I take an interest in control, power and limitation, through the expressions of performance, video and sculpture. My point of departure is mass-culture, where, employing various strategies, I explore notions of authenticity, power and artistic expression. In all my works I have an attempt to establish communicative immediacy that is both visually and conceptually innovative. The works often borrow their expressions from popular culture, subculture and various power structures.
For BB5 I am doing do two collective performances with emphasis on the given architecture, subculture and the public realm of Bucharest. The two performances can be seen as a mash-up between the terrace culture surrounding football, the public realm and the history of Bucharest.
I see it as a way of questioning what the public space has to offer in terms of readings and reactions. A staged collective action with a key signature in a subcultural movement is put in a different context. The performance visually triggers questions on political issues, hostility, power and esthetics.
The many different readings that appear can be seen as addressing a slumbering public subconscious.
The first performance, titled Comón You Reds, consists in around 100 volunteers burning red flares on the terraces of Intercontinental Hotel, an important landmark of Bucharest situated in the University Square which stands as a symbol of freedom and a place of protest. The title comes from a chant that originates from the British football culture. The hotel, which for a very long time dominated the center of Bucharest with it's height, was perceived as a standard of luxury and cosmopolitan western life style before '89, when functioned as a hotel for foreigners only. It still preserves it's symbolic status in the collective memory. The performance will challenge the way people perceive the connection between the social and architecture, by transforming the building in a temporary sculpture that relates to the complex history of the University Square and the participatory role that subcultures may appropriate within the frame of social movement.
The other performance, titled Curva Viola, consists of a large amount of pink and violet smoke that will mark Make a Point, a cultural community center situated in Pantelimon, one of Bucharest's so called disadvantaged area, in a communist textile factory. In this performance a memory of the early fanzine movement surrounding the Swedish terrace culture is reenacted through the attempt of recreating a b&w xeroxed image of Curva Viola, the ultras of Fiorentina football club, into the colors my mind reads. Again, transforming architecture in temporary sculptural monuments, I wish to raise awareness over this areas and their social relevance for the urban landscape.