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Jan Eugen (RO) - Seduced and abandoned

October 7th-25th, Atelier 030202, Bucharest, curator: Olivia Nitis

Jan Eugen suggests a relocation that has to do with identity and housing policy. Any form of civilization can be measured by the relationship with the living space and a nation can be identified by architectural formulas dictated by the socio-political context. In the communist Romania, the political regime relied on architectural uniformity, destroying, or, at best hiding presences of those buildings designed by architects educated in Vienna, Paris or Berlin, and built before 1947, offering massive concrete buildings with a mean comfort to swallow millions of people, seen through the same lens of egalitarian uniformity. Mass industrialization brought the construction of numerous industrial buildings in the creation of jobs for the entire sector of urban and rural population. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, Eastern Europe and implicitly Romania enters into an alert construction process (rather than reconstruction) under the influence of westernization and globalization, emphasizing the principles of mass consumption. Most buildings built after 1989 in Romania are office buildings or shopping malls, and these investments went in parallel with a very high level of abandonment of the industrial spaces that functioned during the Ceausescu regime.

The extremely serious situation of these abandoned buildings can not be solved in a political and economic system based on corruption and consumption, with no or minimal investment, without designing viable projects that can reintegrate these spaces in a natural flow of housing.

Jan Eugen’s project raises a key issue, that of the maximum use of space followed by ignorance and drop-out, due to economic interests. However, this project raises the issue of past history and reporting the need for reforming housing policies. These are related to social, economic and cultural policies, involving aspects of life quality, unemployment, environmental degradation, exploitation and preservation, urban development, tourism efficiency and so on. Fast Eco Building, the former IAUC (Apparatus and Equipment Institute of Research) was opened in 1979, being considered "a spactacular architectural achievement." After 1989 it became private property, the spaces being placed for rent, without repairs and taking maximum advantage of internal equipment and machinery. Currently, the building is abandoned at a rate of 60%. To the history of this place and can be added many others, because our local area is full of buildings eroded by time, which were once like seductive young ladies, but at the same time seduced, and of course, abandoned, in the most classic patriarchal style.

Valeriu Schiau (Ro) - performance Personal Issues

Personal Issues is a unique performance in which the artist Valeriu Schiau draws with gasoline and fire. Our personal problems, which we are constantly working to keep them hidden from the public, influence us, overwhelm us and constrain our professional development. The balance between private and public life is very fragile, and each of us is trying to find ways to escape, as Valeriu Schiau is exteriorizing his personal issues in a kind of ritual action, of pyro-graphics, of continuous printing by repeated burning. (Olivia Nitis) Valeriu Schiau (b.1969) lives and works in Bucharest, Romania.

Curator: Olivia Nitis

Location: Atelier 030202, Bucharest, 11 Sf. Vineri Street