06 Nov 2017

Bucharest IN-OUT /City as an Illusion

Bucharest IN-OUT- City as an Illusion


'Day by day the city is a set of circumstances, a contradiction, a paradox, being both ordinary and extraordinary. From the perspective of the collection of repetitive and banal actions that are produced and re-produced, the city seems to be a site of resistance. And yet everyday life is in revolution, it's not just a story told by intellectuals to and for intellectuals - there is the magic of illusion of approaching and departing, to the same extent, in everyday practice. We are not always in a privileged possession of a bird's eye view, a panoramic perspective, instead consuming the city at the streetlevel.
We consciously view this city as a personal realm, through squares and public squares; we sell it and buy it in libraries and cafés, invest it and forecast it in banks and billboards.
The illusion we are project into the frozen realities by too much planning, urbanization, control, mediates the circumstantial adaptation on rarely premeditated paths, other than functional ones.
Urban geography can not be reasonably and rationally explained in a different manner than the sum of the shortest distances between the series of points travelled by a moving body / individual. As in a game that bears the name - in capital letters - ILLUSION. It generates addiction - with its syntax we are all right, every one in its private space, but with semantics of illusions we still struggle, because the playground is a common space - the city (I can just call it 'e s c a p e room'). What are the rules that you play by? And where do you think you'll be? And if you reveal to the smallest detail a sequence of illusion you gamble with, do you realize how restrictive it can be? Okay, I have gained a specific experience, but what is the role of illusion in building a meaning for the city/playground? And what role does the illusion have in the relationship between your reality and the external one? In a project that is so called - The City as Illusion, the only possible set of rules is that all rules are valid, The Truth is the only thing forbidden. The emotional and the knowledge we gather is temporary and circumstantial. We can anticipate, but we can not know for sure and we want to adapt our own constraints according to the other.'


Curatorial text : Adriana Mereuta


Bucharest In Out is an annual cultural intervention project on its second edition, a creativity project which temporary exhibits a series of public space art interventions in Bucharest. The artworks are conceived by 9 visual contemporary artists. This year high school students are invited to participate in this project with their artworks (photo, video and writings) on www.bucharestinout.ro until November 14th for an exhibition on virtual public space.
A series of discursive and semination workshops are organized in 4 high-schools from Bucharest: Nicolae Tonitza, Ioan Socolescu, Dimitrie Paciurea and Gheorghe Lazar.
Addressed to the relation between the inhabitants and the public space as a co-inhabited space, in a similar manner to a private, personal space, Bucharest In Out is suggesting to illustrate a possible participation for (re) approaching and transforming a public space into a personalized one, open space for dialog and communication, habitation and accueil.

Financial partners: AFCN-Administratia Fondului Cultural National
ARCUB -Centrul Cultural al Municipiului Bucuresti

Partners: Pavilion Journal, Comunitatea Reforma, Creative Evolution, Radio România Cultural, Modernism Punct Ro, ART7, Smart FM. Liceele : Colegiul Tehnic de Arhitectură și Lucrări Tehnice Ioan N. Socolescu, Liceul de Arte Plastice Nicolae Tonitza, Liceul Dimitrie Paciurea, Colegiul Național Gheorghe Lazăr