October 25 – November 22, 2019
Spațiul alternativ Gara de Nord Timișoara
Avantpost Group: Aura Balanescu, Ciprian Chirileanu, Cosmin Haias, 13m10j, Livia Mateiaș, Liliana Mercioiu, Sorin Oncu, Renée Renard, Petrica Stefan, Miki Velciov
Invited Artists: Nemanja Ladic (SRB), Lőrinc Borsos (HU), Dragan Vojvodic (SRB)
Organized by T-Act Association
CONCEPT / Curator Maria Orosan-Telea
The exhibition entitled In vitro veritas is a call for meditation on the ambivalence and nature of falsified realities. The unequivocal expression “in vino veritas” is substituted in the title by a contradictory syntactic construction. “In vitro veritas” suggests the two possible interpretations of the notion of truth: on the one hand the truth seen as correspondence, as a result of the visible concordance with the objective reality and on the other hand the truth seen as coherence, which, despite being artificially created, can get an absolute value as long as it does not come into contradiction with the system of which it is a part. Therefore, In vitro veritas makes reference both to the truth behind transparent glass and to the “laboratory-concocted” truth as well.
As this duality is projected on the contemporary media environment, which is dominated by manipulation and strategies, by fake news and hoax, one question seems to always make an appearance: can the transparentization of public discourse be regulated through norms? The democratic system has abolished censure, but the self-censure of media micro-systems is still a fact. Provable statements or verifiable information can be the basis for debate, but bringing to the table concepts that are weak, debatable or ambiguous is also a manipulative strategy. The truth becomes visible as long as it serves precise aims.
The ideational content of the exhibition is not only reflected in the works the artists propose, but also in the infrastructure used, the choices made related to the assimilation of the space. The room on the first floor of the North Railway Station benefits from a display window whose visibility provides the first reading key for the concept of the exhibition.
The Avantpost practice to take on the exhibition space with all its existing data has been visible since 2015. The exhibition called “Conexiunea cu prezentul” engaged in a dialogue with the architectural specificity and permanent exhibitions of the Revolution Museum. The works of the project “Universallowed” used and integrated the objects and structures found in the attic of the former Battery Factory, which is where the project was organized.
In vitro veritas follows the same principle of the purposeful incorporation of pre-existent elements, such as the light installation built by Neil Musson and Jono Retallick in 2018, which became a permanent decorative component of the room, or the railway modelling work, which is in the process of receiving its finishing touches. Building a discourse around the programmed aesthetification interventions on this room is a form of honest dialogue with an already-existing reality.
