Under the Stars
India 2018
Two billion years ago, cyanobacteria oxygenated the atmosphere and powerfully disrupted life on Earth. But they didn’t know it. Two thousand years ago, Romans aggravated soil erosion and flooding by cutting forests to build ships to fight Carthaginians. They didn’t know it either. Quite unintentionally, changes in human ways often affect nonhuman nature. The arrival of the automobile, for instance, eliminated huge flocks of sparrows that once fed on the horse manure littering every street. To create a world means to destroy one or many, to transform the cosmological dimensions of being-in-the-world.
We are the first species that has become a planet-scale influence and is aware of that reality. We have learnt that the historically accumulated, global environmental effects of a growing human population, technological innovation, and economic development have become inseparable from the Earth’s geoprocesses. We have entered an epoch unlike any in human history, say scientists – the Anthropocene, where the climate is tipping out of control due to mining, deforestation and the burning of oil, gas and coal. We have begun to understand our influence upon nature but we now need to learn how to restore our balance with nature.
What are the roots of our environmental crisis? Are we aware that human ecology is primarily conditioned by religious beliefs about our nature and destiny? American historian Lynn White denounced Christianity, especially in its Western form, as the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen. Christianity inherited from Judaism not only a concept of linear, cumulative and progressive time, but also a remarkable story of creation, with God creating light and darkness, the heavenly bodies, the earth and all its plants, animals, birds, and fishes, then Adam and Eve. Man named all the animals, thus establishing his supremacy over them. God planned all of this overtly for man's benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any other purpose but to serve man's purposes. And, even if man's body is made of clay, he is not part of nature: he is made in God's image. Christianity, in contrast to ancient paganism and Asia's religions, not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God's will that man exploits nature for his proper ends. Furthermore, in Antiquity every tree, every spring, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit: centaurs, fauns, and mermaids. Before cutting a tree, mining a mountain, or damming a stream, man had to pacify the spirit in charge. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature without any concern for consequences.
Of course, we live now in a different, scientifically advanced age, but the essence of our acts and thinking often remains incredibly similar to that of the past. Our daily habits of action, for example, are dominated by an implicit faith in perpetual progress which was unknown either to Greco-Roman antiquity, or to the Orient. It is rooted in the Judeo-Christian theology, which proves that we continue to live today mostly in a context of Christian axioms. Our science and technology have also developed out of Christian attitudes toward man's understanding of nature, from Roger Bacon and Galileo, to Leibniz and Newton. Buddhism and Eastern spirituality in general promote a more holistic worldview, based on the concepts of interdependence and impermanence, which could provide a valuable source for addressing the interconnected problems of the current age. From its origins in India about 500 years before the birth of Christ, Buddhism spread throughout Asia and is now exerting an ever-increasing influence on Western culture. Idealists such as Schopenhauer, Romantics like Thoreau, the composer Wagner, architect and social reformer Rudolf Steiner and the artist Joseph Beyus – all acknowledged the influence of Buddhism upon their work and thought.
Interdependence refers to the idea of ‘oneness of nature’, with every being and every aspect of reality reflecting and containing all others within it. The concept is vividly conveyed through the well-known image of Indra‘s Net with a jewel at each node, metaphorically portraying the universe as an infinite relational field of phenomena and entities. As the author of the term ‘interbeing’, the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh said: “When we look at a flower, we may think it is different from non-flower things. But when we look more deeply, we see that everything in the cosmos is in that flower. Without all of the non-flower elements - sunshine, clouds, earth, minerals, heat, rivers and consciousness - a flower cannot be.” Organisms are just configurations of energy, moments in a network of relationships, knots in a web of life. The doctrine of impermanence affirms the transience of all phenomena and, implicitly, as contemporary ecologists and philosophers agree, the nature’s state of constant flux rather than stable equilibrium. Since Darwin, it has been understood that flexibility and receptivity to change define all natural beings and that all species are subject to mutation at any time.
Are we, subsequently, prepared to radically rethink our deeply inbuilt spiritual axioms and explore alternative paradigms? To consider pivotal questions about our global impact as a species and re-imagine ways of being-with-the-world and being-on-earth? Then we have to (re)sensitize ourselves to the ground beneath our feet, the trees around us, and the stars above first.
Simona Nastac, residency and exhibition curator
Artists
Lochan Upadhyay
Lochan Upadhyay studied Fine Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, India. The artist works with different media, being particularly interested in consumerism, recycling, mobility, migration and their consequences on communities in rural and urban areas. His practice includes waste installations and sculptures, performative photography, public art. His project "Power of Cloth", created together with the inhabitants of Partapur village, questioned the inadequacy of the social structures generated by the local traditions in relation to the values of modern society, being nominated for the International Public Art Award in India in 2015. The "Mobile House", a temporary nomad shelter built exclusively from recycled objects, was exhibited at Kunstverien Bellevue-Saal, Wiesbaden in 2013. Lochan works in Partapur and lives in Jaipur, his art being influenced by the experience of permanent transit between rural and urban areas. The artist is a member of the team that set up the Sandarbh art residency in Partapur in 2003. He exhibited at the Tel Aviv Contemporary Art Museum, the Albert Benamou Gallery in Paris, the Yeosu International Art Festival, South Korea and Art Plural Gallery in Singapore. https://lochanupadhyay.wordpress.com/
Preethi Athreya
A Chennai-based contemporary dancer, Preethi Athreya trained in Bharatanatyam and later went on to do a postgraduate degree in Dance Studies (Laban Centre, London, 2001). Keenly conscious of her need to be defined not as the exotic other, she chose to continue her journey in her native Chennai. Between 1999 and 2011, she worked with Padmini Chettur from whom she inherited the evolving legacy of Chandralekha and a strong commitment to constantly redefine the Indian body.
Working within the Indian contemporary dance scene as a performer, choreographer and facilitator, Preethi belongs to a league of dance-makers in India today who use dance as an agent of change. Her initial training in Bharatanatyam and her subsequent training to unlearn the strictures that this classical form placed on the body can be traced across many of her works. Her art is process-driven, which also leads to a demystification of the choreographic work – something that Preethi consciously aims for. Her recent ensemble work, The Jumping Project (2015), reflects an endeavour to find an honest body, possibly unbeautiful, but free of artifice. The artist has been engaged in creating a personal movement language that reflects her relationship with her context. She regards her own oeuvre as ‘an attempt to reclaim the body from numerous kinds of anaesthetization that it is constantly subjected to.’
Her most well-known works are Kamakshi (2003) Inhabit (2006), Porcelain (2007) Pillar to Post (2007), Sweet Sorrow (2010), Light Doesn’t Have Arms To carry Us (2013), Anki Bunki Kata (2013), Across, Not Over (2014), Conditions of Carriage (2015).
Preethi is one of the co-founders of Basement 21, a practice-based performance collective in Chennai.
Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar
Sanjeev Khandekar and Vaishali Narkar work together as an artistic duo and along with many collaborators, developing transdisciplinary, socially and politically critical projects. The artists are particularly interested in the human cost of the ongoing environmental catastrophe, in genetic manipulation, cellular and molecular engineering, biological warfare, overconsumption and economic inequality in the global world dominated by the imperatives of neoliberalism and technological progress.
Recent projects include „Imp in the Garden and Other Fairy Tales”, a series of layered embroidery, a "histogram of an anxious presence," with elaborate compositions exploring the theme of genetic mutations, in which the wires and nodes become basic elements of the microscopic vision and of nano-diagrams. Khandekar and Narkar have worked with traditional artisans, encouraging unconventional color, texture and technique responses, initiating a radical renewal of an old artistic practice and its vocabulary.
Another ongoing project is "Anthropocene Songs - Music as a Murmur of the Earth," a new series of embroideries that reinterpret the iconography of Ragmala paintings during the Mughal Dynasty (1526 - 1857) through the ecological disaster filter of the present. The artists have participated in numerous exhibitions and projects in London, Paris, Moscow, Dehli, Calcutta and Mumbai.
Shilpa Rangnekar
Shilpa Rangnekar is an Indian conceptual artist with a multidisciplinary approach to socially engaged art and research practices. She is particularly interested in observations of everyday life and associated behaviors, which either result in the form of utilitarian art, food performances or engaging community projects.
Since 2010, Shilpa has been working as a coordinating artist for Sandarbh, a context for experimenting with artistic processes and exploring new modalities of public participation in contemporary art. This involvement has helped her develop projects in collaboration with communities based on dialogical and participatory practice. One of her recent project, Equilibrium (2014), was supported by Creative Encounters, a cultural partnership between Asia and Europe, which produced a rich cultural exchange between ten artists from Asia and Europe.
Shilpa has travelled extensively and participated in several residency programs in Germany, South Korea, and India and recently at the Bemis Centre for Contemporary Arts (USA) under the thematic residency of Future of Food.
Shilpa has tremendous experience of working in close collaboration with artists in supporting and developing projects. Currently she is also working as a Program Director at Space Studio, Vadodara, designing a robust program for artists.
She has postgraduated from Hyderabad Central University in 2008 with MVA in Painting and holds a BFA in Painting from M.S.U, Baroda, 2005.
Shilpa lives and works in Baroda (Gujarat), India.
Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu are an artist couple living and activating in the city of Iasi, Romania. They graduated BA (2013) and MA (2015) studies at “George Enescu” University of Arts (Faculty of Visual Art and Design) in Iasi. The artists participated in several international alternative education programs: “Autumn School. The 3 s: the space, the social and the sensorium” at University of Applied Arts (2016, Vienna), “Summer School for Engaged Art”, project developed by Chto Delat art collective at Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation (2015, Berlin).
Their artistic practice could be positioned at the intersection between social studies and visual art, researching for methods and examples where art and artistic means can be instrumentalized in order to overexcite the ability to look beyond capitalism and create a (common) future. Working together since 2012, the artists have produced a series of solo exhibitions exploring / analyzing / deconstructing / decomposing the paradigm of life exploitation: “What Past? What Future?” (2017, Linz, Austria), “When atoms collide and disturb entropy” (2017, Craiova, Romania), “Return to Spaceship Earth” (2017, Bucharest, Romania), “Talking about the Future” (2017, Cluj-Napoca, Romania), “Depresion, Uncertainty and Other Symptoms of Mortality” (2016, Lodz, Poland), “In Search for Causes and Realities” (2016, Iasi, Romania), “Clinical Architectures for a Compositionist Future (Part II)” (2016, Iasi, Romania), “Constellations of Desires” (2016, Iasi, Romania), “(No)Future” (2015, Eckernforde, Germany), “No Hope For a Future” (2015, Iasi, Romania), “Metropia” (2014, Iasi, Romania). Their works have been present in numerous group shows such as: “Odessa Biennial” (2017, Odessa, Ukraine), ” Ways of using absence ” (2017, Timisoara, Romania), “Non-Fictions” (2016, Bucharest, Romania), “BIDEODROMO. International Experimental Film and Video Festival” (2016, Bilbao, Spain), “After Eden” (2016, Budapest, Hungary), “Video Art Festival Miden” (2016, Kalamata, Greece), “In Times of Hope and Unrest” (2015, Bucharest, Romania), “Between Democracies 1989-2014” (2015, Johannesburg, South Africa), “Appearance & Essence”,1 st Timisoara Art Encounters Biennale (2015, Timisoara, Romania), “Visualcontainer TV”, 28 th Instant Video Festival (2015, Marseille, France), “CLOSE-UP” (2015, Prague, Czech Republic), “Working Title” (2014, Sf. Gheorghe, Romania), “It already happened again” (2013, Iasi, Romania).
They also took part in several artist-in-residence programs at “warehouse.industries” (2017, digital residency) “Domino Contemporary Art Space“, (2017, Cluj-Napoca, Romania), “Wschodnia Gallery” (2016, Lodz, Poland), “Club Electroputere” (2016, Craiova, Romania), “quartier21 / Museums Quartier”, (2015, Vienna, Austria), “Otte 1, Kunstlerhaus” (2015, Eckernforde, Germany), “Timisoara Art Encounters Biennial” (2015, Timisoara, Romania), and created video works commissioned by “Salonul de proiecte” (2017, Bucharest, Romania), “CAMERA PLUS. Biennial of contemporary photography and moving image” (2016, Iasi, Romania), “ArtycoK.tv” (2015, Prague, Czech Republic).
Sneha Khanwalkar
Sneha Khanwalkar has played a significant role in changing perceptions of Hindi film music by digitally mixing disparate noises, sounds of local instruments and voices in her work. Unlike most music directors who are happy sitting and composing in their studios, she feels most inspired outside, away from it.
Born and brought up in Indore, Khanwalkar was taught music as a child, as her mother’s family belonged to the Gwalior gharana of Hindustani classical music.
Sneha won Filmfare’s R.D Burman Award for the best music director for Love Sex Aur Dhoka in 2011 and was nominated in the Best Music Director category at the 58th Filmfare Awards for Gangs of Wasseypur Part 1 & Part 2.
With projects like Gangs of Wasseypur 1 & 2, Khoobsurat, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, Love Sex Aur Dhoka to flaunt in her repertoire, Khanwalkar brings with her a mix of eccentric as well as upbeat rythms.
Special guest: Dr Mitra Mukherjee-Parikh
Dr Mitra Mukherjee-Parikh is an academic, researcher, critic, translator and cultural activist working from Mumbai for the last forty years. Currently she is engaged in researching and writing on women and ‘modernities’ from a multidisciplinary and comparative perspective. Also translating and editing creative and critical texts from Bangla, Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati into English.
Special guest: Prabodh Parikh
Prabodh Parikh studied Philosophy at University of Bombay and Oklahoma State University in 1970. From 1974 to 2005 he taught philosophy at Mithibai College, Bombay, from where he retired as H.O.D of Philosophy. He was a Charles Wallace fellow at the University of Liverpool, with a research on Wittgenstein and Buddhism. In 1999, he was awarded a fellowship at the University of Sorbonne in Paris. At present, he is Faculty-in-Charge of International Art, Literature and Culture at the Whistling Woods film School, Mumbai.
He writes in Gujarati and engages with John Cage, Simone Weil, Osip Mandelstam and Gandhi as a way of life and listens to jazz and Ravindra Sangeet most of the time. In 1963 he read Tristan Tzara and Eugene Ionesco, who became his lifelong companions from Romania.
Works produced during the program
(Not) Under the Stars, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar
(Not) Under the Stars, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar
wool, synthetic wool, local salt, dry and fallen tree skin, bark, acrylic, cotton thread
171 x 241 cm
Developed in collaboration with a local weaver, the work examines the old traditions, occupations and craftsmanship specific to Romanian rural areas. Inscribed in the Intangible Cultural Heritage list, the traditional carpet weaving has been passed from generation to generation as an expression of creativity, identity and social cohesion. Using flora and fauna as inspiration for both the motifs and the colour palette, the carpets have always reflected the natural environment, but with the mechanization of the hand-loom for greater productivity and the replacement of plant fibres with synthetic materials the craft is lost and an entire organic culture disappears. A critique of industrial labour, the work ultimately argues for a positive revaluation of hand-craftsmanship and precapitalist forms of culture and society.
(Not) Under the Stars, Beware: Ivanka Also Loves (wild) Strawberry Jam - Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar
(Not) Under the Stars, Beware: Ivanka Also Loves (wild) Strawberry Jam
Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar
strawberry jam, wooden shelf, mirror, video
variable dimensions
The work investigates traditional practices specific to households in the region, such as home preparation of jam and pickles for winter, now endangered by neoliberalism and its usual prescriptions – constant economic growth, overconsumption, competitiveness and profit. The artists prepared strawberry jam together with an elderly lady from Slănic, the conversation critically touching on these ideas and neoliberalism's major role in the collapse of ecosystems. The work is a response to the rich world’s new fascination for bio food and therefore their greed for acquisition of land and genetic resources, and in particular it highlights Ivanka Trump’s recent comment on organic food and her father’s backing to the use of pesticides. Healthy and hygienic food has already become a luxury and the poor are further pushed away from its access. "When we think of the Anthropocene or climate change, we know it is the result of our own rapacity - the artists say. This aggressive greed is the avarice of the (Big) Capital. In fact, the Anthropocene is also named 'Capitalocene'. As poor countries are hammered by sudden disasters and longer-term droughts, shortages, and epidemics, wealthier countries will paradoxically and perversely provide less aid, as they struggle with their own resource problems and future uncertainties."
(Not) Under the Stars, This is the Way World Ends... Not with a Bang but with a Whimper - Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar
(Not) Under the Stars, This is the Way World Ends... Not with a Bang but with a Whimper
Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar
synthetic resins, polyvinyl acetate thermoplastic resin, calcium sulphate dehydrate, gypsum, coloured leather waste, Slănic Moldova dust, dung, sand, plastic water bottles,waste metal scrap, building debris, a pine leaf skeleton fossilised , text
sculpture, 91 x 121 x 125 cm; video projection, variable dimensions
Consistently concerned over the last 15 years with global warming, climate change and the Anthropocene, the artists use here typographical smog and urban excreta to propose a metaphorical representation of the end of the world: a seemingly random section through the infinite flow of global media news juxtaposed with another through the endless amounts of waste generated by humans. The magnitude of pollution, genetic mutations, extinction of other species, destruction of the natural habitat, displacement of millions of refugees because of drought and floods, and the vertiginous acceleration of these processes are reflected in the artists' effort to collate hundreds of Romanian and international press articles simultaneously with the collection and selection of 150 Kg of sculpture materials from the local waste transfer station in Comăneşti.
(Not) Under the Stars, War At The Doors - Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar
(Not) Under the Stars, War At The Doors
Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar
video documentation, 6 digital prints 31 x 23 cm, photo ink on paper
In the midst of the hills and mountains of Slănic, 15 minutes of celebration. A respite of cosmic beauty, man in perfect continuity with nature. On the threshold, the war machine is on already. Each day we arm it more. Fireworks.
(Not) Under the Stars, Letter from the West - Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar
(Not) Under the Stars, Letter from the West
Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar
sculpture, mixed media, 80 cm x 136 cm x 62 cm
A block of compacted waste, lacquer, watercolour, wire, and an oversized copy of the 1997 special stamp of Mahatma Gandhi issued by the Romanian Post for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of India's independence. A compelling reflection on the legacy of the Western civilisation to the world echoing Walter Benjamin's words about the concept of history and a humanity that proves itself by destruction: “There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”
Unlimited #1 : Earth Song - Preethi Athreya
Unlimited #1 : Earth Song
Preethi Athreya
performance, video documentation
A large rectangular trough filled ankle-deep with mud sits in the space of a tennis court. There is the sound of a tennis game being played, points won, audience applause. In place of the players, a group of thirteen people navigate this terrain. They step, crawl, stand, jump, look, slide and fall in the mud in time to an invisible rhythm. The law of the mud begins to direct a universe of the body.
Where does the body begin and end? What are the limits of our conscious being? Inside and outside are the limits of our mind. As spatial concepts, they can be evoked from sound, smell, taste, memory. The ‘insideness’ of a moment appears in the body as lean, as crouch, as shift.
Do we define space as the sum of its physical components or do we define it by the actions it witnesses? Unlimited #1: Earth Song is a collision of internal spatial reference with an external experiential construct.
Two weeks into our residency in Slanic Moldova, the French Open tennis championship was being played. While Simona Halep emerged victorious and won laurels for all of Romania, there was relentless rain and thunderstorms in Slanic Moldova. A small village nearby, called Ciresoaia, was flooded. Homes were engulfed in rivers of mud, people, belongings, life – all out in the river of mud. As we stood with them trying to recover what was left, there was an inescapable feeling of being utterly small and inconsequential. Unlimited #1 Earth Song is a dedication to this moment of experiencing parallel realities.
Sound: Sneha Khanwalkar
Performers: Lochan Upadhyay, Ioana Scurtu, Daria Maria Botesatu, Iunia Botezatu, Mara Dascălu, Georgiana Oprea, Andreea Petrescu, George Aghinea, Yasmina Hassairi, Renata, Simona Nastac, Sneha Khanwalkar, Alina Georgiana Teodorescu, Sanjeev Khandekar, Preethi Athreya
Thanks to: Ben, Bogdan Armanu, Gabriel Leascu, Nicu, Cosmin, Radu
Don't Panic, I'm from Slănic - Lochan Upadhyay
Don't Panic, I'm from Slănic
Lochan Upadhyay
sculpture, mixed media, variabile dimensions
Lochan Upadhyay's sculpture is a hybrid, a new mutant and nomadic species born from the interbreeding of an economic migrant or a refugee from conflict areas such as Syria with what one might call a mobile home, a vehicle of dislocation and of existential precariousness. The artist is interested in migration policies, the same in Partapur, India, as in Eastern Europe, a phenomenon governed and fueled on a global scale by the neoliberal ideology, economic inequality and the mantra of excessive consumption through unlimited exploitation of the planet's finite resources. The title of the work is a sarcastic reference to sensationalist headlines in the British press announcing the "invasion" of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants.
Found in Slănic - Shilpa Rangnekar
Found in Slănic
Shilpa Rangnekar
pop-up book, 21 x 28 cm
What does it mean to know a place beyond tourist itineraries and information? How do you capture the uniqueness of its situation in a particular space and time? Interested in psychogeography as a strategy of immersion in an unfamiliar place, Shilpa Rangnekar has engaged in a process of collection of affective memories and historical and cultural information capable of decoding the town of Slănic and symbolically opening its interstitial and marginal territories to action. Developed through workshops and discussions with groups of teenagers, historians and nature lovers from Onești and Slănic, the book resonates with her ongoing socially engaged practice focused on participatory performances, collaborative and community projects.
Cleaning the Future Art Museum of Slănic - Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
Cleaning the Future Art Museum of Slănic
Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
live action, analog film photo documentation, A4 prints, hand-painted cleaning tools
Behind the Casino of Slănic Moldova, the building of the former canteen built during the communist era has fallen into disrepair and decrepitude. It could be the space of a future contemporary art museum, a living and breathing place generating knowledge, participation and dialogue. The artists decided to clean the place, with specific aesthetic tools. Is this an absurd gesture? A playfully critical action addressing the marginal position of art in society? Or, on the contrary, an attempt to suggest that art and artists have, however, agency and the potential to activate consciousness and communities?
Book of (Pain)tings - Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
Book of (Pain)tings
Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
artist book, water-based paint on canvas, 21 x 29.7cm
An interrogation on the role of art and artists in the processes of materializing ideas, unlearing and relearning the ways of being with others and on Earth.
Fragment of a Star - Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
Fragment of a Star
Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
sculpture, Slănic stone, paint
Permanent public artwork in Slănic Moldova's central park, a reminder of the failed project of Communism in Romania, at the intersection of what was and what could have been.
Sound Mine - Sneha Khanwalkar
Sound Mine
Sneha Khanwalkar
interactive sound installation
Imagine the reverberations of your voice in Târgu Ocna Salt Mine. Stop and listen to the Earth pulsating in the depths and heights of the mountains and springs above. Sneha Khanwalkar creates soundscapes and experiences in unconventional spaces, reconnecting the human rhythm with nature.
The artist has also collaborated with people from Slănic and its surroundings to create a digital community album, a collage of voices and sounds traveling through various places and situations - Târgu Ocna Salt Mine, the forests of the Nemira Mountains, villages, and churches. The album includes fragments of local religious choirs, bits of conversations, the songs of the weavers in Cireşoaia, the organ of the Catholic cathedral in Iaşi. It will soon be available on SoundCloud, stay tuned!
Life of a Tree - Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
Unlimited #2 : Lost and Found - Preethi Athreya
Press
Schedule
A critical reading of Nature in selected poems of Rabindranath Tagore
Music InContext: The Attic residency
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Testimonials
Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu - artists
"The artistic residency In Context is one of the few projects of this type in Romania that act in the urban periphery area for educating the local population and integrating it into the national cultural circuit. Although the development of contemporary art projects can be difficult in this social setting, with a public without exposure to living artistic creation due to the absence of specific spaces and programs in the area, we believe that such actions are all the more necessary to balance the socio-cultural discrepancies between the capital and periphery.
"Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar - artists
"Time spent in Slanic Moldova - when we look back, it seems like a dream. It's too unreal to be real.
Even after a month, we are still marked by what we have been living in those mountains, among those forests, wild flowers and crystalline springs that have healed our thirst. The deep tranquility, in the presence of natural elements in their wild and naked form, was overwhelming and it is not easy to overcome this fascinating experience, to return to the confusing cacophony of daily routine. We want to stay in the same mood of hypnotics.
"A poetry is never over, there is always an accident that stops it," Paul Valery wrote, and it is true. Our resident at Slanic was like inspiring the essence of a poem, and for its existence in the world, it seems, we had to abandon it. So we can make it public and write about it ...
"Shilpa Rangnekar - artist
"Artists are usally looking for getaways in search of new ideas and to inspire themselves. Artist residencies are one such options. The time at Slanic was like a dream living in such a beautiful landscape. Adding to this was the excitement of its geographical location in Eastern Europe and the wide array of artists that were coming for this program.
This artist Residency program is a new initiative that I felt is an attempt to not just introduce contemporary art to the public but also develop new opportunities for the residents to re-engage with their surrounding and also for the youngsters to understand the nuances of creativity and observe and participate in the process of creation. The enthusiasm of the local authorities and the young students from Slanic and near-by towns was a proof of its success and the urgency of its continuation.
Preethi Athreya - artist
"What is unique about being a resident artist in the town of Slanic Moldova is that it is an intense and austere experience. The stunning landscape of the Nemira and Dobru mountain ranges makes you feel like you are being watched silently with majesty and grandeur. The presence of the medicinal water springs and their gurgling soundscape keeps ringing in your ear, affecting the way you walk and think. A sense of history hangs in the air with so many closed down hotels and restaurants. Yet, there is a steady stream of keen patients for the physiotherapy clinic and the healing waters.
Populated predominantly by the very young and the relatively older generations, the town swings from being a place of nostalgic charm to a harsh economic landscape. Indeed it is a challenge to makers of dance, music and art to find that which is precious and uphold it with love and care, for the many residents of Slanic Moldova who show fierce pride and loyalty to a time, a place and a people. It was humbling to be a part of this human landscape.
"Lochan Upadhyay - artist
"The scenic beauty of Slanic Moldova was the first thing that striked me. All surrounded by the fresh water springs and thick forests and mountains were the immediate source of interaction for all the artists. The long morning treks with other artists at the beginning of the residency gave me an entry point to develop a dialouge with the place. The long history of this place and the changing future with younger population moving out to bigger cities for more opportunities has now left kind of a void in the place, which became a point of curiosity for me. In such a situation the residency program emerges as a possibility of developing new opportunities for locals.
The active involvement of the schools and the residents provides a foundation for the artists to think and develop their ideas. These kinds of collaborations often turn into a lifetime of friendships.
I feel this initiative of collaborating with artists and the local public should be continued to explore the place but also present new possibilities for the viewers to look at their surrounding from a different perspective.
"Sneha Khanwalkar - artist
"I had no idea what a residency is like. This was my first. I had a hard time getting over my momentum of the city. But, surprisingly, for my fellow resident artists, the forests were a playground. They took long walks to and from the springs and the rest of Slanic. Very inspiring bunch! Great talks and exchange of thoughts. Passionate arguments. Unexplained affection towards some and the constant conflict with Art. But one tiny experience that stood out for me, was when I got to stay with the locals. Emilia, a darling lady hosted me in her home, and let me stay there for a week. The sounds I found there, at any given time, were somewhat the following:
the chickens, the dog
the coffee brewer on gas
birds
Emilia's giggle
wooden floor creaking
Veronica knitting
the wall clock ticking.
cutlery
my own breathing
That is it. Emilia and I never spoke. We had a language barrier or let's just call it a bond. I got inspired to lose language for a bit. Between TristanTzara's presence in that region and this sonic environment, I'm deeply deeply convinced about staying quieter even inside my head. I'm grateful to Alina and The Mayor of Slanic for making this experience happen. Thank you for the wine, the cherries and the inedible berries.
"
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