Urban mnemonics

I use cultural anthropology as a tool to decipher whether there or not there is a real need for artists to manifest their work in an urban space, surrounded by cafes and other public facilities designed for socialising. Today’s preoccupations are no longer about the universal humanity of the Enlightenment, but rather about different individuality. There is far greater perceived value in how everyone makes their own rules. This authenticity fascinates me, the reason for I which I seek to integrate into both my artistic career and in my doctoral research. It can also be seen, in a more simplified manner, as a long research process related to the lives of certain artists. Naturally, this process of course leads me to develop my own opinions and conclusions that tend to snowball. The way the forces dynamism generated by such artists and their pursuits later propagates and ultimately shaping history, constitutes the essence of my research, for in every case their progress, the germination of new ideologies and artistic movements, the context in which they appear and the consequences that echo to the present day, represent in fact the essential.

For Dans Ma Rue, the project I embarked upon last year, I study the imprints that artists from all over the world have left and continue to leave on the streets of Paris. One could say that I collect ‘traces of humanity’ from the streets of Paris to use as elements of a new composition, for example, sampling a fragment of imagery made in a public space (e.g. a collage that reminds of a Parisian street) and presenting it in an exhibition setting.

I study the cultural aspects of human life that can be witnessed in history and society - with its objects, ideas, and actions. The way people choose to live their lives, their activities, all these things are elements that irreversibly change the urban space, which is home to many of us. The home is the most important space in human life, some even say it is what defines it. "Everything happens in the house: the children come, the old people leave, the women come and the men stay, sometimes the other way around. It is a kind of crossroads through which all the elements of life pass.

Here takes place something that, until very recently, used to be fundamental: hospitality, which in Romanian terms is called a omeni (to humanize) and which translates very well what hospitality actually means.” (Vintilă Mihăilescu, course notes). The refuge of home can be a form of paradise - but it can also be a kind of hell if bad things happen there. We’re instinctively drawn to return home when facing difficult times, but equally, we might also be driven to run away from an unhappy domestic situation.

Although this is not necessarily the home scenario I’m interested in, this digression is relevant as a way of emphasising the importance of the space where we ‘belong’. Through exercising imagination, we can easily visualise how the people who come and go or walk-up and down, who talk or sing, who meet, fall in love, or simply stop on a certain street, end up defining its history and create a place full of emotion and life. A fragment of the street becomes steeped in the stories of its inhabitants. My objective is not to attempt to quantify all these people, but rather to try and detect any collective voice, to identify the ‘glue’ that connects the diversity of fundamental human rituals that take place in the street - and the joys, frustrations, inclusions and discriminations, passions, ambitions, or miseries that precipitate them. The study of traces that inform the unique atmosphere of a street is in fact a detailed study of the lives of those who’ve walked it.

Returning to the enquiry with which I started, any supposition of a need for artists to make their work visible in the urban/social environment is indeed confirmed. The public space, to which I am unconditionally attracted, represents an accumulation of such social contexts, laden with energy and life, that ultimately populate a street.

Having done my homework on some of Paris’ exquisite architecture, I was walking around with Filip (my two-year-old son) interested in photographing buildings which reminded me of books I had once read. We were explorers of Paris, visitors from another world, from a society with different priorities. Where I come from, there is less emphasis on art and culture, but Paris with all its treasures embraced us - whilst still making it clear that we were strangers. It was like watching a vintage movie that we’d somehow been given permission to enter. I sensed an obligation to acknowledge that I, a detached outsider was observing a rare and exotic landscape - and I felt with certainty that other people must have experienced it in the same way years before me.

This three-month fieldwork trip to Paris enabled me to absorb the ‘mnemonics’ of this city in order to create my own interpretation of Parisian facades to depict the street I envisioned. The purpose of this work-in-progress installation is to draw attention to a way of looking at reality, to a ‘filter’ that I invite people to try on; it’s one I use to explore the idea that people’s pain and shortcomings are often transformed into effort, struggle, and a desire to succeed that culminate in a representation of the beauty that rises to the surface in the form of a memory of these artists’ works. These ‘works’ also hint at the personalities that defined them, transmitted to us today in the form of traces, like a map of their thoughts and concerns.

Following their paths and tracks represents for me a guide towards understanding how to relate to the spaces that now are ‘mine’ as they once were ‘theirs’; spaces where other lives were lived and upon which we now impose our own beliefs – for today at least. My research seeks to identify the ideal format in which to create the street of my vision; working title Dans Ma Rue. I envisage an interactive installation, where people can enter and find themselves in a multicultural, timeless space. Referencing De Chirico’s mysterious way of refuting reality, I plan to create an assemblage of projected images of buildings and facades built from wood and covered with painted canvases. I collect streetlamps and other 3D elements such as gates and pipes, with the intention of placing them over the projections. All objects, textiles, and paints will be recycled, to highlight the importance of their history.

A street remembers its visitors and my installation will honour the memory of all the women whose stories started out on the streets of Paris. In the spirit of The Gluers I will paint these artist’s words on the facades, but with a new purpose; to remind people of their own ambitions. To achieve this, I plan to modify the meanings of the quotes by writing them in bright, strong colours.

This imaginary street will use technology to create a ‘portal’ that pushes us to look deeper at the process of transformation. I illustrate this by showing a strong and united voice of international women artists. It is not about how one human transforms themselves, but rather about how humanity leave unintentional traces behind, that ultimately transform the space.

I specifically chose wood for the construction of these structures because my art is in a process of continuous reinvention, and wood is also a material that constantly transforms. I’m exploring my roots, exploring the lives of those who trod these paths before me, the difficult paths that artists have always walked to reach as high as they are able. I let them be reborn through me, through my paintings that are imprinted with their words and feelings, reverently preserved by referencing them in my work as ready-mades Finally, the work will also allude to Romanian domesticity (and thus my own heritage), by building wooden facades as support for surfaces covered by an interpretation of the universal history of female artists.