December 14-15, 2019

STPT Public Transport Maintenance Studios / Corneliu Mikloși Museum Timișoara

Artists: Aura Bălănescu, Ciprian Chirileanu, Marius Jurca, Livia Mateiaș, Renee Renard, Nicolae Velciov

CONCEPT by Maria Orosan-Telea, curator

The multimedia exhibition From Revolution to Revolutions, a project of the Avantpost group within reMIND 89, re-discusses from a contemporary perspective the memory of the 1989 Revolution, using innovative and experimental means of expression. Having a unitary conceptual structure, the exhibition fragments its discourse at the level of implementing ideas and locating interventions among the existing equipment and structures in space.

The proposed works resume various commemorative strategies alternative to official speeches. The commemoration of the most important event in our recent history is approached by artists as a situation in which individual and subjective feelings meet with collective narratives.
Starting from data, statistics or concrete facts spent during the Revolution, referring to general feelings and emotions related to revolt, change and mental projections towards “better”, problematizing the oppressive past, but also the ambiguous post-communist period, artistic approaches oscillate between lucidity, severity, awareness, critical attitude or emotional involvement.

The context and space in which this project takes place, however, contributes to the analysis of the term revolution in a broad sense. Capitalizing on the traces of the past in terms of the use in artistic interventions of objects found in the workshop space of tram depots, but reflecting, at the same time, on the transformations that this space will experience in the near future, the project additionally formulates two types of questions:
What did the Industrial Revolution mean for Timisoara? How do we use this material heritage?
What kind of technological revolutions does the future hold for us? How will they work with art?