[artinfo] CHISINAU-Art, Research in the Public Sphere

[stefan rusu]

SEMINAR&WORKSHOP

within the project

 C h is i na u- Art, Research in the Public Sphere

Period: 24 May - 7 June
Project organizer:  KSAK- Center for Contemporary Art,  C h is i na u

Location:  State University,  C h is i na u

Address: str. A. Mateevici 60, Main Building, Auditorium 137/141

Program: 10.00 - 17.30, open for the public

The transdisciplinary seminar and the workshop 
dedicated to documentation and research are a 
part of the CHISINAU- Art, Research in the Public 
Sphere - a cross-disciplinary platform that will 
investigate the connections between political and 
cultural symbols and propaganda and its impact on 
the urban environment, the interference between 
personal narratives and imported ideologies and 
cultural discourses in relation to the public 
sphere. The project aim is to explore the 
dominant institutional and political discourses 
that have shaped the society and the urban 
landscape of the city of Chis¸ina˜u in the course 
of its recent history.

A number of visual artists, curators, historians, 
designers and sociologists from the Balkan 
(Romania, Serbia, Montenegro) and Baltic 
(Lithuania and Estonia) countries, as well from 
other EU countries (Poland, France, Austria, The 
Netherlands) that have experienced similar social 
and cultural processes and phenomena will present 
their research and case studies related to 
projects dealing with art and the public sphere 
and to the connections between the public and 
private acceptions of space placed in various 
cultural and ideological backgrounds.

The workshop the participants will examine how 
certain versions of the past are produced and 
given prominence in the public media, civic life 
and state politics, and in the flow of daily 
lives, from the former policies to the present 
political and economic discourses that dominates 
the society. Launching a project related to the 
public sphere today, in the middle of 
globalization and of an aggressive capitalist 
society that has reduced the role of art to that 
of mere decoration, means that public art should 
become a tool of critical engagement, with 
political and social connotations. What is the 
current look of the city and where are the real 
roots of the deep nostalgia for the former 
symbols and the ghosts that still haunt the 
society - these are some of the questions that 
the project participants will try to answer with 
their projects and contributions to the project.

Participants:

Angela Serino - curator, art manager, The 
Netherlands, Klaus Schafler - visual artist, 
Austria, Vladan Jeremic&Rena Raedle - curators, 
social activists, Serbia, Danilo Prnjat - visual 
artist, Serbia, Joanna Rajkowska - visual artist, 
Poland, Kaja Pawelek - curator, Poland, Dumitru 
Oboroc - visual artist, Romania, Alina Popa&Irina 
Gheorghe (The Bureau of Melodramatic Research) - 
visual artists, Romania, Ferenc Gróf 
&Jean-Baptiste Naudy (Societe Realiste) - visual 
artists, France/Hungary, Rael Artel - curator, 
art manager, Estonia, Floe Kasearu - visual 
artist, Estonia, Catalin Gheorghe - art critic, 
theorist, curator, Romania, Virgil Paslariuc - 
historian, Moldova, Ovidiu Tichindeleanu - 
philosopher, writer, Moldova, Tamara Nesterova - 
historian, archaeologist, Moldova, Indre Klimaite 
- visual artist, Lithuania, Ghenadie Popescu - 
visual artist, Moldova, Tatiana Fiodorova - 
visual artist, Moldova, Maxim Cuzmenco - visual 
artist, Moldova, Vladimir Us - artist, curator, 
Moldova, Ana Marian - art critic, theorist, 
Moldova

CHISINAU- Art, Research in the Public Sphere is 
suported financialy by Allianz Kulturstiftung, 
Germany, Alliance Française de Moldavie, the 
Goethe Institute/Bucharest trough German Cultural 
Center AKZENTE/Chisinau, the Polish Cultural 
Institute/Bucharest and the Austrian Cultural 
Forum/Bucharest.

Stefan Rusu- Project Manager/Curator

Center for Contemporary Art-[KSA:K],
Str. Banulescu-Bodoni 5, ap-2, Post code 2012,
Chis¸ina˜u, Republic of Moldova

tel: + 373 22  23 72 72
http://www.art.md