CULTURAL INITIATIVES
DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT
During DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT, an office functioned as a spatial intervention team, taking turns occupying the exhibition spaces, creating a living ECOSYSTEM and inviting people to enter and participate in dissecting the respective theatre of galleries and its functions. Outside of the art-practices, members of the Garden Department has connected with local communities to create a seed-intervention and offer the collectives DNA represented by their home seeds.
The first intervention took place at ruruHaus underground in August 2022 at Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany under the name Perpetual Stew. This shared journey continued in September at the Fotograf Festival 12 at Jelení Gallery as Practices of Belonging and was followed by Collective Art Dating event in November at Centrul de Proiecte in Timișoara, Romania.
1. PERPETUAL STEW
Kassel, Germany - Documenta15
The intervention took place under the name PERPETUAL STEW which refers to the collective's way of collaborating, adding different ingredients to a dish, and treating the ruruHaus as a laboratory or kitchen of ideas and interactions.
The ongoing process of cooking is also a process of thinking together and picking up the group's leftovers to create another new and tasty stew. It is a re-imagination of realities in an attempt to create inclusive sustainable ecosystems for artists and communities.
During this event an office also hosted Indonesian language classes organized by Gudskul, sobat-sobat resting bed initiative, and a mug painting workshop after which mugs were offered to the ook_visitorZentrum in Kassel.
2. PRACTICES OF BELONGING
Prague, Cech Republic - Fotograf Festival
A new chapter of DEAD DOVE was presented at Jelení Gallery in Prague during Fotograf Festival 12.
This time the core issues addressed by the group were belonging and inhabiting more or less hostile environments. “Practices of Belonging” workshop facilitated by an office and inspired by works of Aimee C. Rowe and Jeanne van Heeswijk aimed at approaching be-longing as the start for naming and imagining location as opposed to treating an identity as an effect of location.
3. COLLECTIVE ART DATING
Timișoara, Romania - Centrul de proiecte
The Collective Art Dating intervention meet local collectives and practices to engage exchange, discuss and find new ways of collaboration.
an office imagines the gallery space as a crowded space full of visitors and collectives having tea and coffee, engage in a 10 minute discussion.
The intervention, inspired by speed dating culture format, was created with the aim of inviting visitors to bring their contribution to the exhibition space discussing accessibility, connection, and hospitality, exchanging information about the relation with their practice, the concept of collectivity, ways of collaboration, horoscope and process of art interventions.
During DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT, an office produced a 5 episodes mini-series called How to survive as an art collective, a cook book, seeds interventions with local communities and animal sanctuaries, a research text, a play, several video and in-situ performances, a long harvest in diverse languages on welcoming and belonging and a lot of feedback forms and notes on collaborative practices, co-habitation and its complex process.
SOLITAR
The nomad duo spațiu incert (uncertain space), formed by Ioana Țurcan and Marius Mornea developed in 2021 an initiative called SOLITAR with the main goal of an interdisciplinary artistic research on the broader topic of ambiguous loss, with our initial focus on caregivers and coping mechanisms.
The long term goal is to create support groups, identify coping mechanisms and co-create rituals to live with ambiguous loss, rituals that embed them to allow for large scale reach and impact.
The multi-dimensional initiative that took place in Cluj was meant to engage the local audience on the topic of care, caregiving, rituals and bring them in dialog with the local community of caretakers.
Solitar project was co-financed by Madera Creation and The National Cultural Fund.
The project was developed under Culturepreneurs - a local programme for cultural entrepreneurship.
Partners: University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj, University of Art and Design Cluj, Cultural Centre Cluj, Division of Social Assistance and Child Protection Cluj, Cluj City Hall and Local Council, Daisler Association, Demmers Teehaus, White Cuib Gallery, Iscoada Platform, DOR Media, Blue Monday Project, Art & Wellbeing Forum
1. GESTURES OF CARE
White Cuib Gallery, Cluj
During the pandemic we wondered what care is, what forms it takes, what gestures it expresses itself through and how far from the daily routine it can take us.
We gathered an interdisciplinary team of psychologists, anthropologists, visual artists and started an artistic research through which we got in touch with the local community of home carers and personal assistants in Cluj-Napoca. Together with them we searched for answers and found more questions that we want to find answers to together in the public space.
We invited the locals to a multimedia exhibition in the atmosphere of a care space. Through the presence of dedicated objects, audio stories and archival images we tried together with the public and the project team to understand, debate and even archive gestures and rituals of care, to understand the space dedicated to them whether in public or private.
2. WHO'S TAKING CARE OF THE CAREGIVERS?
Demmers Teehaus, Cluj
The collaboration with the public continued with a new exercise in challenging the collective intelligence in front of another "easel": the windows at Demmers Teehaus.
Inspired by discussions with the audience, ideas and messages gathered in the library of caregiving gestures at White Cuib, we decided to increase the writing space, call in the personal assistants and home caregivers, offer hot tea and more bookmarks, and start a writing dialogue about "Caregiving for Caregivers".
The artistic intervention started by planting ideas and questions on glass, then invited passers-by to respond in writing, either directly on the window or on postcards available in the teahouse. If some inspiration was needed, both the team and the caretakers were on location with hot tea provided by our hosts.
3. STREET INTERVENTION
Cinema announcement boards, Cluj
As a need to be seen expressed by the caregivers, we made a street intervention creating a story out of illustrations in 7 posters exhibited on the main street in the city where cinema posters and music festivals are usually advertised.
The message on the posters was changed twice, both of the stories being exhibited for more than a month.
The first story was related to the project inviting more caregivers to either complete a questionnaire on copping mechanisms or to join our project and the second one was illustrating intimate moments of care and messages from the caregivers that already took part in SOLITAR.
We also intended to write questions related to care on the street, with ecological paint that appears when temperature changes but unfortunatley we did not get permission from the local municipality.
4. SUPPORT GROUPS
Outdoor parks, Cluj
The support groups were initiated by the community as a natural way to take care of the community, talk initiatives and discuss ways to approach them, not only artistically but also legally.
Some of these meetings happen once a month in parks or at a home of a member and moreover is an intimate exchange on personal situations, moral and emotional support, sometimes even some laps around the park, volleyball games or dancing.
The group has its own private whatsapp chat.
5. PUBLIC VISUAL PRESENCE
The postcards, stickers and bookmars address questions of care and are questions brought up by the caregivers involved in the project but also by the members of the team in order to start and continue conversations with friends, family or people that pass by on the street and other public places.
The questions are in written in Romanian, Hungarian and Romani, the most present and disputed languages in Romania.
illustrations by Ioana Trușcă
6. COOPING MECHANISMS RESEARCH
The questionnaire is based on several international standardised tests (COPE, PHQ-9, GAD-7), commonly used in research assessing coping mechanisms. It is completed anonymously, using an identification code that allows us to process the data and carry out the study without keeping personal information of the participants. Using it we aim to inventory common ways of coping with difficult situations, to understand their distribution and type so that we can encourage the adoption of the healthiest coping mechanisms.
We still invite carers interested in an assessment of their own coping mechanisms to complete the questionnaire below. We appreciate your sharing it in the caregiving community of which you are a part of.
https://forms.gle/8ysPKmy8mJBazCDt5 by Alexandra Iacob
7. SEMINAR
During the seminar held on 10 November with 50 students from the University of Arts and Design, Ioana and Marius (the initiators of the project) talked about the ways in which art can express those feelings we don't know how to identify, understand or name, and how SOLITAR is just the beginning of a process of exploring the theme of care and the internal springs that generate rituals and coping mechanisms when we face uncertain losses.
8. WORKSHOP
By integrating art into medical practice and having artists address themes in health care, we can reach a greater understanding of the field of care and connect both fields to the caregiving community.
In the seminar we had with students from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy we talked about ways of working within arts research and encouraged collaboration between these two sectors.
EXTERIOR.INTERIOR.INTIMITATE
exterior.interior.intimitate is a creative exploration project built together with the youth from Vaslui with an online exhibition of their subjective intimacies.
The process was creatively approached through free writing, photography, collage and heartfelt discussions on intimacy and sexual education collaborating with educators and curators from different parts of the country.
The published Encyclopedia of Intimacy can be downloaded or consulted online (in romanian language only).
