The exhibition explores urban futures and reveals the formation process of the ArtiVistory Collective (Artistic Visual Storytelling), a group of young artists from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca from the Comics and Cartoons MA program. The artists act as urban imaginaries, who engaged in a unique visual research journey from 2020 to 2022, coordinated by Alice Iliescu. They include Melinda Ureczki Lázár, Lucian Barbu, Evelina-Maria Grigorean, Teodora Predescu, Horațiu Coman, Ștefan Sebastian, Erdély Bálint, Zsófia Bernát, Oliviana Fudulache, Alexandru Papa, Diana Florescu, Dariana Ilie & Carla Oros.

“The art collective emerged during the design of OurCluj initiative, which is a novel approach to urban innovation called Values-Based Urban Living Laboratory. Within the context of a democratizing society, OurCluj seeks to advance Cluj’s position in a global innovation economy while cultivating the values that support democratization, namely trust and care. Part of the social research project (in)VISIBLE, artists created a space for collective imagination, or what is called civic imagination. This active imagination, shared with a community of people, can serve to hold together different stakeholder groups and communities with common purpose.

Curated by Alice Iliescu, Anamaria Tomiuc and Daniel Popescu (University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca) together with the exhibition commissioner Alexandra Sârbu (Cluj-Napoca Museum of Art) and co-designed with Barbara Bulc (SDG Colab) and OurCluj participants, the exhibition is organized as a journey through a series of themes that have been explored in visual narratives and draw the viewer into a reflective path on different ways of perceiving our society. Understanding social issues, remembering the past, exploring the ecosystem, acting on change and imagining futures are the invisible mechanisms of the social innovation initiative that are rendered visible through the creative laboratory in the ArtiViStory Collective. Along the exhibition, the viewer is invited to answer within a self-reflective journey a series of questions such as: What is the role of art in the community? How do we perceive the world around us? What stories can be told about the past? How do we imagine the future? How do we build an inclusive community? How can we engage young people? What if goals of wellbeing were prioritized over economic growth?

Through storytelling, comic strips, animation, sequential art, narrative illustration and other mediums of artistic expression, the exhibition provides a glimpse of this creative laboratory of these artists and renders the sequential art as more than just a representational tool, but as a catalyst for activating the collective imagination. The variety of formulas for exploiting the potential of the graphic and pictorial imaginary and the systems of construction in sequential frames, in which image and text build up visually artistic narratives, are specific to the medium of documentary comics. But even more, the exhibition inquires the role that comics and sequential art could gain in research processes as contributing, through collaboration with different working groups, to social innovation in urban development practices.

The exhibition invites visitors to become active participants and activate imagination and reflect on the role of the arts such as urban comics in social and urban transformation. Without a cultural content to economic and social transformation the problems found in much of development may only accelerate”, we found out from the project team through the press release.

About:

The UniversitArt Association is a non-governmental, non-profit, apolitical and independent public interest organization established in 2017 within the University of Art and Design of Cluj-Napoca, with the aim of representing the interests of its community, promoting its members locally, nationally and internationally and supporting the university in fulfilling its cultural mission by organizing artistic and scientific events. In the framework of the (in)VISIBLE research project and OurCluj initiative, The UniversitArt Association, in partnership with Barbara Bulc (SDG Colab) and Eric Gordon (Emerson College, Engagement Lab and MIT), and coordinated by Daniel Popescu, supported the realization of the in-depth research study of OurCluj, entitled Activating Values in Urban Transitions - a novel approach to urban innovation in Romania, supported by Fondation Botnar. The publication will be launched in the Spring 2022.

SDG CoLab is a non-profit collaboratory focused on design and research of alternative social structures for the wellbeing of people and the planet. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, it was founded by Barbara Bulc in response to a growing need for systems change, to reimagine our values and relations with care for the society and natural systems as a whole.

Engagement Lab at Emerson College is a laboratory for collaborative learning and research about digital culture and democracy, based in Boston, USA. Led by Eric Gordon, it supports faculty and students in developing practices in their teaching and research that have demonstrable and sustainable social impact.

Fondation Botnar is a Swiss philanthropic foundation working to improve the health and well-being of young people in growing urban environments around the world by advocating for the inclusion of young voices in urban development processes as key decision-makers and contributors. The Foundation invests in and supports innovative programmes and research and brings together actors from different sectors to create dialogue and partnerships that give everyone a chance to be supported, represented and have access to opportunities. In Cluj-Napoca, Fondation Botnar supports OurCluj program, a 10-year urban innovation initiative currently consisting of a network of twelve interlinked social innovation projects, working together with the local government, civil society, the private sector and academia in their work to ensure the well-being of young people in the city OurCluj is part of OurCity global initiative in seven intermediate cities in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia.

The exhibition can be visited free of charge for its entire duration. An official finissage will take place on Friday, 25th of March 2022 at 17.00. The exhibition can be visited free of charge for its entire duration and is. accompanied with a public program (21 -25 March 2022).

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IMAGINING FUTURES: Urban Comics from ArtiViStory Collective

at Cluj-Napoca Museum of Art

11 March - 27 March 2022

Open Wednesday to Sunday 10 am - 5pm, Free Entry

For public information visit www.macluj.ro and follow #ImaginingFutures #ArtiViStoryCollective

Funding partner:
Fondation Botnar

Supporting partners:
University of Art and Design, Cluj-Napoca Museum of Art, SDG Colab, Engagement Lab, Municipality of Cluj-Napoca, Grupul PONT, Cluj Youth Federation (FTC), Cluj Cultural Centre (CCC)

Public program developed in collaboration with UniversitArt and SDG Colab March 21-25

Related publication:

"Activating Values in Urban Transitions - a novel approach to urban innovation in Romania", Spring 2022 (Written by Eric Gordon, Barbara Bulc, Tomás Guarna, Tijana Zderic,Bianca Ștefania Băluță, Nadina Pantea; Artworks by: ArtiVIStory Collective; Curated by Alice Iliescu, Daniel Popescu, Anamaria Tomiuc)

The „ARCHIVE” includes video projections and TV screens with images and slideshows from the events displayed in the Aparte Gallery between 2005 and 2020, as well as a visual index of over 200 documented exhibitions.  „ARCHIVE. Aparte Gallery 2005 - 2020” is part of a series of exhibition, editorial and discursive events realized in the project “ Base of Activities and Practices in ART - Baza Aparte” financed through a grant (FDI - D3, CNFIS-FDI-2020- 0084).

The phisical exhibition was organized in compliance with the rules specific to the pandemic period (thermal scanning at the entrance to the institution, wearing a face mask, using disinfectant and restricting the access to a limited number of people in the gallery simultaneously). 

About Aparte Gallery I should add that it was founded in 2004 as a projects space of the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design of UNAGE Iași, with the institutional intention to develop an (inter)active interface between the university artistic educational environment and the contemporary art public of Iași and not only. This gallery is a place in which students, teachers and guest artists collaborate in organizing exhibitions, creative and critical workshops, conducting interdisciplinary projects, presenting dissertation and doctoral dissertations and carrying out other artistic activities and events. In 2015, the Aparte Gallery was reconfigured and renovated, and in 2020 it was reconditioned and re-equipped with equipment and a new lighting system. 

The participating artists are: Dragoș Alexandrescu (RO / FIN), Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu (saba) (RO / UK), Liliana Basarab, Bianca Basan (RO / SE), Sarah Muscalu, Andrei Nacu (RO / UK), Daniela Palimariu , Dan Perjovschi, Andrei Venghiac (RO / SE), and the curatorial concept belongs to the curators Lavinia German and Cristian Nae.

“In a fragmented artistic context, marked by institutional precariousness and social insecurity, the artistic careers of young artists are often the result of strategic positions, happy encounters, but also temporary failures, moments of indecision, identity crises that generates new searches and stimulates the mobility of artists. The phenomenon of emigration of educated young people to countries in northern or western Europe, which has considerably reduced Romania's population in recent decades, despite the efforts of economic growth and social reform, has not bypassed the world of contemporary art. Many artists took advantage of the social mobility gained with the integration in the European Union, settling in western cities with fervent artistic scenes and with a stronger system of commercial and artistic promotion ", the curators emphasize. 

The exhibition “CROSSROADS. Poems of non belonging ” brings together a selection of works belonging to contemporary artists from different generations who have been active on the international stage in the last decade and who, after starting their artistic education at the „George Enescu” National University of Arts in Iasi, left the city, settling either in Bucharest or in other Western European cities. It situates the idea of ​​artistic education not as an incipient point of an artistic trajectory, but as a node in a network of artistic paths that have temporarily intersected in various cultural contexts. Through their work, these artists today belong to several micro-communities simultaneously, building their discourse and artistic identity precisely through the ability to cross and connect multiple spaces, ideas and cultural experiences. 

The proposed curatorial selection aims not only to bring into dialogue different experiences of migration, relocation, uncertainty and adaptation to different artistic contexts and creative conditionings, but also to explore the accompanying affections, expectations, anxieties and existential uncertainties that often become the motivation for artistic expressions. intense poetics. Overall, the works on display rethink and (de) construct the notions of communion, community, collectivity, individuation and creative singularity.

In the introductory text of the exhibition, Alexandra Sârbu, art historian and museographer at the Art Museum in Cluj-Napoca, explains both the extremely delicate context in which the works presented on the grounds of Bánffy Palace were born, and the motivation that drove the decision. I present it below:

"The education system, as well as the cultural sector, has been one of the areas most affected by the current health crisis, being forced to resort, almost overnight, to a drastic "turnaround"change: the introduction of compulsory online schooling to replace the classic face-to-face teaching system. But this process of "moving" the teaching act in the virtual environment, which is quite steep and adopted only as a solution to the damage, has highlighted the challenges, advantages and, of course, disadvantages of digitizing education, one of the most sensitive aspects being the impersonal and cold character of this type of schooling, by limiting the direct connection between teacher and pupil or student. With the most radical effects in the case of the vocational sector. 

Or, art and its places of manifestation are inextricably linked to the need for communication and interrelationship, to the warmth and the secure environment of the immediate proximity. Digital opportunities, despite their attractiveness and unquestionable spectacularity, are not, however, able to totally replace the "real experience", that particular feeling of intimacy that you exercise in the physical presence of the work of art, a lively and vibrant dialogue. , which acquires, imperceptibly, the dimension of a "bodily experience" involving the eyes, the senses, the breath and the thought. And last but not least, it is complemented by the uniqueness of the emotion you feel while sharing the experience with those you have with you. In the absence of "live", you are practically deprived of a whole register of sensations, which the virtual environment does not seem to be able to reproduce. 

"Gone With the Wind" is, in essence, a metaphorical title that refers, beyond the significance of the famous film or the wave of protests "Black Lives Matter" that marked the recent news, to the psychological and social impact of the period of " forced confinement imposed by the pandemic context generated by Covid-19. Blurred prospects, oppressive feelings of uncertainty or even dismay and inadequacy, confusion caused by inaccuracy or annoyance of messages delivered in public, inherent risks and losses, unanswered questions, the need for guarantees and "minimal security" lastly, the frustration of seeing your freedom of movement and interactions reduced to a strictly necessary level, all caused, both at individual and societal level, disturbances difficult to manage and anticipate, but also a certain human "condition", able to make possible the migration to the asceticism of inner exile, a refuge and a voluntary return to oneself, to that forgotten or often hidden truth (...), points out the museographer.

The stages of elaboration of the works reunited in the exhibition fully coincided with the regime of «self-isolation» established, at national level, by the exceptional sanitary conditions, being thus imprinted, in a movingly sincere manner, by a whole kaleidoscope of reactions «hot », Triggering emotions and feelings against the background of the installation of unprecedented circumstances.