CAMERA PLUS – An Open History
In 2016, a moment of constitutive synergy of creative forces and energies at the Center for Contemporary Photography in Iași led to the start of the first edition of the CAMERA PLUS project. This biennial of contemporary photography and moving images was the first large-scale event of the Center for Contemporary Photography, an institution established in 2015 by Matei Bejenaru, Lavinia German, Cătălin Gheorghe, Cristina Moraru, Cristian Nae, and Cătălin Soreanu.
During the event’s three days, a series of exhibitions were organized involving both local and internationally renowned artists. Additionally, in order to support artistic research, multiple activities were organized that aimed to create a framework for learning about and promoting contemporary photographic practice, as well as a conference around the topic of ethics and photography and the politics of images in a time of crisis, a critical workshop of analyzing photos, a portfolio review session for local photographer artists, a meeting with a photography book editor, and an evening of experimental film and video art screenings. The aim was to build a platform for investigating photographic practice, mediating the critical theory surrounding photography, and consolidating professional connections to facilitate multilayered relations between critical discourse production and contemporary photographic practice in Romania.
The biennial opened with the audio-visual performance made by Minim (Diana Dulgheru), which explored the possibilities of visualizing sounds through numbers. Referencing Marshall McLuhan’s theory that numbers, as the language of science, represent a technological extension of the feeling of touch, Diana Dulgheru succeeded in capturing the sensory aspect of numbers through a rhythm built by manipulating sounds and images in real time.
The exhibition “Clinical Architectures For A Compositionist Future,” curated by Cătălin Gheorghe, was structured in two parts, having been opened both at Aparte Gallery (belonging to the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design of the UNAGE Iași) as well as at Borderline Art Space, the latter housing the installation created by Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu, who, by taking a compositionist approach to photography, capture the uncertainty of a futuristic dystopia in an intermedia installation inspired by sci-fi allegories. The first part of the exhibition examines photography from a clinical perspective, understanding the image as immaterial architectural information that describes contemporary society. With works by Matei Bejenaru, Michele Bressan, Andrei Mateescu, Mona Vătămanu, and Florin Tudor, the exhibition theorized the fluidity of images as liquid fragments, investigating possibilities of logging utopian structures and exploring surrealist imagery in the post-socialist space of Eastern Europe.
Mona Vătămanu and Florin Tudor’s work, Flying Utopia (2015), reflects on utopian projects for urban development and housing in Eastern Europe after World War II, showcasing a constructivist interpretation of an aerial shot of the architecture of Jurigovo Square in Karlova Ves, a design that was part of the modernization plan of Bratislava in the early ’50s. while Michele Bressan’s photo diptych, Alexandru cel Bun – Iași (2012), offers us a picture of segregation within communities, and Matei Bejenaru’s work Iulius Mall – Iași (2010) shows us the dystopia of post-socialist realism in which the exacerbation of consumerism, the chaos of local policies, and irregular urban development have created a surreal picture of the city of Iași. Equally, Andrei Mateescu captures the hyper-excessive interventions within local urban planning dictated by the desire for abundant consumption. His series Hyper (2012) visually translates the techno-ideological turn after 1989, showing the excesses – which are visible on an architectural level – of the corporations who control the hyper-market industry in Romania.
The exhibition “Event with No Cause,” curated by Lavinia German, was opened both at Tonitza Gallery and at Cupola Gallery in Iași, bringing together work by Andrei Nacu, Mihai Nistor, Andrei Venghiac, Bianca Basan, Lucian Bran, Nona Inescu, Alex Maxim, and Mihai and Horațiu Șovăială. In investigating the photographic moment, the exhibition was constituted as a meditation on everyday experience, exploring the possibilities of recovering the past and translating everyday events into affect.
The first part of the exhibition included the works of three young artists from Iași who work with photography and the moving image. Andrei Venghiac’s work from the series A Tree (2015) investigates how the instrumentalization of photographic abstraction can transform representation into affect, into a hypnotic organic structure that allows the imagination to fuel a personal fiction. Andrei Nacu’s project (2016) rethinks the personal past in connection to social history, identifying three fictional scenarios for rereading the past. Starting from family archive photos, Andrei Nacu configures his own narrative linearity on the level of inter-associations between images, recreating a particular history of events. Equally, the series of silver prints created by Mihai Nistor investigates one’s relation to the past, critically observing the routine ways of relating to the communist past in spite of the constant effacing of national post-revolutionary memory. The work titled 25 Years of Democracy (2015) comprises twenty-five images reproduced on photographic paper in a technique specific to analog development, involving the replication of the original image, copying the copy, so that the representation of communist symbols becomes indiscernible, an expression of distance from communist values.
The second part of the exhibition “Event with No Cause” comprised an ensemble of narratives referring to interpretations of various temporalities, examining the past and present, as well as offering personal introspection and theorizing the act of looking. In exhibiting the work (2015), Andrei Venghiac examines the artistic process conceived as a poetic meditation on the act of looking through the camera. In contrast, Nona Inescu, in her work Tools for Self-Reflection (2015), explores new ways of looking, by transforming an article of clothing into a tool through which the gaze is redirected towards the self in an exercise of self-protection. Bianca Basan presents a video essay whose narrative non-linearity articulates a philosophical discourse. Structured around an enigmatic character, the video essay, titled The More I Think About It the More We Rewrite the Beginning (2016), combines multiple linguistic levels and forms of translating language within a dialogue on creativity and artistic creation.
Within this same reading of the relation between viewer and object, Lucian Bran analyzes typical 1980s decorative wallpapers as a source of nostalgia for the viewer who looks at something that has already been looked at. His work Promised Land (2011) consists of a series of photos that create a new level of understanding decorative images by means of a series of overlapping frames. Unlike Lucian Bran, Alexandru Maxim, in his work Snapshooter (2016), separates the image from the context of its representation towards establishing a critical discourse on contemporary culture. By analyzing the didactic models of academic drawing, Andrei Nacu remarks on the need to understand the photographic object within the process of creating the photographic image. His photo project titled Fotodermatoglyphics (2016) relies on comprehending tactile memory within his work, both visual and sensory, with image archives. Mihai and Horațiu Șovăială, in their work Recognized Structures: Models (2016) investigate the subjectivity of memory, reproducing the canonical image of three characters that can be identified in the didactic/evaluative slides created by the Animafilm studio in Bucharest in the 1970s.
The exhibition “Nomad Archives,” curated by Cristian Nae, brought together works by four contemporary artists working with photography and moving images: Dan Acostioaei, Tudor Bratu, Alexandra Croitoru, and Tatiana Fiodorova. In his installation titled Seas under Deserts (2016), Dan Acostioaei produces a geopolitical analysis around workforce migration, starting from the story of his father, who was detached to work in Syria and Iraq between 1975 and 1980. Fragments of a personal narrative are associated with maps and postcards in a multilayered affective knowledge process. Tudor Bratu’s The Dissidents’ Travel Guide (2011-2014) follows the structure of a travel guide, tackling various aspects of daily life in an impersonal manner. Including photographs, video works, but also essays and an artist book, the project discusses the relation between the politics of representation and the representation of politics, while also investigating the ways in which Romania deals with its communist legacy.
Alexandra Croitoru’s project Paris: A Photobook (2016) is built as a meditation on the role of photography, both in personal art practice that uses photos as its object and approaches the image as a way of mediating information and in the contemporary art environment, with its fetishization of historical photo books. Last but of least, Tatiana Fiodorova exhibited her photo book Red Star Factory (2013-2014), a publication that analyzes the relations between body politics and working conditions under the Soviet regime, as well as the video work European Clothing (2011), which, complementing the previous work, documents daily life in post-Soviet Moldova. Moreover, Tatiana Fiodorova’s book Basarabia and its Inhabitants (2016) continues her research on the history of Soviet Bessarabia, problematizing the peasant’s condition in the Soviet and post-Soviet context.
The collateral events of the CAMERA PLUS Photography and Moving Image biennial brought together specialists like Louise Clements, the director of Format Festival in the U.K., Markus Hartmann, a German photo book editor and gallerist, and Iosif Kiraly, a photographer artist and professor at the Bucharest National University of Arts. The three specialists, together with Matei Bejenaru, a visual artist and professor at the George Enescu National University of Arts in Iași, held a Portfolio Review session for young visual artists who use photography in their projects. A workshop of critical theories in photography was also organized, led by Cristina Moraru (UNAGE Iași), as well as a public presentation of the Minerva Photo Archive, given by Răzvan Anton and Denes Miklosi from Cluj-Napoca.
Finally, the interest in the ethics of photography and the politics of images, as well as the question of how subjectivization techniques are used on the level of image manipulation, were conducive to organizing a conference that brought together national and international participants such as Pascal Beausse, the director of the Photography Collection of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques din Paris; Călina Bârzu, a researcher at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam; Louise Clements, the director of QUAD FORMAT International Photography Festival in Derby; Laurenţiu Fuiorea, a specialist in biopolitics and a doctor at the University of Bucharest; Markus Hartmann, a photo book editor and co-founder of Hartmann Projects in Stuttgart; Corina Ilea, an independent curator and photography teacher; Diana Mărgărit, a lecturer at the Al. I. Cuza University in Iași; Raluca Nestor, a lecturer at the National University of Arts in Bucharest; and Ana Lúcia Coelho Pereira da Silva Nobre, a doctor at the University of Lisbon.
Despite its biennial format, CAMERA PLUS retains its charm as a unique dynamic event that keeps alive the hopes of organizing a new edition. Seven years since the biennial’s first edition, the preoccupations of the organization team’s members converged towards bringing back CAMERA PLUS as a relevant event on an international level. Towards this, are considering expanding the working team, including new members, such as Oana-Maria Nae, an art historian and academic at UNAGE, Sarah Daria Muscalu, a post-doctoral researcher at UNAGE, and Oana Nechifor, a PhD candidate at UNAGE. The goal is to generate a far-reaching project, whose recurrence can reestablish Iași on the map of contemporary art events in Romania.
– by Cristina Moraru
