EMERGING TOWARDS (FUTURE): Multispecies Exhibition and Cross-fields conference, Bergen 7 & 8.09.2023

1 September 2023 by with comment off

Bergen School of Architecture (BAS) will host will host two events organized by Working Art Space and Production, a cultural organization from Romania.

The first event is the opening of the multimedia exhibition “Multispecies”, which brings together integrated works in a visual, auditory and sensory experience that invites the audience to reflect on subjects that transcend human perspectives.

The exhibition, produced by WASP Studios from Romania in collaboration with Architect Cristian Ștefănescu (a-works) will present the inaugural exhibition of the Emerging Towards (Future) program, entitled “Multispecies.” The exhibition will open its doors on September 7 2023, at 19.00, in the Silo Basement Space of BAS Faculty of Architecture and later it will be presented at WASP Studios from Romania, in October.

This innovative showcase explores the intricate relationship between nature, visual arts, and architecture, brought to life by ten multidisciplinary artists from Romania and Norway. The exhibition seamlessly blends the artworks into a sensory experience that engages the audience visually, aurally, and emotionally, prompting contemplation on the challenges surrounding the Multispecies theme.

The event highlights a particular way of thinking at the crossroads of social, visual, and natural sciences, emphasizing the coexistence with diversity and its exploration both on an individual and collective level. This intersection of emerging forms of art, architecture, and design finds its inspiration in sustainable and enduring approaches. By analyzing and aligning with various life forms and their regenerative potential, a balanced and responsive mindset is recovered.

“Multispecies” is not just an artistic endeavor but a response to a resilient reality. In an era where the limits of anthropocentric thinking are being questioned, this project aims to foreground the possibilities of learning from complex natural systems and encourage a more fluid and open perspective on the surrounding world.

The second event, the „Cross Fields” conference, will take place on September 8 2023, at 14:00 in the Large Auditorium Space of BAS. The symposium is focused on the relationship between contemporary visual arts and architecture. The conference will place particular emphasis on public spaces and representational areas, which generate diverse situations and reflections of contemporary existence.
Architects, artists and curators introduce possible models of sustainable and creative tools, noting, on the one hand, the need for a physical practice of theories related to architecture and on the other hand, the need to emphasize those aspects of architecture that can favor the development of new and meaningful areas of experience. Such synergistic practical research can have a strong social impact by opening up to the public and to new audiences from the fields of reference (art and architecture). These instances can be used as a tool for urban regeneration because it can involve communities in redefining the meaning of public space. Architecture regains new public voices for sustainable development.

These initiatives are part of the Emerging Towards (Future) project, situated at the convergence of art, ecology, and architecture. Through contemporary art and its related fields, the project highlights the need for collaborative, intergenerational, and trans-sectoral actions in research, production, and dissemination processes, adapted to both current and future contexts.
Group exhibition

Curators: Andreea Căpitănescu ( RO) & Cristian Ștefănescu (NO)

WASP Studios

WASP Studios is a cultural organization founded in 2015 to respond to the need of supporting artistic creation and production in Romania, in the alternative space WASP – Working Art Space and Production in Bucharest and in collaboration with national and international organizations and institutions. WASP Studios supports the continuous training of Romanian creators through networking opportunities and promotion of contemporary creation. The directions of activity include dance and performance, transdisciplinary collaborations in visual arts, architecture, film, music, new media, opening to other areas of knowledge such as literature and creative industries. In 2019 WASP produced 9 performances for the performing arts program of EUROPALIA Romania, presented in Belgium at BOZAR, Kaaitheater, KVS, Concertgebow, and currently WASP pays increased attention to the development of curatorial projects in art in relation to new media, literature and architecture.

BAS

Bergen School of Architecture (BAS) is a private and academically independent educational institution within Norway that promotes an open, plural and diverse approach to architecture and urbanism that is strongly influenced by art, activism, social anthropology and ecology – an approach that is often applied through direct, hands-on and on-the-ground engagements within real situations. The teaching is anchored in a Nordic west coast climate with emphasise on learning from tradition both in regard to material knowledge and contextualization in landscape and situation.

CRISTIAN STEFANESCU ARCHITECT (a-works)

Cristian Ștefănescu is a Romanian/Canadian architect based in Bergen, Norway. Since 2013 he has been leading his own architecture and art projects in his own company CRISTIAN STEFANESCU ARCHITECT (a-works | architecture + art), in parallel with his work as a professor at the Bergen School of Architecture. His works have been exhibited at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen Norway, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Romania and at Architekturzentrum Wien as part of the Vienna Biennale and most recently in the Romanian pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale in the group exhibition Fading Borders. His contribution to Hardanger Skyspace, commissioned by Kunsthuset Kabuso received 2nd place in Betongtavlen 2017, Norway’s highest award for concrete architecture. In addition, the participatory project Pyramid Park, the design and construction of a public park, won 1st prize in Romania’s national public space design competition, Urbaniada.

This project is financed with the support of EEA Grants 2014-2021 within the RO-CULTURE Programme.
The EEA Grants represent the contribution of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway towards a green, competitive and inclusive Europe. There are two overall objectives: reduction of economic and social disparities in Europe, and to strengthen bilateral relations between the donor countries and 15 EU countries in Central and Southern Europe and the Baltics. The three donor countries cooperate closely with the EU through the Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA). The donors have provided €3.3 billion through consecutive grant schemes between 1994 and 2014. For the period 2014-2021, the EEA Grants amount to €1.55 billion. More details are available on: www.eeagrants.org and www.eeagrants.ro.
RO-CULTURE is implemented in Romania by the Ministry of Culture through the Project Management Unit. The Programme aims at strengthening social and economic development through cultural cooperation, cultural entrepreneurship and cultural heritage management. The total budget amounts to almost 34 million EUR. For more details access: www.ro-cultura.ro.

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AND WHAT ART CAN DO ABOUT IT? // JON DEAN & ANCA RUJOIU // TALK

16 November 2022 by with comment off

AND WHAT ART CAN DO ABOUT IT? // AN INVITATION TO ACTING IN CONCERT JON DEAN & ANCA RUJOIU // TALK

17th November, 2022

WASP – Working Art Space & Production, 67-93 Ion Minulescu Street, Bucharest, Romania

The two #DIALOGUES part of the project “AND WHAT ART CAN DO ABOUT IT?” will take place on 17 November at 7pm. The talks feature artist Jon Dean and curator Anca Rujoiu. They are an integral part of the collaborative project conceived by Irina Botea Bucan & Jon Dean, Anca Rujoiu and Andreea Căpitănescu at the initiative of WASP STUDIOS. This educational project takes a public form between 17 and 19 November and includes: dialogues, artist presentations and activations proposed by the eight participants in the project. The full programme can be accessed on the event page: https://fb.me/e/2F3j8MOJK

“And what art can do about it?” questions a recurrent theme in contemporary society, namely the relationship between art and eco-socio-political crises, and following an open call in September, the project mentors have conducted workshops with the selected artists: Cosmina Morosan & Anticorp Solar, Elvisey Pisica, Gene Tanta, Irina Motroc, Kiki Mihuta, Moncea Malina, Teodora Rotaru, Thomas Steyaert.
Jon Dean (b. Wolverhampton) has been working for over thirty years in the intersecting fields of visual/community arts and applied social sciences; the artist initiates and develops diverse cultural projects by integrating differentiated and negotiated participatory strategies built to place participants at the very heart of artistic expression, learning and cultural policy. Throughout his career, Jon has worked within a wide range of socio-cultural contexts, including: formal education institutions, museums, art galleries, as well as generic community venues. Recent exhibitions/projections include: Loop Barcelona; Elvira Popescu Cinema, Bucharest; Young Artists Studio, Budapest; University of Johannesburg; Goldsmiths University, London; Tranzit.ro, Bucharest; Anca Poterașu Gallery, Bucharest; Centrala Gallery, Birmingham; Art on Display, Bucharest; Arcub, Bucharest; Black and White Biennial, Satu Mare; Columbia University, New York; Ferenc Bar, Budapest.
Anca Rujoiu (b. Bucharest) is a curator and editor In 2019 she co-curated the third edition of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara, approached as a year-long institutional program. As curator of exhibitions and later head of publications (2013-18), she was a member of the founding team of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, contributing to the institution’s many exhibitions, public programmes and publishing projects. The initial three-year programme, Place.Labour. Capital, created connections between research, residencies and exhibitions with artists Simryn Gill, Allan Sekula, Trinh T. Minh-ha, to name a few. He has co-edited several publications, including the artist books Thao Nguyen Phan: Voyages de Rhodes (2018), Simryn Gill & Michael Taussig: Becoming Palm (2017). As part of the FormContent curatorial initiative in London, he worked on a nomadic project, It’s Moving from I to It (2012-2014), which took the form of a script composed of seventeen ‘scenes’: exhibitions, workshops, commissioned texts and the like. She is a PhD candidate at Monash University in Melbourne.
Cover image: Irina Botea Bucan and Jon Dean, “Studio of Radio Theatre, Radio Romania”, part of the exhibition Signal: transmitted invisibility, Anca Poterașu Gallery, 2016
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Producer: WASP Studios // Co-producer: 4 Culture Association
Project co-financed by the Bucharest City Hall through ARCUB within the Affective Bucharest Program 2022. For detailed information about the financing program of the Bucharest City Hall through ARCUB, you can access www.arcub.ro .
The cultural project is co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN). It does not necessarily represent the position of AFCN. The AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or the manner in which the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.
Project co-funded by the European Union – Creative Europe Programme, in the framework of Life Long Burning – Towards A Sustainable Eco-System for Contemporary Dance in Europe
Media partners: Radio România Cultural, Modernism, Revista Zeppelin, Revista ARTA, Feeder, IQads, România Pozitivă
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DIALOGUE: Post-surveillance art

9 November 2022 by with comment off

Guests: Anda Zahiu, Constantin Vică, Cristian Iftode, Cristina Voinea, Iosif Király
Moderator: Andreea Căpitănescu

14 November, 19:00
WASP – Working Art Space & Production, 67 -93 Ion Minulescu Str. Bucharest
WASP STUDIOS invites the public on the 14th of November, 19:00 to take part in a dialog about the influences and presence of the surveillance cameras in our life and routine. In a dialogue moderated by Andreea Căpitănescu, philosophers Anda Zahiu, Constantin Vică, Cristian Iftode, Cristina Voinea and artist Iosif Király propose a public analysis of the ethics of surveillance in contemporary society.
The topic of surveillance is increasingly of interest, and after a global “tsunami” such as the one experienced in spring 2020, when both in the press and among ordinary people the Israeli secret services were given as positive examples, using all their technological arsenal to see who is and who is not complying with the restrictions imposed by the government, or when in China and in Europe drones were watching who was leaving the house, the discussion about “Security OR Privacy” is all the more interesting and topical.
The pandemic context and the wave of conspiracy theories, fake news and the growing debate about rights and limitations imposed by governments, as well as the laxity with which we allow ourselves to provide personal information and images on social media, are some of the issues proposed to be addressed in a dialogue that brings into discussion an artistic as well as an anthropological and philosophical perspective.
An important direction of the dialogue between the guests of WASP Studios, is the perspective of overlapping the present reality of the theme of surveillance with the historical trauma of the generation that lived during the totalitarian communist regime – the surveillance of the police (security).
How do artists, young people and the general population relate to this theme?
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Anda Zahiu is a PhD student at the Faculty of Philosophy (UB) and a member of the Research Centre for Applied Ethics, specialising in political philosophy and applied ethics. Her research interests focus on the impact of new technologies on the sphere of morality and the different ways in which we can conceptualize the right to privacy.
Constantin Vică is a lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. He teaches courses on Ethics of Technologies, Ethics and Politics of New Technologies, Technology and Development, Morality, Business and Information Technology, Ethics of Cognitive Technologies, Philosophy of History, Philosophy of the Future and Digital Culture. His areas of interest are in applied ethics, computer and information ethics, philosophy of computer science and artificial intelligence, bioethics, social and political philosophy. He has published various articles on Internet and cognitive enhancement, Artificial Intelligence and the ethics of the future, accountability of AI systems, epistemology and open data policy, hacker politics, robots as assistants and companions, conflict between intellectual property institutions and informal online norms.
Cristian Iftode is the Director of the Department of Practical Philosophy and History of Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest, where he teaches courses in ethics, therapy philosophy, aesthetics and contemporary philosophy. He has published numerous studies in collective works or specialized journals in the country and abroad (The New Bioethics, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, AJOB Neuroscience, Ingenium, Public Reason, etc.), as well as authored volumes, among which we mention Aristotle. The Problem of Analogy and the Philosophy of Donation (Editura Univ. of Bucharest, 2015), The Good Life. An Introduction to Ethics (Ed. Trei, 2021) and Philosophy as a Way of Life: The Sources of Authenticity (Ed. Trei, 2022, second edition). He is constantly giving public lectures, workshops on practical philosophy and is a regular contributor to the press (Dilema veche, Scena9, etc.), which aims to demonstrate the relevance of philosophy to everyday life.
Cristina Voinea is an assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy and Sociohuman Sciences, Academy of Economic Studies. He received his PhD in 2019 from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, with a thesis studying how private and state power intertwine in internet governance. In her research, Cristina traces how new technologies influence our moral lives, working at the confluence of several fields, such as the ethics and politics of new technologies or moral psychology. Her studies have been published in journals such as Technology in Society, Science and Engineering Ethics, Ethics and Information Technology and Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, among others.
Iosif Király is a visual artist, professor at the National University of Arts Bucharest, where he has been teaching since 1992. He is co-founder of the Department of Photography and Dynamic Image (1995). His work investigates the relationship between perception, time, synchronicity and memory through photography, installation-art, drawing and more recently, video. He has initiated, coordinated, and, together with architects, visual artists, and anthropologists, participated in research projects related to the changes having occurred in post-communist Romania: D-Platform, RO-Archive, Triaj, Tinseltown. During the 1980s, Iosif Király became active in the mail art network, an international underground movement established by Fluxus. After 1989, he exhibited both individually and within the subREAL* group.
Andreea Căpitănescu is curator of WASP Working Art Space and Production, cultural manager and artist. With a background in contemporary dance (UNATC), project management in English (SNSPA) and doctoral research in the arts (UNARTE), she is interested in experimenting with new multidisciplinary frameworks with the potential to catalyse artistic and theoretical exchanges that modify and influence creative processes and propose new personal, authentic versions. Since 2005 she is director of eXplore festival and since 2008 co-organizer of the European project Jardin d’Europe and Life Long Burning. She was curator of the performing arts programme for the EUROPALIA Romania festival (Brussels), and since 2021 he is a lecturer at the Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu.
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Producer: WASP Studios // Co-producer: 4Culture
Project co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the grantee.
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Performance by Anton Ovchinnikov // Immersive multi-channel video installation

31 October 2022 by with comment off

”Intimate Choreographies. Mapping a new reality” presents:

19:00 – 20:00 Beauty of the Beast – Performance with & by Anton Ovchinnikov (Ukraine)

20:00 – 21:00 Immersive multi-channel video installation, concept and artistic direction: Andreea Căpitănescu

 

03 November 2022, 19:00 – 21:00

WASP – Working Art Space & Production, 67 -93 Ion Minulescu Str. Bucharest

Since the first days of the war, Ukrainian dancer and choreographer Anton Ovchinnikov has been writing and posting short poems on his personal social media account, in an attempt to remain artistically connected to the traumatic experience of forced isolation, violence, hopelessness and hope, of a trapped and captive body that continues to create a choreography of thoughts in a time that expands with the awareness of the fragility of each hour of life.

The artist’s lyrics were a catalyst and a guide for the project “Intimate Choreographies. Mapping a New Reality”, and on Thursday, November 3rd, we invite you to WASP – Working Art Space & Production for the final two events of the project.

The evening will start with Ukrainian dancer and choreographer Anton Ovchinnikov’s performance “Beauty of the Beast”, and afterwards the audience is invited to interact with the installation “Intimate Choreographies”, which transposes the collective experience made during the public interventions from September to October.

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Beauty of the Beast performance, Anton Ovchinnikov: 

Russian classical ballet is today one of the main products of Russian cultural export and one of the symbols of Russian art and culture outside of Russia. The performance “Beauty of the Beast” suggests looking at classical Russian ballet as an aestheticized form of violence against a person and over the body.

Today, when the Russian army destroys cities and the population of Ukraine, inhumanity and destruction become new symbols of Russia. How can this metamorphosis change the view of Russian classical ballet? Can it still be a cover for the lawlessness, anti-humanism and imperial habits of the Russian elite?

The performance is based on the poem „New Russian Ballet”, which was written at the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on March 31, 2022.

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Intimate Choreographies – Immersive multi-channel video installation

From early September, select from an open call, co-authors & performers: Alisia Nină, Ciprian Chiujdea, Ciprian Mihăilă-Leotescu, Cosmin Dorian Ilie, Pedro Gafei Aurelian, Vlad Benescu, Lena Sabosia have performed 12 performative interventions in public spaces in Bucharest, Brasov and Sibiu.

Erika Hera, Silvana Neda, Ioana Băiașu and Ana- Maria Luca, join them in Brasov and in Sibiu by students of the University “Lucian Blaga” of Sibiu, Faculty of Letters and Arts, Department of Theatre Arts: Agapi Andreea, Luchian Alexandra, Müller Lili, Dobre Andreea, Băiașu Ioana, Croitoru Radu, Hera Erika, Neda Silvana, Isabela Haiduc, Ioana Dima, Francesca Garbalau, Gajim Constantin, Jurj Andra.

Excerpts from the poems of the artist Anton Ovchinnikov and texts written by the participating artists simultaneously guided groups of 20 persons through an individual audio system (headphones and receiver). This way, joint choreographies were constructed, which focused on interactions and actions, with and towards those around.

The performative interventions were documented through surveillance cameras, as the project concept started from the idea that the surveillance/monitoring space can actually generate a deep emotional intimacy, which once translated into the installation, undermines the detached and uneven power structure of technology.

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Producer: 4 Culture Association // Co-producer: WASP Studios

Partner: Hans Mattis-Teutsch High School of Fine Arts, Brasov; Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Project financed by the Municipality of Brașov

Project co-financed by the Bucharest City Hall through ARCUB within the Affective Bucharest Program 2022. For detailed information about the financing program of the Bucharest City Hall through ARCUB, you can access www.arcub.ro .

The cultural project is co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN). It does not necessarily represent the position of AFCN. The AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or the manner in which the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.

Project co-funded by the European Union – Creative Europe Programme, in the framework of Life Long Burning – Towards A Sustainable Eco-System for Contemporary Dance in Europe

Media partners: Radio România Cultural, Modernism, Revista Zeppelin, Revista ARTA, Feeder, IQads, România Pozitivă

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