movement. Ioana Ciocan also told us about the partnerships that Art Safari 2022 is part of, partnerships that continue the tradition of the event, or which are beginning just now, a beginning that promises to increase the fame of the event:


    “We already have a trusted partner in the Bucharest Municipal Museum. We made two exhibitions together so far. Surely, your listeners recall the one last year, at the Gabroveni ArCuB Inn, called Seduction and Triumph in Art, with works that came entirely from the Bucharest Municipal Museum. Now we have our second extended collaboration with the museum, thanks to Adrian Majuru, director of the museum, and the exhibition this year includes an expanded partnership with 16 museums around the country. This partnership is extremely important, the collaborations between museums are, in fact, the great retrospective exhibitions, such as the Theodor Amman this year. Also as a first time, Art Safari can say proudly that it is a cultural project financed by the Ministry of Culture.”

  • Art Safari 2022

    Art Safari 2022

    The Dacia-Romania Palace in Bucharests Old Center is host to the 9th edition of the well-known culture and art event called Art Safari. Art Safari already has its own audience, from Bucharest, from all over Romania, and all over the world, as one of the great art events in Eastern Europe. Here, the contemporary meets the Classical, the modern, the retro, avant-guarde, and famous artists, which is a good depiction of the 2022 edition.





    We spoke about the exhibition with Art Safari director, Ioana Ciocan:


    “The 9th edition of Art Safari has six exhibition pavilions, which are open for visiting for three months. After that we take a small break, during which we of course change exhibitions, and on September 21 we open our door for the 10th edition, and anniversary edition, which itself will last three months. This year, very interestingly, we have six months worth of exhibition, three by three months, and visitors will be able to experience all kinds of art. The five exhibition pavilions are Irina Dragomir, a contemporary art pavilion dedicated entirely to this young artist. We refer to her as the superstar of contemporary art, she has very happy works, in vivid colors. In fact, this exhibition, curated by Alexandru Radvan, is called Red, Yellow, Blue, and it is very lively, very youthful, inspired by American pop art, with many self-portraits, but also with characters populating Irina Dragomirs dreams. The second pavilion, also within the bounds of contemporary art, has been brought over from Germany, authored by Barbara Klemm, one of the most important photography artists in the world, with an impressive career of over 70 years. The works brought from Germany are black and white photos, historic photos made when the Berlin Wall was brought down. They are also celebrity photographs, such as Madonna, Alfred Hitchcock, or Andy Warhol, but also photos that artist Barbara Klemm took during her two visits to Romania, in the 70s and the 90s. And, to stay in the area of international friendships, we move to the second story of the Dacia-Romania Palace, in order to introduce the third pavilion of the exhibition, the pavilion which is half from Israel, half from Romania. This is an exhibition dedicated to Marcel Iancu. This major exhibition presents architect Marcel Iancu, but also Marcel Iancu the visual artist. In fact, this exhibition contains the most valuable work of Art Safari, financially speaking, it is a work coming from the National Art Museum of Romania, and is worth 300,000 Euro. My favorite, an exhibition that comes from Spain, with the help of the Spanish Embassy and the Cervantes Institute, is dedicated to the two sacred monsters of 20th century universal art, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. The two are represented in Bucharest by graphic art, which represents their stage design for their the ballet The Three Cornered Hat, by their co-national Manuel de Falla. Romanias patrimony is represented by the works of Maestro Theodor Amman. This retrospective is curated by Elena Olariu, and is made in partnership with the Bucharest Municipal Museum. It will represent Maestro Theodor Amman in an original way, because we start the exhibition with the ballroom scenes, which were very fashionable in the 19th century. This is a marathon, which continues at night, because Art Safari closes its doors at 9 PM, only to open them at 10 PM, in order to receive the visitors that want a guided night tour.”





    Let us mention that Marcel Iancu (1895-1984) was a famous Romanian-Israeli painter, architect, and essayist, of Jewish extraction. In 1917, he graduated the Zurich Architecture Academy. He studied painting under the great Romanian painter Iosif Iser. He was one of the founders of the Dada movement. Ioana Ciocan also told us about the partnerships that Art Safari 2022 is part of, partnerships that continue the tradition of the event, or which are beginning just now, a beginning that promises to increase the fame of the event:


    “We already have a trusted partner in the Bucharest Municipal Museum. We made two exhibitions together so far. Surely, your listeners recall the one last year, at the Gabroveni ArCuB Inn, called Seduction and Triumph in Art, with works that came entirely from the Bucharest Municipal Museum. Now we have our second extended collaboration with the museum, thanks to Adrian Majuru, director of the museum, and the exhibition this year includes an expanded partnership with 16 museums around the country. This partnership is extremely important, the collaborations between museums are, in fact, the great retrospective exhibitions, such as the Theodor Amman this year. Also as a first time, Art Safari can say proudly that it is a cultural project financed by the Ministry of Culture.”

  • Circular Tradition

    Circular Tradition

    In May and June, the Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest is playing
    host to an exhibition of contemporary collaborative art entitled Circular tradition (Connected to nature), in the form of an
    encounter between established contemporary artists and traditional
    artisans who are keeping ancient crafts alive, in a nutshell a blend
    between innovation, technology, art and craft. We talked to the
    manager of the Romanian Peasant Museum Virgil Nițulescu about the
    concept of the exhibition and how it took shape:







    Indeed, it’s a somehow different exhibition than what we
    normally host at this museum. The concept is based on an initiative
    from 2017 called Romania’s
    Creative Traditions and which was launched by a former manager of
    this museum Vintilă Mihăilescu, together with Teodor Frolu. The
    initiative was aimed
    at bringing together contemporary artists who are particularly
    interested in Romanian traditional culture. This time, the exhibition
    Circular Tradition
    draws on a workshop held by
    the Romanian Peasant Museum by six contemporary artists and six
    traditional artisans. The six artists are Teodor
    Graur, Mircea Cantor, Marius Alexe-Bean, Oláh Gyárfás, Virgil
    Scripcariu and
    Dan Vezentan, and the six
    artisans are Viorel Gheorghe,
    Tănase Burnar, Adrian Mihaiu, Melinda-Maria Andras, Csaba Balint and
    Csaba Racz. Each of the
    participating artisans specialises
    in a different craft, such as pottery, textiles, leather, carpentry,
    and each has inherited their craft from earlier generations and is
    going to pass it on to the next generations. Ultimately, it’s an
    exchange of experience, because they learn from the contemporary
    artists new techniques and ideas that circulate in the Romanian
    contemporary art world, and,
    more importantly, the contemporary artists are learning from the
    artisans, so as to tap the traditional world in their art. The
    artists involved in the project are aware of the fact that you cannot
    be original and have a distinct voice on the international scene
    unless you start from that which is characteristic to the community
    you were born in.







    One of the co-organisers and
    initiators of the project from 2017 entitled Romania’s Creative
    Traditions that formed the basis for this new exhibition, the
    architect and creative industry entrepreneur Teodor Frolu told
    us about the workshops, the involvement of the artisans and of the
    contemporary artists, and about the fine line that separates a visual
    artist from a traditional artist. Teodor Frolu:







    The workshops that brought together the artisans and the artists
    lasted a week, but many have been collaborating for many years and
    our intention is to show just how contemporary and relevant
    traditional crafts are and how they can be transformed by the
    contemporary artists in works of art of great artistic value and
    become part of private collections.
    Artists like Mircea Cantor,
    Teodor Graur, Dan Vezentan, Oláh Gyárfás and
    Virgil Scripcariu are already
    drawing on traditional crafts in their work, while someone like
    Bean, Marius Alexe from the
    group
    Subcarpați, has already made
    a traditional instrument like
    the kaval flue known among young people by incorporating it in his
    music. They recently set up the Subcarpați cultural centre and each
    is trying in their contemporary art works to enhance the visibility
    of traditional crafts. So this is in fact a meeting between an
    artisan who is also an artist and an artist who is also an artisan.
    Artists are, if you will, contemporary artisans themselves, they work
    directly with the material, are using different techniques and are
    very good in what they do with their hands and their imagination.







    We also caught up with one of the
    artists involved in the exhibition, Mircea Cantor, a visual artist
    living in Paris and one of the most recognisable names in Romanian
    contemporary art. In 2011, he won the Marcel Duchamp prize at the
    Paris International Contemporary Art Fair. Cantor told us about the
    role of traditional art in his work and his constant collaboration
    with traditional artisans:







    I think this is a unique moment
    in the history of this museum, this collaboration between artists and
    artisans. For me, however, it’s a natural process working with
    artisans and acknowledging their contribution to my art. It’s
    important to give credit to and admit that you’re working with an
    artisan, whether it’s someone who works in leather or with wool.
    These things should take place naturally and everyone stands to gain
    from it. It’s a form of mutual support and recognition, both
    professional and financial. The public also benefits from this
    collaboration. I also believe the public should be more informed
    about this, including children, through education programmes
    in schools designed by the ministry of education, and through
    financial programmes, they should know that they can do things they
    enjoy and also make a living from them. There’s a living to be made
    from these traditional crafts that I discovered here at the Peasant
    Museum. I think this may have a domino effect in the long run, which
    would be positive for everyone, for artists and artisans alike, for
    civil society, and for education.

  • Radio Romania Culture Awards

    Radio Romania Culture Awards

    The 21st edition of Radio Romania Culture (RRC) Awards Gala was recently held on the stage of the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest, after two years of absence caused by the Covid 19 pandemic. Radio Romania Culture Awards Gala is the only event that grants awards in all areas of culture in Romania. During this anniversary edition awards were granted for the most important achievements of the Romanian culture in 2021. The Radio Romania Culture Excellence Award went to medical doctor Cătălin Denciu and the Intensive Care Unit team of the Piatra-Neamt County Hospital, as these people put their lives in danger to save their patients during a tragic fire in 2020. The special award for education went to the mathematics training platform MateX.xyz. The platform was created by 8 Olympiad participants with the aim of preparing poor 8th graders, online, for the National Assessment.



    The special prize for science was awarded to the founder of Graphs.ro, Dragoș Vana. His platform presented data on the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic in Romania, on a daily basis, as well as information about the anti-COVID vaccination campaign. Started as a personal project, with personal resources, in April 2020, Graphs.ro has become a reference source and an indispensable tool for tracking the evolution of the pandemic in Romania. The special prize for literature was awarded to the bookshop ‘La Două bufnițe – ‘At Two Owls from Timisoara, a large-scale cultural project, an example of cultural survival in the difficult days of lockdown.



    Here are Raluca Selejan and Oana Doboşi, the founders of the bookshop At Two Owls, upon receiving the Special Prize for Literature awarded by RRC: We thank RRC and the jury who nominated us for this award. It is an award that comes at a time when we were almost ready to put down our weapons after two very difficult years, but the award reminds us that a beautiful community was formed around our bookshop, that supports us when it is very difficult for us, without knowing that it is very difficult for us. We want to thank our parents who have always supported us and thanks to whom our bookshop has survived and all our friends. The pandemic has been a difficult time because in our country, as you know, books are not essential, bookshops are not protected by law, we do not have a law on a single book price, so the only ones who can protect this market and the books are the readers. We also want to thank the teacher and writer Daniel Vighi, who believed in us as few people believed in us when we were very young, who encouraged us to become what we are today and from whom we learned that in literature there is no weekend, vacation or holidays. Its from Daniel Vighi that we also learned that the greatest joy which literature brings is that moment of solitude when the reader meets the text, and that is why we hope to bring as many books as possible as close as possible to the readers. We are urging you to support physical bookshops because booksellers are very fondly waiting for you.



    Simona Popescu received a prize at Radio Romania Culture Awards Gala for her book ‘Cartea plantelor și animalelor – ‘The Book of Plants and Animals (Nemira Publishing House). Simona Popescu is the author of the poetry volumes ‘Xilofonul şi alte poeme – ‘Xylophone and other poems (1990), ‘Pauză de respir – ‘Pause for breath (together with Andrei Bodiu, Caius Dobrescu and Marius Oprea, (1991), Juventus, (1994), reprinted entirely in the collection Opera poetica (2021), and ‘Lucrări în verde. Pledoaria mea pentru poezie – ‘Works in green. My Plea for Poetry (2006). She wrote the novel Exuvii (1997; seven editions until 2021), a volume of essays, Volubilis (1998), and books of critifiction about the surrealist poet Gellu Naum, ‘Salvarea speciei. Despre suprarealism și Gellu Naum – ‘Saving the Species. On Surrealism and Gellu Naum (2000) and ‘Clava. Critificțiune cu Gellu Naum – ‘Clava. Critifiction with Gellu Naum (2004).



    Here is Simona Popescu: I thank the jury and I feel honored to receive an award granted by RRC. Thank you for stopping in my garden with an opening to the sea and to the ocean, the garden being a metaphor for my book. It is a book of over 300 pages, with dozens of plants and animals, which are, in fact, pretexts to talk about the wide world, about the human species, not just about plants and animals, and to touch upon several themes of literature, be they great, small or average. My good thoughts go to my good friends who were also nominated, Ștefania Mihalache and Miruna Vlada, and of course to all those who wrote good and very good poetry books, and also other books, in 2021.



    In the Prose category, Alina Nelega received an award for the novel ‘un nor în formă de cămilă – ‘a cloud in the shape of a camel (Polirom Publishing House) and in the Theatre category, Andrei Mureșanu Theatre in Sfântu Gheorghe received an award for the show ‘Consimțământ – ‚Consent by Evan Placey, directed by Radu Afrim. The film ‘Otto Barbarul – ‘Otto the Barbarian, directed by Ruxandra Ghițescu, received the RRC Award in the Film category, and the four solo exhibitions by Mircia Dumitrescu were awarded in the Visual Arts category. The prize in the Science category went to Răzvan Cherecheș, Director of the Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences, of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, for the campaign to promote the anti-COVID public health measures in Romania. In the Music category, Nicu Alifantis & Zan received an award for the album Dimov • Leoneed is love, and in the Education category, the Narada Association received an award for their projects that bring the technology of the 21st century closer to education. (LS)

  • European Book Day in Cluj

    European Book Day in Cluj

    In late April this year in the city of Cluj Napoca, north-western Romania, right in the city center at the Casino – the Center for Urban Culture an event will be taking place, which is supposed to bring together children, young people from disadvantaged categories, publishers from Romania and writers.


    The event is called European Book Day and we are going to find out more on it from Bianca Mereuță, director of the Signatura publishing house and organizer of this event in Romania:


    Bianca Mereuta: With European Book Day we intend to bring the young people closer to books in a manner as creative as possible, ways that young people may find interesting, pleasant and even funny so that they may see books as an alternative to multiple stimuli they face in everyday life and which are so exciting. European Book Day began in Austria, it was founded by our Austrian partners. It is a project co-funded by Erasmus+ in which five countries are staging events through which young people from vulnerable environments with limited access to cultural events and books may get into contact with authors, the world of books and education and with other young people. They may thus spend some good time together and share the joy of reading. The project is underway in four European countries and the fifth is the communicational partner of the entire concept. Like I said Austria is the initiator of the project and the event will be held in Romania on April 27th. It will be followed by the events in Sweden in May and it will come to an end in Germany in November. European Book Day is targeting the young people.


    European Book Day is at the beginning, at its first edition and attendance is free. But what is the event like? And what exactly is going to happen during this event? Here is again Bianca Mereuță:


    Bianca Mereuta: European Book Day wants to bring youngsters close to books, whet their appetite for reading. So, youngsters from disadvantaged categories and young people who have access to education and books from well-off families will meet and spend some good time together. Prior to the main event, with young people from disadvantaged categories we held a series of workshops of creative writing and art during which they managed to create literary works, which are going to be on display during the European Book Day. In this way we tried to show them that reading, books and creativity are available to everyone. Everybody can create and we all have the resources to create but in order to achieve this goal we must have a foundation of culture and the awareness of the importance of education. On April 27th starting 11:30, young people and adults alike, accompanied by children of course, are expected to join us at the Casino – the Urban Culture Center and enjoy a series of book-inspired events and we also hope that we are going to spend together a couple of good hours. Young people need to think outside the box and see beyond the easy alternatives they have to quickly satisfy their needs. They need to be aware of this long-term promise, that of education, which is easily done step by step but which is actually constructive for the personality of a human being.


    At the end of our discussion Bianca Mereuță, organizer of European Book Day shared the future expectations in relation to this project.


    Bianca Mereuta: We’d like to turn European Book Day into a multiannual event which reaches out to as many young people around Romania as possible. They need that. So, European Book Day will hopefully grow and have an impact in the hearts and minds of those coming to Cluj these days and linger in their memory. We hope they’ll understand the habit of daily reading.


    We should also note that starting this year Romania has a National Reading Day, which is marked on February 15th as according to statistics the daily average time a Romanian spends reading is five minutes and most people read about a book a year. And in a country where 10% of its citizens are buying a book a year, the school plays an essential role in cultivating an apparently obsolete activity, reading as a way aimed at saving us from a superficial environment, where we are making decisions without thinking. Reading builds deep and solid connections inside the mind of the reader, be they children or adults, the Ministry of Education said, and on that day changed the school timetable so that students were able to enjoy one hour of reading in classes. Teachers recommended children to bring to school one of the books they liked and read from it in classrooms. The objective of this action was to promote daily reading as a habit.


    (bill)


  • Mihnea Chelaru is nominated for Theatre Union award

    Mihnea Chelaru is nominated for Theatre Union award

    Radio Romania’s Radio Theatre received three nominations for the Theatre Union awards for best radio theatre production. The
    productions in question are: A century of Romanian theatre in Chişinău – The revenge of forbidden memory,
    written by Mariana Onceanu, Radio Noir. Crime stories (Season 1), staged
    by Mihnea Chelaru and The Tudor Vladimirescu Case written by Gavriil
    Pinte. Today, however, we will be introducing you to director Mihnea Chelaru,
    who is well-known for his innovative work in the field of sound art, having won
    many prizes at important radio drama international festivals, such as New York
    Festivals World’s Best Radio Programs and the 60 Second Radio competition in
    Montreal.

    We spoke with Mihnea Chelaru about his passion for radio drama, his
    recent nomination for the Theatre Union awards and about how he ended up
    staging the radio five stories from the Bucharest Noir collection
    published by Tritonic and written by Bogdan Hrib, Tony Mott, Dan Radoiu, Daniel
    Timariu, Ștefan Decebal Guță. The five episodes were first broadcast in 2021
    and were launched simultaneously on Radio Romania’s news and current affairs
    channel and at eteatru.ro, under podcast. Mihnea Chelaru not only staged these
    shows, but was also responsible for their artistic production and sound design:


    Mihnea Chelaru: First and foremost, I am a big fan of film noir
    and when I discovered such excellent Romanian works in this genre I really
    wanted to make this series. So I contacted Attila Vizauer, the editor-in-chief
    of the National Radio Theatre, and the writer and editor Bogdan Hrib and told
    them about my idea, which I have to say seemed a bit crazy to me, but which
    they liked. That’s how this series was born, and I’d like to continue it. I
    gave it the title Crime stories. Season 1 precisely because I’m planning
    to continue the project, and hopefully we’ll have Season 2 and 3. The first
    season was a success, with traffic to the page doubling after it was launched
    online at etreatru.ro, so the public like crime stories. We even attracted new
    public, as more people rediscovered radio theatre during the pandemic.


    Mihnea Chelaru is the first to introduce on-location
    recording into Romanian radio theatre. This was back in 2008, when he recorded The
    Barber of Seville directed by Toma Enache. More shows followed: Argentina,
    directed by Ilinca Stihi, The Metamorphosis, directed by Ion Andrei
    Puican, Over the Rainbow, directed by Mihnea Chelaru and Ion Andrei
    Puican, and My Poor Father, directed by Attila Vizauer, all of which
    were recorded using the same technique and won prizes at international
    festivals.


    Mihnea Chelaru: Young people are accustomed to
    receiving information fast, the development of the media contributed to this. As
    I’ve noticed in the international festivals in which I’ve taken part, the plays
    of up to 40 minutes were the most popular. Even radio people have difficulties
    focusing on plays that are longer than this, regardless of how well a play is
    produced. Being a film director myself, I tried to bring the radio drama sound closer
    to film sound, while keeping the elements that help radio drama. And because my
    father worked for Radio Romania too, as a music director with the National
    Radio Theatre Department, I’ve listened to radio drama since childhood. And even
    then I hated hearing a voice that sounded like it was recorded in a room, and
    hearing birds chirping in the background, I couldn’t connect those elements. This
    is why I tried to bring the actor in the original location, to have it all
    sound as if recorded in the same place.


    During the pandemic, the public seems to have rediscovered
    radio theatre. Mihnea Chelaru says there is growing interest in this genre:


    Mihnea Chelaru: In many countries, such as Russia,
    Norway and Canada, the radio drama departments of public broadcasters were closed
    down. But over the past few years this genre has seen an upward trend, the
    public is once again interested in radio theatre and some of the departments
    that had been closed down were reopened and started producing shows again. In
    the US as well, radio theatre was a thing of the past even 10 years ago, but
    recently a lot of private producers emerged, who make radio plays, so the genre
    seems to be reborn. This year we have the Grand Prix Nova International Radio
    Drama Festival, which Radio Romania has been organising for nearly a decade. And
    the public will be able to meet a group of passionate people who love radio
    theatre.


    Cosmin Şofron, Daniela Ioniţă Marcu, Nicoleta Lefter,
    Ion Arcudeanu, Marius Călugăriţa, Cristi Dionise, Bogdan Isopescu, Sabina
    Lepădătescu and Alin Potop are among the cast of Radio Noir. Crime stories
    (Season 1). (C.M., A.M.P.)