Biennial of Young Artists

The Biennial of Young Artists is the first regular event in the visual arts scene in Bucharest aimed to present and promote the creation of young artists in regional and European context.
 
The Biennial of Young Artists is one of the first periodic visual-art manifestations specifically addressed to the young Romanian and foreign artists. During the 4 editions that took place so far, the project reunited more than 250 artists from around the world, as well as curators and art critics. The project aims to promote young artists’ creation, to establish international cooperation networks, and to help develop the Romanian cultural scene. Since one of the main goals is to establish both international and local partnerships as well as involving Romanian art in local and global projects, the Biennial of Young Artists aims to increase Romania’s visibility on the contemporary cultural scene. META Cultural Foundation organizes the Biennial of Young Artists since 2004.
 
META Cultural Foundation is one of he first private non-governmental organizations in Romania that promotes visual art. It was founded in 1995 and ever since it was involved in various projects, contemporary art exhibitions, sculpture symposia as well as interdisciplinary symposia. Today, the foundation promotes alternative contemporary art, inter/trans/multi/pluri/disciplinary dialogues, unconventional exhibiting locations, and experimental orientations.The main goals of the foundations are: to promote Romanian contemporary art both locally and internationally; to establish European cooperation networks in the cultural field, that would lead to a better representation of Romanian contemporary art internationally; to familiarize the Romanian public with the changes that take place on the contemporary cultural artistic scene; to offer young artists the opportunity to express and to help them exhibit their works and show them to the public.The foundation organized contemporary art exhibitions, sculpture symposiums, interdisciplinary symposiums, workshops, that reunited artists, art critics, managers, mathematicians, literates, anthropologists, biologists from Romania, Serbia, Czech Republic, Poland, UK, the Netherlands, USA etc. At the same time, META publishing house undertook a diverse publicist activity (albums, translations, META Cahiers, “A century of Romanian sculpture” dictionary etc.)
 
Previous editions of the project:

 
1st edition – 2004 – Biennial of Young Artists – Images of Violence / Violence of Images
 
2nd edition – 2006 – Biennial of Young Artists – Absent Without Leave
 
3rd edition – 2008 – Biennial of Young Artists – Re-construction
 
4th edition – 2010 – Biennial of Young Artists – Police the Police
 
5th edition – 2012 – Biennial of Young Artists – Overlapping Biennial
 
Aims and Objectives:
 
• To become an important platform of communication and cooperation between both local and international art scenes;
• To promote the art of contemporary young artists by offering them the opportunity to express in an international context;
• To establish a cooperation network at European level offering both the artists and local cultural entities the possibility of becoming actively involved in regional cooperation programmes;
• To increase the awareness of local population towards new practices in contemporary art;
• To stir up reactions and discussions among experts, as well as in mass-media both at local level and European level;
• To stimulate active involvement of volunteers;
• To acquaint the general public, as well as experts from various fields on topics and recent problems related to society (theoretical symposium section);
• To establish partnerships with local/regional/international cultural institutions;
• To obtain financial aid from public and private sectors;
• To promote partner institutions, sponsors and media partners through publications, the event’s website and on-line newsletters.

META Cultural Foundation

META Cultural Foundation has been active in visual arts field since 1995. It is one of the first Romanian private organizations that focuses on both the local contemporary art scene and the international one. While expressing an interest for the three dimensional object in its first years, today it is mostly directed towards recent alternative contemporary art and experimental directions, aiming to generate an inter/trans/multi/pluridisciplinary dialogue inside the unconventional cultural spaces.
 
META Cultural Foundation intends to promote Romanian contemporary art, both locally and internationally, to establish regional and European networks of cooperation in the cultural field, that will lead to a better representation of Romanian contemporary art, to open Romanian cultural environment towards the changes and evolutions that permanently take place on the contemporary art scene, to support young talented artists, to promote national cultural values on local, regional, and international art scene.
 
During the past 18 years of cultural activity, META Cultural Foundation organised numerous contemporary art exhibitions, sculpture symposiums, interdisciplinary symposiums, workshops that brought together artists, curators, art critics and art historians, managers, mathematicians, literates, anthropologists, biologists from Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Republic of Moldova, Serbia, Czech Republic, Poland, Croatia, Estonia, Great Britain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, Israel, Australia, Singapore, China, USA etc. With the help of META Publishing House, the Foundation had also an important editorial activity (art albums and catalogues, translations, Caietele META, A Century of Romanian Sculpture. A – D, dictionary, volume I, 2001), and recently has released the first bilingual encyclopedia dedicated to Romanian sculpture – A Century of Romanian Sculpture, an extended version of the printed dictionary, available at www.sculpture.ro.
 
Since 2004, META Cultural Foundation regularly organises The Biennial of Young Artists, one of the most important cultural events on the Romanian contemporary visual arts scene. One of the Biennial’s objectives is to develop international partnerships, thus involving Romanian art in international art projects.
 
More info on: www.metacult.ro


News


2024-08-17



MagiC Carpets Slon Residency 2024: an exploration of “memories’’ through multimedia art
 
Between August 15th - September 7th, 2024, META Cultural Foundation organizes and hosts the 7th edition of the artistic residency within the international MagiC Carpets platform. Nestled in the picturesque landscape of Slon village, near Vălenii de Munte, the residency invites the artists selected by curator Raluca-Elena Doroftei to immerse themselves in the community and draw inspiration from the rich, yet often overlooked, cultural heritage of the area.
 
Exploring “memories” through multimedia
 
“Memories”, the theme for this year’s residency, delves into the intersection of modern technology and the timeless realities of rural life. In Slon, where traditions and memories are deeply rooted, artists will immerse themselves in the local culture to uncover the rich layers of community memory. By engaging directly with residents, artists will gather stories, conduct archival research, and analyze traditional motifs that have been passed down through generations. These explorations will inform the creation of multimedia works - videos, photographs, sound, installations - that capture and reflect the essence of the community's collective memory.
 
The project emphasizes how contemporary digital tools can be used to document and reinterpret these rural memories, preserving them in new formats while paying homage to their origins. The works produced during the residency will serve as both an artistic expression and a documentary record, preserving the past while making it accessible and relevant to a modern audience. Through this approach, the residency aims to bridge the gap between past and present, technology and tradition, ensuring that the memories of Slon's residents are honored and sustained for future generations.
 
A unique artistic environment
 
The residency site itself is a work of art, conceived by the Romanian sculptor Romelo Pervolovici. Since 2015, this space has become a beacon of inspiration for artists seeking to engage with the community in an authentic and holistic manner. The residency offers a rare opportunity to experience the daily life of the villagers, combining artistic vision with the serene beauty of the natural surroundings.
 
The META Cultural Foundation’s initiative is more than just a residency; it is a vibrant intersection of creativity, culture, and community. By breathing new life into undervalued locations and promoting cross-cultural exchange, the program fosters a unique dialogue between contemporary artistic practices and traditional ways of life.
 
Selected artists for 2024
 
This year’s residency will feature a diverse group of artists whose work in multimedia, particularly in video and photography, has earned them international recognition.
 
•  Charlie Cauchi (born in the UK, lives and works in Malta)
 
She is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker. Her work includes video, sound, text, documentary, and installation. Her practice is a hybrid combining documenta techniques, academic research and fiction. She holds a BA and an MA in Film Studies from Queen Mary University of London. She is also co-founder of Rosa Kwir, Malta’s first dedicated LGBTQI+ gallery and archive. With roots in both the UK and Malta, Charlie's artistic practice is deeply influenced by her dual cultural identity and the rich and complex histories of the Mediterranean (Marble of the Senate. Sand of the Coliseum, 2024 / Backlot, 2023). Her work often explores themes of identity, migration, memory and place, generating immersive experiences that invite the audience to reflect on the human condition in an ever-changing world.
 
Charlie Cauchi has exhibited in a variety of international contexts, solo and group exhibitions, festivals and installations. Between Sea and Land (2023) has been featured in several notable exhibitions, including the Valletta 2018 European Capital of Culture and the Malta Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Hallini Hanini is a deeply personal creation that explores themes of emotional attachment and separation, particularly in the context of family and relationships.
 
•  Anastasiya Ivanova (born in Ukraine, lives and works in Berlin, Germany)
 
She is a multimedia artist dedicated to narrative art through photography and video. With a photojournalistic background, she explores themes like motherhood, loneliness, and relationships interdependence. She particularly focuses on community-oriented projects, capturing the essence of group dynamics and collective experiences.
 
AntiBabylon (2022) is a documentary film capturing the essence of five poets' performances and their cultural exchanges, coming from countries previously under Soviet influence. Lviv National Philharmonic (2017-2022) is an important documentary photography project capturing the dynamic relationship between musicians and their audience, both on and off the stage, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the life of the Philharmonic. Burnout Madonnas is a multimedia project combining ready-made embroidery with photos of real mothers, overlaid with Lego blocks, symbolizing the chaotic and demanding lives of women caregivers.
 
•  Ruxandra Nițescu (Romania)
 
She is a Romanian multimedia artist whose work captures the subtleties of everyday life with a focus on social and cultural narratives. Her practice is driven by the desire to explore and deeply understand what loneliness (Eternally remembered - Eternally consumed, 2022), abandonment, illness, collective or individual trauma mean (We live in a wagon never going anywhere, 2022 / I can't find you, 2021). Over the years she has used photography, video, sound, drawing and printmaking, being interested in their permeability. Lately her attention has turned to the importance of natural space in relation to personal history (Ierbarul legăturilor dintre noi, 2023).
 
•  Mihai Smeu (Romania)
 
He is an emergent filmmaker whose projects often merge documentary and fiction to explore human experiences. He formalized his passion by studying photography and film art at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. This academic background has allowed him to refine his technical skills while also developing a unique artistic voice. Mihai Smeu’s journey into photography and film began with a deeply personal connection to family traditions. This personal motivation adds a layer of emotional depth to his work, making his projects not just artistic endeavors but also acts of preserving history (Boxes of Death & Spirituality / Untitled, 2021).
 
During their stay, these artists will interact closely with the local community, integrating the perspectives of both older residents and younger generations into their work. Workshops in video, photography, sound, acting, and creative writing will also be conducted, encouraging the village’s children to express their own perceptions of local traditions and their evolving identities within the community.
 
About the MagiC Carpets Platform
 
MagiC Carpets platform is co-funded by European Union's Creative Europe programme. It brings together 21 European cultural organisations, coordinated by Kaunas Biennial, offering opportunities for emerging artists to explore little-known areas and to create, together with local communities, new works that bring to light regional particularities and traditions. The aim is to raise awareness of undervalued cultural aspects in modern society, thus facilitating intercultural access, engagement and dialogue.
 
For further information about the MagiC Carpets Slon Residency 2024 and to stay updated on the project's developments, please visit the META Cultural Foundation website at https://www.metacult.ro/metacult/magiccarpets and the platform's website at https://magiccarpets.eu.
 

 
Acknowledgments
 
The residency in Romania is sponsored by Impuls Leasing Romania, and is part of the MagiC Carpets project, which runs from 2018 to 2025. This initiative currently brings together 15 active European cultural organizations and 2 partners, all dedicated to promoting cultural dialogue through art: Diyalog Derneği (Istanbul / Turkey), Folkestone Fringe (Folkestone / UK), Ideias Emergentes - Produção Cultural, CRL (Porto (Guimarães) / Portugal), Jam Factory Art Centre (Lviv / Ukraine), LAB 852 d.o.o. (Zagreb / Croatia), Latitudo Art Projects (Rome / Italy), META Cultural Foundation (Bucharest (Slon) / Romania), New Theatre Institute of Latvia (Riga / Latvia), Novo Kulturno Naselje (Novi Sad / Serbia), Openspace. Innsbruck (Innsbruck / Austria), Tbilisi Photo Festival (Tbilisi / Georgia), Trempo (Nantes / France), Wroclaw Institute of Culture (Wroclaw / Poland), Tartu 2024 (Tartu / Estonia), OPENART (Örebro / Sweden), Unfinished Art Space (Gzira / Malta).
 
In Romania, MagiC Carpets project is organized and hosted by META Cultural Foundation through META Cinema programme since 2018. During the 6 editions, the international audiovisual creative residencies have been developed in Slon village, Cerașu commune, Prahova county. Following the proposals of the 14 emerging curators nominated by the partner institutions, Raluca-Elena Doroftei, META guest curator since the first edition, selected artists from Serbia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Portugal, Croatia, Ukraine, France and Romania for the 6 editions: 1st edition, 2018 - Larisa Crunțeanu (Romania), Vojin Ivkov (Serbia), Michal Kindernay (Czech Republic); 2nd edition, 2019 - Vlad Dinu, Daniel Djamo (Romania), Luisa Sequeira (Portugal), Marta Elīna Martinsone (Latvia); 3rd edition, 2020 - Mihai Gavril Dragolea, Ana Țaran (Romania), Toni Mijač (Croatia); 4th edition, 2021 - Patric Pavel, Mihai Smeu (Romania), Anna Zvyagintseva (Ukraine); 5th edition, 2022 - Alina Manolache, Sebastian Moldovan (Romania), Toni Mijač (Croatia); 6th edition, 2023 - Andrei Predescu (Romania), Ștefania Becheanu (Romania/France) and La Nouvelle Panique (Gaspard Hoël and Jonathan Poulet, France).
After 6 years of work in Slon residency, MagiC Carpets has generated 18 videos, that annually get the opportunity to be included in META Cinema programme selections, to be promoted and nominated in national and international competitions.

Eight Romanian artists and an artistic group nominated by the curator of META Cultural Foundation have been selected for international residencies within MagiC Carpets project: Daniela Pălimariu in Innsbruck residence (Austria, 2018); Odeta Catană in Riga, Latvia; Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan in Limerick, Ireland (2019); Adelina Ivan in Guimarães, Portugal; Elena Urucatu in Istanbul, Turkey (2022); Stanca Soare in Wrocław, Poland; Claudiu Cobilanschi in Novi Sad, Serbia; Dan Vezențan in Kaunas, Lithuania (2023); Alina Manolache in Zagreb, Croatia (2024).

 


2023-08-03



MagiC Carpets 2023, the sixth edition of the audiovisual artistic residency hosted by META Cultural Foundation in Slon

Between August 10th - September 7th 2023, META Cultural Foundation organizes and hosts the sixth edition of the artistic residency within the international MagiC Carpets platform. In a picturesque natural landscape, the village of Slon (near Vălenii de Munte) will become the creative residence for the artists selected by curator Raluca Elena Doroftei in order to explore the resources of the rural community and reflect, through contemporary artistic means, pieces of the little-known reality and values of the area.

The theme of this year's residency will focus on multimedia (audio-video) techniques and the way in which technology and its tools impact rural reality, seemingly drawn from some other era. The artists will interact with the inhabitants of Slon and the village surroundings and will turn their visions into short and / or medium-length videos.

Created by the Romanian sculptor Romelo Pervolovici, the site of the residency itself is an artistic piece and since 2015 it has become a unique place of inspiration. The residency in Romania organized by META Foundation offers the setting for a holistic experience, right in the middle of the community and its specific life. A mix of eclecticism and vision, this initiative brings new life to undervalued places and also encourages cross-cultural exchange, uniting artists and the common public in a journey of creativity and knowledge.

MagiC Carpets has already demonstrated the power of art to educate, connect and transform society by infusing these spaces with a range of artistic practices, including visual arts, sculpture, performance, music and multimedia technologies. Artists can explore their creativity unconstrained, integrating contemporary digital media into traditional art forms.

The artists selected for this year's residency focus their creation on multimedia language, mainly video and acoustic: the group La Nouvelle Panique (France) composed of Gaspard Hoël and Jonathan Poulet (musicians), Ștefania Becheanu (Romanian artist based in Paris)and Andrei Predescu (Romania).

La Nouvelle Panique is an artistic group composed of Gaspard Hoël (musician and videographer) and Jonathan Poulet (musician and sound artist), who create multidisciplinary projects, ranging across performance art, music, video and installation. In 2017 they formed the experimental rock group Bonjour Joseph, and released an album under Parisian record label La Souterraine. In 2019, inspired by less explored approaches, they originally experimented new creative paths, like entertainment and musical humour. Thus they created La Nouvelle Panique and produced Le Grand Spectacle, powered by Pulse and TUNantes. Their approach was then nuanced by the playful universe inspired by Peter Pan's character, Monty Python's humour and the scenic freedom of the contemporary circus. In 2021 they produced a series of performances for TUNantes, experimenting puppet performance and extending their research into music as a main scenic element. In 2023 they produced a film featuring a fabulous brass band made up of six hundred young people from northern France. For early 2024 they are preparing a new theatrical co-production with TUNantes.

Ștefania Becheanu (b. 1987) is sound artist and interdisciplinary performer. Using a multiple approach involving sound, visual art and the body, her multimedia works lie at the intersection of experimental, improvised music, field recording and visual arts. She also integrates contemporary movement and dance into her sound installations. Among the variety of her creative expressions we find solo performances on a live stage (Une écoute intime, created at the Arsenal / Cité musicale-Metz; Fragile), visual and sound installations in a museum (Kantaje, de la langue aux oreilles, exhibited at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and in Venice) or physical reflections based on contact with nature (La danse de l'arbre with Mathilde Vrignaud). Other times it is about a book (Silence-décomposition with Pierre-Luc Landry, published by Nota Bene), musical improvisation (Noi Trei), artistic productions (Constellations festival in Paris and Fey'stival 57 in Féy) or sound creation workshops in schools and social centres. Through the diversity of her creations, Ștefania Becheanu aims to break the barriers between forms and genres, to promote emancipation through art and to explore the concept of active and empathetic listening as a way of expressing emotion and vibration.

Andrei Predescu (b. 1998) is a visual artist, he graduated the Department of Photography and Dynamic Image at the National University of Arts Bucharest. His practice focuses on mixed media installations and explores concepts developed within the post-digital art movement. Raised in a social environment marked by skepticism towards digital resources or lack of internet access, Andrei investigates the confluence between technology, human experience and cultural identity. 3D printed or laser-cut structures ("Droplets" - 2022, "Flux Horizon" - 2022), custom-made models or modified ready-made objects, installations and video works have been exhibited in major group exhibitions (Where is she?, Alert Studio, Bucharest; Post-Nothinglkinema icon: In Good Company, Arad Art Museum; Possible Interactions, National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania).

MagiC Carpets platform is co-funded by European Union's Creative Europe programme. It brings together 21 European cultural organisations, coordinated by Kaunas Biennial, offering opportunities for emerging artists to explore little-known areas and to create, together with local communities, new works that bring to light regional particularities and traditions. The aim is to raise awareness of undervalued cultural aspects in modern society, thus facilitating intercultural access, engagement and dialogue.

More information on Slon residency within MagiC Carpets European project can be found on META Cultural Foundation website https://www.metacult.ro/metacult/magiccarpets and on the platform's website https://magiccarpets.eu.

Impuls Leasing Romania is sponsor of the residency organized by META Cultural Foundation in Romania.

MagiC Carpets project will run between 2022 - 2025 and currently brings together 15 active European cultural organisations and 2 partners. Coordinated by Kaunas Biennial (Kaunas / Lithuania), the platform includes: Diyalog Derneği (Istanbul / Turkey), Folkestone Fringe (Folkestone / UK), Ideias Emergentes - Produção Cultural, CRL (Porto (Guimarães) / Portugal), Jam Factory Art Centre (Lviv / Ukraine), LAB 852 d.o.o. (Zagreb / Croatia), Latitudo Art Projects (Rome / Italy), META Cultural Foundation (Bucharest (Slon) / Romania), New Theatre Institute of Latvia (Riga / Latvia), Novo Kulturno Naselje (Novi Sad / Serbia), Openspace.Innsbruck (Innsbruck / Austria), Tbilisi Photo Festival (Tbilisi / Georgia), Trempo (Nantes / France), Wroclaw Institute of Culture (Wroclaw / Poland), Tartu 2024 (Tartu / Estonia), OPENART (Örebro / Sweden), Unfinished Art Space (Gzira / Malta).


2023-07-15


Press Release

M2M Museum will host, in its Studio Hall, the contemporary art exhibition of the young artist Ioana Aron (b. 1994), entitled A House, a Home, which will open on Saturday, 15 July, at 1:00 PM.
 
The exhibition rediscusses the concepts of house, home, artist’s studio, museum, seen as a certain space, but also as a space that belongs to an identity, as a personal imprint.
 
The curator of this exhibition, Călina Coman (b. 1998), emphasizes the idea of home, ”this safe, introspective space, in which parts of our intimacy are revealed”.
 
To an equal extent, there is a rediscussion of the theme of the artist’s studio, as the place where the artwork originates, an ”intimate, purely personal habitat”. Reproduced in various contexts – museums, art galleries – artist’s studios ”gain a special existence and significance...interacting with those who step inside influencing the perception and interpretation of the artwork” (Călina Coman).
 
A House, a Home ”proposes a series of in situ installations which include painting, object, sketches and personal notes, in the characteristic manner of agglutination of objects found in the immediate proximity”, the curator of the exhibition points out.
 
In parallel, in the halls of the M2M Museum, you can also visit the exhibition of the 2META Group (Maria Manolescu and Romelo Pervolovici) entitled Self-Portrait in Two, an exhibition developing a quasi-unitary vision of two complementary identities: the members of the 2META Group.
 
This Self-Portrait includes themes such as the Double, the Mirror, the Twins, Identity, and Symmetry.
 
Painting, sculpture, video talk about a universe of complementary-symmetrical images, starting from the famous ”Je est un autre” (Rimbaud) – ”I is another”.
 
Entrance to the museum is free in both spaces – Studio Hall and Main Halls. The exhibitions will be open from Tuesday to Sunday, between 11 AM-6 PM. The opening of the exhibition A House, a Home will take place on Saturday, 15 July, at 1:00 PM.
The M2M Museum is located in Slon, Prahova County. For more details, please visit the museum website, at https://www.metacult.ro/m2m/
 
Project organized by: META Cultural Foundation, partner: National Museum of Contemporary Art, sponsor: Impuls Leasing Romania, media partner: Modernism.ro
 


2022-09-14


M2M/ 2 META Museum opening

Opening of a new exhibition space in the foothills of the mountains,
at the edge of the forest
Contemporary Snapshot / Traditional Timeline. Art is always somewhere else Exhibition will have the opening on the 17th of September at 14:00 and it will bring together representatives of the contemporary visual art scene:
Vioara Bara, Radu Comșa, Călin Dan, Teodor Graur, Stela Lie, Petru Lucaci, Sorin Neamțu, Marilena Preda Sânc, Carmen Rasovszky, Gheorghe Rasovszky, Roxana Trestioreanu, Adrian Uncrut, Dan Vezentan, Simona Vilău, 2 META.

The project focuses on avant-gardes, which become classicized, turning into settled memory, tradition. Innovative concepts wear out over time, winding up as dictionary entries, even ground-breaking scientific theories end up by being revised, reinterpreted, redefined.

Everything becomes history at some point, fitting, more or less, into the coordinates of a traditional timeline.

The line between the contemporary and the traditional becomes thin, permeable, permissive. Seen from this perspective as well, “Art is always somewhere else”, as the artists of historical avant-gardes used to say.

The event marks the opening of the M2M / 2 META Museum, a new exhibition space located in Slon Village, Cerașu Commune, Prahova County. Initiated by Romelo Pervolovici, Maria Manolescu, Radu Pervolovici, M2M, initially an artist workshop in the foothills of the mountains, at the edge of the forest becomes a Museum of Contemporary Art, starting on the 17th of September 2022.

During the opening event, there will be a screening of the film An evening in my parents’ studio directed by Eva Pervolovici.

The exhibition will open with speeches by Magda Cârneci, writer, art critic, and editor-in-chief of ”Arta” magazine, and Ion Bogdan Lefter, writer, cultural commentator, professor at the University of Bucharest.

You can find more information on the website of META Cultural Foundation (www.metacult.ro), as well as on M2M website (www.metacult.ro/m2m).
 
Partner: National Museum of Contemporary Art
Sponsors: Impuls Leasing România, Aqua Carpatica, Domeniile Sâmburești, Wet Hard Seltzer
Media Partners: Igloo, Modernism.ro, Observator Cultural, Radio România Cultural
RSVP
 


2022-08-09

Audiovisual creative residency for emerging artists organised in Slon, MagiC Carpets platform - 5th edition, 2022

META Cultural Foundation organizes the fifth edition of the audiovisual creative residency from Slon (Cerașu commune, Prahova county), within the MagiC Carpets project, from August 10th, 2022 to August 25th, 2022. The curator of the project, Raluca-Elena Doroftei, has selected for this year's edition 3 artists: Alina Manolache (RO), Toni Mijač (HR), and Sebastian Moldovan (RO). The purpose of the artistic residency at Slon is to support the synchronization of the Romanian cultural environment with the main trends in international contemporary art and to facilitate the dialogue between local and foreign artists. The village of Slon and its surroundings, with everything that means its history, tradition, nature and local community creative potential, becomes the subject of research and inspiration in the projects of the artists invited here during the residency. This year's edition aims to continue this approach, integrated into a European project, a platform that brings together artistic residencies, organized by international partners, dedicated to 15 other local communities from all over Europe.

Alina MANOLACHE (b. 1990) is a Romanian filmmaker. Her practice stands at the intersection between documentary cinema, artistic research and education. Featured by ”Filmmaker Magazine” as one of the top 5 female directors of IDFA (International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam) 2020, Manolache is an alumna of Visions du Réel (Nyon, Switzerland), IDFA (Amsterdam, Netherlands), CPH:DOX (Copenhagen, Denmark), Jihlava (Jihlava, Czech Republic), Dokufest (Prizren, Kosovo) and other prestigious festivals around the globe. She has authored several acclaimed shorts and one feature length documentary (”Lost Kids On the Beach”), as well as commissioned webdocs for ”VICE” and ”The Guardian”. She has served on international juries (CPH:DOX, Mons Film Festival, among others) and she has been actively contributing as a mentor and guest lecturer at documentary workshops and in academia. Alina Manolache holds a Bachelor’s in Photography & Video by the Bucharest University of Fine Arts and a Master’s in Society & Media Studies. She is a graduate of Archidoc, Aristoteles Workshop, Sarajevo Talent Campus and IDFAcademy, among others. Between 2012-2014, she lived and worked in France. First in Grenoble, as a scholar of École Supérieure d’Art et Design, then in Paris, as an artist-in-residence with a project at Centre Pompidou. Her filmography consists of exploratory, choral films that investigate identity, belonging and shared experiences. So far, she has navigated topics like post-communist generations (Lost Kids on the Beach, IDFA 2020), surveillance (I AM HERE, Jihlava 2020), space exploration (2020: A Covid Space Odyssey, The Guardian 2020), youth (End of Summer, Visions du Reel 2016), museums (Your Visit Starts Here, Centre Pompidou 2015), human-machine relationships (3 Dialogues About the Future, in production). Her work has been reviewed by The Guardian, Filmmaker, The Calvert Journal, VICE, Aeon, POV and more. Currently, Alina Manolache lives in Romania, but her research-based film projects – as well as her activity as a mentor – take her to different parts of the world.

Toni MIJAČ (b. 1988) is an artist and film director; he lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia. In his work, Toni Mijač explores the impulses of everyday life, analyzing the use of language, memory, interpretation and other phenomena through various media (photography, film, video, text, installation) and strategies (manipulation, resemanticization, play with syntax). Behavior, dynamics, memory, rhythm and reaction are recurring interests in his works, and the aspects highlighted by them are starting impulses in his research. Attentive to the types of communication, body language or intensities of the different routines and norms that form a chosen area of ​​interest, he collects the traces and details that later serve as working material in different stages of his projects. He experiments with the language of new media to explore ways in which he can get in touch with the viewer, and one of the tools used in carrying out his work is collaboration. He has realized conceptual, cinematographic and commercial projects, also having experience as a collaborator or leader in local and international workshops and festivals. For 6 years (2009-2015), he initiated and organized children's film workshops, entitled ”Communication through film”, held in several high schools and the Cinema Club in Split. He holds a bachelor's degree in film and video from the Academy of Arts in Split and a master's degree in new media from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

Sebastian MOLDOVAN (b. 1982), graduate of the University of Arts and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Painting department. He uses, one by one, any available medium of artistic expression available – installation, video, sound, drawing, being often attracted by minimalism, arte povera, ready-made and site-specific interventions. He uses different mediums depending on the space or on the situation out of the need to interact with them, something that painting could not provide because of the status of a finite, bounded object. His artworks have been exhibited and presented at the Museum of Recent Art (Bucharest, Romania), Art Encounters Biennial (Timișoara, Romania), Guangdong Times Museum (Guangzhou, China), Galerie Jan Dhaese (Gent, Belgium), New Gallery of IRCCU - Venice Biennale 55 (Venice, Italy), Brukenthal National Museum - Contemporary Art Gallery (Sibiu, Romania). In Romania, Sebastian Moldovan is represented by Galeria Gaep in Bucharest, where he participated in various personal and group exhibitions: "The Domino Effect 2" (2021, group exhibition), "Spacetime's a Wastin'" (2021, personal exhibition), "The Domino Effect' (2020, group exhibition), "The Uncanny Within" (2017, solo exhibition) and "You Never Know What's Off" (2015, solo exhibition). Originally from Baia Mare, he lived and worked periodically in various places in the country – Cluj, Bucharest, Sibiu, Baia Mare, the countryside of Sibiu and Sălaj, currently settling in Bucharest. Often living in small towns and villages, he is familiar with this environment, with its concerns and orientations, keeping a connection with the rhythm of these places, of the common man and the majority. He is thus looking for a binder/ a bridge/ a representation for the cold conceptualism, often found in his art. In his artworks, Sebastian Moldovan talks about the frustration produced by disparities and abuses of power, retrograde tendencies, corruption, grabs in a world difficult to define between aggressive capitalism and the inertia of the old power structures proposing opposite or excessive realities. To some extent, he turns his gaze away from immediate human reality and finds refuge and inspiration in the world of plants, natural phenomena, mechanisms. If at first the artworks were minimalistic, perhaps as a reaction to the attempt to approach painting, now they evolve towards using the mechanisms of the surrounding world – overloading the senses, exaggeration, noise, violence. There is a tendency to reintegrate drawing, either through itself or through video and three-dimensional installations.

The MagiC Carpets project, initiated in 2018 by the Kaunas Biennial, together with 14 other European cultural organisations, and co-financed through Creative Europe program, offers residency opportunities to emerging artists, aiming at encouraging the production of new artworks, developed in different local communities in the countries where the cultural organisations involved in the project operate. The MagiC Carpets platform, dedicated to both emerging artists and curators, supports the research of local communities and the creation of new artistic productions, with the aim of highlighting their local specificity and improving and increasing the degree of participation in culture. The first stage of the MagiC Carpets project ended in 2021, and the results of the project could be seen in the exhibition "MagiC Carpets Landed", curated by Benedetta Carpi de Resmini, presented in Kaunas, Lithuania, on the occasion of the inauguration of the cultural program Kaunas 2022 - Capital of Culture European, and in Aveiro, Portugal.

The MagiC Carpets project continues in the period 2022-2025 and currently brings together 14 active members of the platform and 2 partners. Led by Kaunas Biennial (Lithuania), the platform includes: Diyalog Derneği (Istanbul / Turkey), Folkestone Fringe (Folkestone / UK), IDEIAS EMERGENTES – Produção Cultural, CRL (Porto (Guimarães) / Portugal), Jam Factory Art Centre (Lviv / Ukraine), Lab852 d.o.o. za promidžbu (Zagreb / Croatia), Latitudo Srl (Rome / Italy), META Cultural Foundation (Bucharest (Slon) / Romania), New Theatre Institute of Latvia (Riga / Latvia), Novo Kulturno Naselje (Novi Sad / Serbia), OPENART, Örebro Kommun (Örebro / Sweden), Openspace.Innsbruck (Innsbruck / Austria), SA Tartu 2024 (Tartu / Estonia), Tbilisi International Photo Festival (Tbilisi / Georgia), Trempo (Nantes / France), Wroclaw Institute of Culture (Wroclaw / Poland). The mutual goal of these cultural organisations is to facilitate opportunities for emerging artists to embark on journeys to unknown lands and to create, together with local artists and local communities, new works that highlight local specificities and compensate for the shortage of story-telling existing in modern society by enhancing cultural accessibility, cultural activism and participation.

In Romania, MagiC Carpets project is organised by META Cultural Foundation through META Cinema since 2018 and during the four years of project has annually organised audiovisual creation META-residencies in Slon, Cerașu commune, Prahova county. Following the proposals of the other 14 emerging curators appointed by the partner institutions, Raluca-Elena Doroftei, the curator invited by META to join the project since the first edition, has selected for the previous 4 editions of the project 13 artists from Serbia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Portugal, Croatia, Ukraine and Romania: 1st edition, 2018 - Larisa Crunțeanu (Romania), Vojin Ivkov (Serbia), Michal Kindernay (Czech Republic); 2nd edition, 2019 - Vlad Dinu, Daniel Djamo (Romania), Luisa Sequeira (Portugal), Marta Elīna Martinsone (Latvia), 3rd edition, 2020 - Mihai Gavril Dragolea, Ana Țaran (Romania), Toni Mijač (Croatia), 4th edition, 2021 - Patric Pavel, Mihai Smeu (Romania), Anna Zvyagintseva (Ukraine). At the end of the four-year project, 15 video artworks were created in the Slon residency through MagiC Carpets, which every year benefit from the opportunity to be included in the selections of META Cinema programs, to be promoted, entered and selected in competitions national and international.

Two artists and an artistic group from Romania, recommended by the META Cultural Foundation, were selected to participate in international residencies within the MagiC Carpets project: Daniela Palimariu in residence in Innsbruck, Austria (in 2018), Odeta Catană in Riga, Latvia (in 2019) and Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan in Limerick, Ireland (in 2019).

Sponsor of the Cine-residency organised by META Cultural Foundation in Romania: 
Impuls Leasing Romania.

You can find out more about the residency on Meta Cultural Foundation website:
http://www.metacult.ro/metacult/magiccarpets/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/METACulturalFoundation 
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/meta.cultural.foundation/ 

More about the MagiC Carpets project, on the project website:
http://magiccarpets.eu/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/MagiCCarpetsCreativeEurope 
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/magiccarpets.eu/ 

 


2021-08-09

MagiC Carpets
10 August - 5 September 2021
4th Edition, 2021

META Cultural Foundation organizes the fourth edition of the creative residency involving artists through the MagiC Carpets - Creative Europe Platform, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. The event is going to take place in the village of Slon, Ceraşu, Romania, between 10th of August and 5th of September, 2021. Three emerging artists and an artistic duo were invited to this year’s edition: Anna Zvyagintseva (Ukraine), Patric Pavel (Romania) and Mihai Smeu (Romania), as well as an artistic duo - La Nouvelle Panique (France), who in the current pandemic context will not be able to travel to Slon (their residency is going to be rescheduled). The Slon artistic residency supports the synchronization of the Romanian cultural environment with the main trends in international contemporary art and facilitates the dialogue between local and foreign artists. The village of Slon and its surroundings, with all its history, traditions, nature and creative potential of the local community, becomes a subject of research and inspiration in the projects of guest artists.

Anna Zvyagintseva (b. 1986, Ukraine) graduated the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv in 2010. In her artistic practice, she often makes manifest imperceptible, impalpable facets of our lives, showcasing their fragility and documenting elusive intangible moments. Using the medium of drawing, as well as photography and installation, Zvyagintseva creates images that capture the traces of everyday life, ephemeral coincidences, and what are generally considered the banalities of life. In translating the simple gestures, body movements, and everyday traces left by nameless people into poetic stories, the artist lends a distinctive frame and meaning to the most mundane objects, places, and activities. Her works have been shown in such institutions and galleries as: National Art Museum of Ukraine, PinchukArtCentre, Sevastopol Art Museum, Visual Culture Research Center, The Naked Room (all - Ukraine), Galeria Labirynt (Lublin, Poland), Galeria Arsenał (Białystok, Poland), Centre for Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski (Warsaw, Poland), MQ - MuseumsQuartier – AzW (Vienna), Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art(Riga), Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe (Germany), Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig (Germany), and others. She participated in the Pavilion of Ukraine, “Hope!”, at the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, 2015; in Kyiv biennial: “The school of Kyiv”, 2015 and “The Kyiv International”, 2017. Also, she has been a member of the curatorial group “Hudrada” since 2010 and co-editor of Prostory.net.ua (an online magazine about art, literature and translation). She lives and works in Kyiv. Anna was selected through the proposals of the MagiC Carpets partners from Ukraine, Jam Factory Art Center.

Patric Pavel (b. 1994, Romania) lives in Bucharest and has recently obtained a master’s degree at the University of Arts in Bucharest, Department of Dinamic Image and Photography. He works mainly using photography as a medium, because he enjoys experimenting with techniques related to analog photography, but lately most of his artistic projects have been in the area of video-making. He preffers a direct approach to art, without much digressing, as he often works on documentary projects using photography and video. A lot of his work is about archiving: he is working on an archive of his own which revolves around subjects like the relationship between people and their objects, the presence/absence of individuals in society and also landscape art. He lives and works in Bucharest, Romania.

Mihai Smeu (b. 1997, România) is an emerging artist, working with photography and new media/digital art. His aesthetic flows between the infinite real and the hard-to-discover imaginary. Using abstract to physio-morphic interventions in his works, Smeu considers that “each artist quotes more or less indirect memories, reiterating feelings and encounters with the outside world“. Currently, Smeu is an M.A. student at the National University of Arts in Bucharest.

La Nouvelle Panique (France) is an artistic team composed of Gaspard Hoël and Jonathan Poulet, aiming to carry out transdisciplinary projects at the crossroads of performance art, music, video, and installation art. Jonathan Poulet graduated from the Fine arts school of Nantes in France, his work is about experimenting the meanings of “in situ” music, or the many possibilities for musicians to play with their real time context - space, matters, social contexts. Combining the practices of musical instruments’ design, the conceptual approaches of the creation process, musical composing practices, and live performance, his work also aims to connect with fictions and surrealistic aspects. Gaspard Hoël is a visual artist, videographer and musician with a surrealist universe influenced by storytelling psychology, animism, fabulous aesthetics, questions of play and identity. His work is inhabited by a childish and confusing melancholy, lingering between dream and reality. Collaborator of Ziczazou, and the Cirque Plume, Gaspard Hoël instinctively favors a musical-pictorial dimension within his creations, as image and music merge and amplify there to form a new playful and experimental space. Gaspard Hoël studied communication and graphic design at the Ecole Nationale Estienne before entering the fine arts of Nantes from which he graduated with the distinction “Production quality” in 2019. La Nouvelle Panique was selected through the proposals of the MagiC Carpets partners from Nantes, Trempo.

A program of viewings and presentations of the artists will be organized in the venue of the residency, following the rules of social-distancing and hygiene established by the authorities, and the works made during the residency can be viewed locally and nationally by organizing public screenings.

MagiC Carpets is a platform developed by fifteen European partners - Kaunas Biennial from Lithuania - the coordonator of the project, Ideias Emergentes - Imerge from Portugal, EVA International from Ireland, Folkestone Fringe from UK, KUNSTrePUBLIK - ZK/U from Germany, Prague Biennale from the Czech Republic, Openspace.Innsbruck from Austria, Latitudo from Italy, LAB 852 from Croatia, Novo Kulturno Naselje from Serbia, Meta Cultural Foundation from Romania, New Theatre Institute from Latvia, Trempo from France, Jam Factory Art Centre from Ukraine, and Tbilisi Photo Festival from Georgia. The platform is designed for emerging artists, who have the opportunity to be selected by one of the fifteen partners for a one-month residency program. The aim is to encourage artistic productions together with local artists and communities. The project is co-funded by the European Union through the 2014-2020 Creative Europe – Culture program. More information about the project can be found on www.magiccarpets.eu.

Among the Romanian artists recommended by Meta Cultural Foundation and selected in international residencies, we mention Daniela Palimariu during the 2018 residency in Innsbruck, Austria, Odeta Catana during the 2019 residency in Riga, Latvia, and Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan during the 2019 residency in Limerick, Ireland. Meta Foundation selected the following artists in the Slon residency, through the MagiC Carpets project: from Serbia (Vojin Ivkov, in 2018), the Czech Republic (Michal Kindernay, in 2018), Portugal (Luisa Sequeira, in 2019), Latvia (Marta Elina Martinsone, in 2019), and Croatia (Toni Mijač, 2020), but also from Romania: Larisa Crunțeanu (in 2018), Vlad Dinu and Daniel Djamo (in 2019), Ana Țăran and Mihai Gavril Dragolea (in 2020).

The video works created at the Slon Residency through the MagiC Carpets platform have the opportunity to be included in META Cinema’s selection programs and be promoted and enrolled in national and international competitions. In recent years, the shorts produced in Slon have been selected at prestigious international festivals: CineFestival, Los Angeles (USA) - 2016, Dublin International Short Film and Music Festival (Ireland) - 2016, Festival Corto Corrente (Rome, Italy) - 2016, Bucharest French Film Festival - 2015, 2016, 2017 (Romania), Sundance Film Festival (Utah, USA) - 2016, International Film Festival (Berlin, Germany) – 2018, etc.

The works will also be showcased in the group exhibition „MagiC Carpets Landed” (5 November 2021 - 23 January 2022), curated by Benedetta Carpi De Resmini, included in the opening events program launchig Kaunas – European Capital of Culture 2022.

The team:
Radu Pervolovici - project director;
Romelo Pervolovici - production director;
Raluca Elena Doroftei - curator;
Andreea Drăghicescu – PR;
Patric Pavel – documenting;
Adrian Drăgoi - production assistant;
Flori Strâmbeanu - catering.

The project is sponsored by Impuls Leasing Romania.

#MagiCCarpets #CreativeEurope
#art #contemporaryart #nomadism #travel #communities #aroundeurope #artistinresidency #emergingartist #emergingcurator


2021-08-08

International Residency for Audiovisual Creation, Slon, Romania
10 August - 20 August, 2021
6th Edition, 2021

META Cultural Foundation opened the 6th edition of its Film Residency in Slon, on Tuesday, 10 August, 2021. This year’s edition takes place between 10 August, 2021 - 20 August, 2021, and its guests include directors Juan Fernández Gebauer (Germany/Argentina) Pauline Penichout (France), and the emerging artist Mihai Smeu (Romania). This project is part of a programme of residencies initiated by META Cultural Foundation in 2015. It consists of an annual film residency designed in the form of a 10-day meeting, which takes place in Slon village, Cerașu commune, Prahova county, Romania. Through the proposed format, the organizers aim to bring together Romanian and foreign experimental directors and artists, in order to encourage cultural mobility in Romania and generate a dialogue, as well as the premises for possible collaborations between them.

After a one-year break, as a result of the international pandemic context, our guests at Slon include directors Juan Fernández Gebauer (Germany/Argentina) and Pauline Penichout (France), joined in their work by the emerging artist Mihai Smeu (Romania), as chief-operator of this year’s residency, assistants Adrian Drăgoi (Romania), Alice Ceapă and Cosmina Duca (Slon, Romania), under the coordination of producers Eva and Radu Pervolovici (Romania), and curator Raluca-Elena Doroftei. Filmmaker Pauline Penichout has been selected this year through META Cultural Foundation, during Visions du Réel Festival, partner institution of the Residency starting with the fifth edition, which took place in 2019.

Juan Fernández Gebauer (b. 1989, Germania/Argentina) is a director, DOP, and actor. His work intertwines fiction and documentary, investigating topics such as city life, the idea of progress, identity and memory. He studied filmmaking at ENERC. His films have won awards at festivals such as Mar del Plata, Bafici, Roma, Toulouse, Malaga, Jechon and Oaxaca, among others. With “Hijos Nuestros” he won the award for best director under 35 at Mar del Plata Festival. “Chaco” is used among native Argentine communities as material for the dissemination of the indigenous cause. It also serves as testimony in the Inter-American Court of Justice in the trials of the Namqom case. In 2019 and 2020 he held two residencies in Tokyo where he filmed 能 (Noh). He lives in Berlin where he is editing his film and developing two new projects: “Visions from the desert” and “Las Manos de Perón”. Juan was selected as talent in the 2021 Berlinale.

Pauline Penichout (b. 1994, France) graduated from la Fémis film school in 2019, and currently she works as a cinematographer, as well as a director. Building images through lighting and framing interests her as a constant yet always new exploration of the boundaries between fiction and reality, between life, art, and politics.

Mihai Smeu (b. 1997, România) is an emerging artist, working with photography and new media/digital art. His aesthetic flows between the infinite real and the hard-to-discover imaginary. Using abstract to physio-morphic interventions in his works, Smeu considers that “each artist quotes more or less indirect memories, reiterating feelings and encounters with the outside world“. Currently, Smeu is an M.A. student at the National University of Arts in Bucharest.

Raluca-Elena Doroftei (b. 1983, Romania) is a cultural manager and curator. She is interested in personal histories, and lately she has focused her research on artistic production in communities and how artists and members of local communities collaborate / interact in order to produce works of art that revive places and local customs. With an experience of over 15 years in the management of cultural projects, she has supported the promotion of Romanian artists and culture in an international context through her activity within the Illustrators’ Club Association, Atelier 35 Gallery, Meta Cultural Foundation, Romanian Cultural Institute and Pantograf Association. Since 2018, she has been a curator within the MagiC Carpets project, through Meta Cultural Foundation, a platform developed by 15 European partners, initiated by Kaunas Biennial (Lithuania) and co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Since 2019, she has been a researcher at The Institute of Public Art, Shanghai, China.

Cultural project created and organized by META Cultural Foundation and co-funded by Goethe-Institut and Visions du Réel
Partners: Cerașu Town Hall
Sponsor: Impuls Leasing


2020-08-07

META Cultural Foundation organizes the third edition of the creative residence involving artists through the Magic Carpets - Creative Europe Platform, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. The event is going to take place in the village of Slon, Ceraşu, Romania, between 10th of August and 31st of August, 2020. Three emerging artists were invited to this year’s edition: Toni Mijač (Croatia), Ana Țăran (Romania) şi Mihai Dragolea (Romania). The Slon artistic residency supports the synchronization of the Romanian cultural environment with the main trends in international contemporary art and facilitates the dialogue between local and foreign artists. The village of Slon and its surroundings, with all the interpretations about history, tradition, nature and creative potential of the local community, becomes a subject of research and inspiration in the projects of guest artists.

Toni Mijač (b. 1988) is an artist and film director; he lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia. In his work, Mijač explores the impulses of everyday life, analyzing the use of language, memory, interpretation and other phenomena through various media (photography, film, video, text, installation) and strategies (manipulation, resemanticization, play with syntax). Behavior, dynamics, memory, rhythm and reaction are recurring interests in his works, and the aspects highlighted by them are starting impulses in his research. Attentive to the types of communication, body language or intensities of the different routines and norms that form a chosen area of interest, he collects the traces and details that later serve as working material in different stages of his projects. He experiments with the language of new media to explore ways in which he can get in touch with the viewer, and one of the tools used in carrying out his work is collaboration. He has realized conceptual, cinematographic and commercial projects, also having experience of collaborator or leader in local and international workshops and festivals. For 6 years (2009-2015), he initiated and organized children's film workshops, entitled "Communication through film", held in several high schools and the Cinema Club in Split. He holds a bachelor's degree in film and video from the Academy of Arts in Split and a master's degree in new media from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

Ana Țaran (b. 1992) is a film artist and director; she works and lives in Bucharest, Romania. Preoccupied about the multiple forms of art, Țaran seeks to use different artistic languages in her creations, thus combining photography with video art and cinematography. She is interested about the internal poetics of any space, with the relationship to memory and childhood, which, in her opinion, "influences us for the rest of our lives". Her films have been screened at international film festivals: Cinéma du Réel Festival, Paris (2020), Festival dei Popoli, Florence (2019), Cinéhaiku Festival, Gordes (2017), Zoom - Zblizenia Film Festival, Jelenia Gora (2017) and Corto Festival in Accademia, Macerata (2016). Over the years, she combined artistic and educational activities in workshops with students from the school in the village of Ha Seeiso (Lesotho, South Africa) and the general school in the village of Mitintsi (western Ukraine). She obtained a master's degree at the Department of Photography and Dynamic Image of the Faculty of Fine Arts, UNARTE, Bucharest (in 2016), and was admitted, in the same year, to the Film Department at the Geneva University of Art and Design.

Mihai Gavril Dragolea (b. 1989) is a film director, screenwriter and cinematographer; he works and lives in Bucharest, Romania. Dragolea's documentaries focus on the world of the marginalized and those who are not represented in the media, trying to bring the viewer a new version of reality. His artistic practice aims at observational modes of expression, their use to generate empathy between the viewer and the social actors on the screen, through a direct involvement of the audience in the film. He is currently developing projects and working in the fields of cinematography and independent journalism, the last such project being focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, a web series called #EuRoPandemic, which is broadcasted on the independent journalism platform dela0.ro. His films have participated in international festivals including: Docuart Fest, Bucharest (2015); One World Romania, Bucharest (2016); Jihlava International Film Festival (2017); Pärnu International Documentary Film Festival (2018); TIFF, Cluj-Napoca (2018, 2020); CREA Conference, Kathmandu (2019). In addition, he is working on a theoretical research that took the form of a doctoral dissertation, entitled "Representations of the marginal in the Romanian observational documentary" and teaches practical courses and seminars at the Faculty of Theater and Film, Department of Cinematography, Photography and Media.

During the residency, between August 10-24, 2020, Ana Țaran and Mihai Gavril Dragolea will conduct creative workshops for children, within a pilot program for the Summer School of Audiovisual Creation for Children, launched this year and targeting children in the area with inclination for art and literature. The main aspects that will be addressed aim at developing communication and mutual understanding skills, responsibility and teamwork, improving theoretical and practical knowledge about image in general and film in particular, but also ways of operating a video camera and a tablet to complete an art project with them.

For public health reasons Toni Mijač will attend the residency on-line, working through video-streaming with the artist and photographer Vlad Dinu, with the possibility to visit Slon and continue his project live, in autumn, depending on the dynamics and evolution of the epidemiological situation at national/ international level and in view of a possible relaxation of the measures on travel conditions. Dinu has a degree in Photography-Video, Computer Image Processing, from UNARTE, Bucharest, and is currently pursuing a master's degree in Photography and Dynamic Image, at the same university.

A program of viewings and presentations of the artists will be organized outdoors in the location of the residence, respecting the rules of social-distancing and hygiene established by the authorities, and the works made during the residence can be viewed locally and nationally by organizing public screenings.

Magic Carpets is a platform developed by fifteen European partners - Kaunas Biennial from Lithuania - the coordonator of the project, Ideias Emergentes - Imerge from Portugal, EVA International - Ireland's Biennial of Contemporary Art from Ireland, Folkestone Fringe from UK, KUNSTrePUBLIK - ZK/U from Germany, Prague Biennale from Czech Republic, Openspace.Innsbruck from Austria, Latitudo from Italy, LAB 852 from Croatia, Novo Kulturno Naselje from Serbia, Meta Cultural Foundation from Romania, New Theatre Institute from Latvia, Trempolino from France, Jam Factory Art Centre from Ucraine, and Tbilisi Photo Festival from Georgia. The platform is designed for emerging artists, who have the opportunity to be selected by one of the thirteen partners for a one-month residency program. The aim is to encourage artistic productions together with local artists and communities. The project is co-funded by the European Union through the 2014-2020 Creative Europe – Culture program. More information about the project can be found on www.magiccarpets.eu.

Among the Romanian artists recommended by the Meta Cultural Foundation and selected in international residencies, we mention Daniela Palimariu during the 2018 residency in Innsbruck, Austria, Odeta Catana during the 2019 residency in Riga, Latvia and Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan during the 2019 residency in Limerick, Ireland. The Meta Foundation selected the following artists in the Slon residency, through the MagicCarpets project: from Serbia (Vojin Ivkov, in 2018), the Czech Republic (Michal Kindernay, in 2018), Portugal (Luisa Sequeira, in 2019) and Latvia (Marta Elina Martinsone, in 2019), and from Romania: Larisa Crunțeanu (in 2018), Vlad Dinu and Daniel Djamo (in 2019).

The video works created at the Slon Residency through the Magic Carpets platform have the opportunity to be included in META Cinema’s selection programs and be promoted and enrolled in national and international competitions. In recent years, the shorts produced in Slon have been selected at prestigious international festivals: CineFestival, Los Angeles (USA) - 2016, Dublin International Short Film and Music Festival (Ireland) - 2016, Festival Corto Corrente (Rome, Italy) - 2016, Bucharest French Film Festival - 2015, 2016, 2017 (Romania), Sundance Film Festival (Utah, USA) - 2016, International Film Festival (Berlin, Germany) - 2018 etc.

The team:
Radu Pervolovici - project director;
Romelo Pervolovici - production director;
Raluca Elena Doroftei - curator;
Florian Alexandrescu – PR;
Patric Pavel – documenting;
Vlad Dinu - image assistant;
Adrian Drăgoi - production assistant;
Flori Strâmbeanu - catering

You can find more about the residence on our website: http://metacinema.ro/index.php?year=202002&lang=EN

This cultural project is co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration (Administrația Fondului Cultural Național). The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the program can be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.

The project is sponsored by Impuls Leasing Romania.

#MagiCCarpets #CreativeEurope #art #contemporaryart #nomadism #travel #communities #aroundeurope #artistinresidency #emergingartist #emergingcurator


2019-05-31

Exhibition | An evening in my parents’ studio

 

 

Artists: 2META+ (Eva Pervolovici, Maria Manolescu, Romelo Pervolovici)
Curator: Georgiana Buț
Exhibition scenography: Radu Pervolovici
Sound design: Benoit Maerens
Opening: Sunday, 2 June 2019, 18:00, LA CAVE
Exhibition: 3-21 June (LA CAVE, GALERIA REFLEX)

The exhibition proposes a reflection about passing on the imaginary in a family of artists: the couple Maria Manolescu-Romelo Pervolovici and their children, an urban architect and a film director, united under the name Grupul 2META+. The project starts from Eva Pervolovici’s eponymous film, in which the director uses the means of autobiography to explore her parents’ pictorial practices, and equally, the role of artistic inheritance in shaping her inner world and her cinematic style. ’’An evening in my parents’ studio’’ thus becomes the story of the artistic coming of age of a director.

The narrative is conveyed through exhibition, which brings together, in complementarity, film, painting, sound design, and exhibition installation. In a scenography created by Radu Pervolovici, painting and film are alternated in order to generate a continuity between the discourses of various media, but also as a metaphor of the artistic bond between generations.

30-year old Eva, a director settled in Paris, visits her family in Romania. Upon entering the studio, she discovers in her parents’ canvases (who have returned to painting as a means of expression), elements recognizable in her work, fragments of memory, ’’childhood dreams and dreamt films” (E.P.). Her decision to make a film rekindles a childhood wish – Eva used to outline film ideas in her diary that she communicated to the future Eva. Starting from the question ’’Is there a genetic imaginary, creativity cells, a common memory that is passed on from parents to children?’’, the director begins her autobiographic research.

The two parts of the short film – childhood journeys and the journeys of the woman who creates – correspond to the two chapters of the exhibition narrative, dedicated to her parents’ paintings: ’’My father’s paintings” and ’’My mother’s paintings”. Maria Manolescu and Romelo Pervolovici have distinct practices that share the meta component and post-conceptual aesthetic paradigm. In their paintings there are ’’images that always invoke other images” (Maria Manolescu), and the intertextual play and plurality of discursive layers converge in that type of image ’’aware of its character of image” (Victor I. Stoichiță).

The studio is rendered within the exhibition space through cinematic narrative, but also through scenography. Canvases, the music played in the studio, and the two protagonists in the final scene of the film belong to the world in which the works have been created in, while being in the same time integrated in an exhibition installation which reduces the distance between the production and exhibition space (the studio and exhibition itself). Using film, paintings, sound design and architectural elements, Radu Pervolovici aims at articulating the concept of the exhibition in the three-dimensional space, while also capturing the cooperating spirit of the 2META+ group.

Grupul 2META+: Reunited since 1998 under the name Grupul 2META, Maria Manolescu and Romelo Pervolovici have been developing since 2010/11 a mutual interest for painting and two distinctive aesthetics, after a period of experimentation during which they worked in various media, exploring the notion of ’’meta”. Grupul 2META+ was born by extending the initial duo to a quartet, including the two artists and their children: a film director and an urban architect. Together, they contribute to disseminating contemporary Romanian art on a national and international scale through the activity of META Foundation, cultural project to which the entire family is dedicated. Eva Pervolovici (b. 1984, Bucharest) lives and works in Paris. In 2011, her short film Little Red was included in Berlin Film Festival and won the award ’’Cannes à la Flip” for the best short movie. Her debut feature film was Marussia, shown at the festival in Berlin in 2013, within Generation competition. Radu Pervolovici (b. 1987, Bucharest) lives and works in Bucharest. He has been the Director of META Cultural Foundation since 2011, of the Young Artists’ Biennial, starting with the 5th edition, as well as the initiator of the online projects A century of Romanian sculpture and A century of Romanian architecture.

Georgiana Buț (b. 1986, Târgu Mureș) lives and works in Cluj-Napoca. Currently, she is a PhD. student at the Department of Philosophy within ’’Babeș-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca. Her research focuses on contemporary art exhibition as an artistic medium. Her educational activity includes collaborations with University of Connecticut, Colorado State University, USA, and ’’Babeș-Bolyai” University, Cluj. She has been communication and programme coordinator for SPAȚIU INTACT gallery, Fabrica de Pensule and Quadro Gallery, Cluj; her curatorial activity includes: End of the Line, Camera K’ARTE, Târgu-Mureș (2018-19); Memoria ca viziune/Memory as Vision (assisting curator), Fabrica de Pensule spaces (2018); Oana Năstăsache: Albastru. La punctul de fierbere al culoriiOana Năstăsache: Blue. Colour’s boiling point, Camera K’ARTE, Târgu-Mureș (2016); Pulse, within the Veil, Casa Tranzit, Cluj (2011).

The event is organized by META Cultural Foundation in partnership with Transilvania International Film Festival, French Institute and the local Council of Cluj-Napoca, co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, and takes place as part of Romania-France Season 2019. The film ’’A night in my parents’ studio” is a coproduction of Ysé Production and META Foundation, it is co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, benefitting from the help of Paris City Hall (Mission Cinéma), International Francophone Organization, the Eastern Europe branch, and Romanian Cultural Institute.

Sponsor: Impuls Leasing | Media partners: Radio Guerrilla, AaRC, Filmsi, Filme-Cărți, Modernism.ro, Onlinegallery.ro

The exhibition is open until Friday, 21 June 2019 | FB event

Locations: LA CAVE Gallery of the French Institute in Cluj-Napoca, 22 Ion I. C. Brătianu Street, and REFLEX Gallery, 3 Iuliu Maniu Street.

Visiting hours: 3-21 June, Monday to Friday, 10:00-17:00.
*At the French Institute, the exhibition is open prior to film screenings during TIFF, as follows: 3-9 June, from Monday to Sunday, between 21:00-22:00.

 


2019-04-15

META Cultural Foundation organizes the second edition of the creative residence involving artists through the Magic Carpets - Creative Europe Platform, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

The event is going to take place in the village of Slon, Ceraşu, Romania, between 10th of July and 7th of August, 2019. The curator assigned by META Cultural Foundation is Raluca Elena Doroftei. Four emerging artists were invited to this year’s edition: Marta Elina Martinsone (Latvia), Luisa Sequeira (Portugal), Daniel Djamo (Romania) and Vlad Dinu (Romania).

Marta Elina Martinsone is a theatre and film director, residing in Riga, Latvia. In her works, as a theatre director, but also as film director, she analyses the relationship between imagination and reality - how we conceive worlds in our mind and how they clash with the reality creating existential conflict. She is interested in mixing theatre and film, by including theatrical means of expression in film and experimenting styles of acting. Marta holds a Master of Arts degree in Audiovisual Arts: Film directing and producing, and in Theatre Arts: Theatre directing, from the Latvian Academy of Culture, and a Master of Arts degree in Art history and theory, from the University of Essex, UK. Also, she studied a BA in history, at the University of Latvia.

Luisa Sequeira is a filmmaker and film curator, living in Porto, Portugal. She works on multiple platforms, such as film, video and photography exploring the intersections of cinema, design and emerging media. She studied journalism and specialized in directing documentaries at Porto University. Currently, she’s pursuing a PhD in Media Art, developing a research in memory, archive, archaeology and cinema. Since 2010, she is the artistic director of Shortcutz Porto and organizes Super 9 Mobile Film Fest, an online festival exclusively dedicated to mobile cinema. In cinema, she made several short, documentary and experimental films that have been screened at various international film festivals, exhibitions and symposiums.

Daniel Djamo is a Romanian visual artist and filmmaker. He is fascinated by the origins and stories of individuals and groups, as well as themes such as national identity. Blending film with performance and video art, he also creates photographic installations which evoke the past and underline ‘the instant’. Daniel holds a Master and a Bachelor degree of Arts from the Photography and Video - Computerized Image Processing Department of Bucharest National University of Arts, and obtained a Doctorate in Visual Arts from the Art History and Theory department of the same university. He also has a BA in Journalism, Public Relations and Communication Sciences from the Bucharest University. He has been awarded multiple prizes, including the ESSL Award CEE, the Henkel Art.Award. Young Artist Prize CEE, the Startpoint Prize Romania, Special Award for Documentary Film. His videos have been screened in numerous video art and film festivals, while also winning several awards for his artworks in the competitions.

Vlad Dinu is a Romanian visual artist and photographer, who lives and works in Bucharest, Romania. Vlad approaches ideas such as soul and metamorphosis of the human body, explores and observes nature, the urban medium and architecture, frequently using abstract filters. He is licensed in Photography and Video - Computerized Image Processing Department, at Bucharest National University of Arts and is currently pursuing Master studies in Photography and Dynamic Image at the same university.

Magic Carpets is a platform developed by thirteen European partners - Kaunas Biennial from Lithuania - the initiator of the project, Ideias Emergentes from Portugal, Eva International from Ireland, Folkstone Fringe from UK, KUNSTrePUBLIC from Germany, Prague Biennale from Czech Republic, Openspace from Austria, Latitudo from Italy, Lab852 from Croatia, Novo Kulturno Naselje from Serbia, Meta Cultural Foundation from Romania, New Theater Institute from Latvia, The Center for Contemporary Art from Georgia. The platform is designed for emerging artists, who have the opportunity to be selected by one of the thirteen partners for a one-month residency program. The aim is to encourage artistic productions together with local artists and communities. The project is co-funded by the European Union through the 2014-2020 Creative Europe – Culture program. More information about the project can be found on www.magiccarpets.eu.

Two of the Romanian artists proposed by META Cultural Foundation have been selected by our partners to participate in their residences:

Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, https://www.beneraestefan.ro/, by EVA International (https://www.eva.ie/) from Ireland.

Odeta Catana, https://odetacatana.com/, by New Theatre Institute (Homo Novus festival) http://www.homonovus.lv/eng/index, from Latvia.

The video works created at the Slon Residency through the Magic Carpets platform have the opportunity to be included in META Cinema’s selection programs and be promoted and enrolled in national and international competitions. In recent years, the shorts produced in Slon have been selected at prestigious international festivals: CineFestival, Los Angeles (USA) - 2016, Dublin International Short Film and Music Festival (Ireland) - 2016, Festival Corto Corrente (Rome, Italy) - 2016, Bucharest French Film Festival - 2015, 2016, 2017 (Romania), Sundance Film Festival (Utah, USA) - 2016, International Film Festival (Berlin, Germany) - 2018 etc.

#MagiCCarpets #CreativeEurope


2018-06-21

Creative Residence in Slon involving emerging artists through Magic Carpets EU Cultural Program

META Cultural Foundation has initiated the first edition of Magic Carpets International project for emerging artists, as part of its cine-residency program. The event is ongoing in the village Slon, Ceraşu, Romania, until 8 July 2018. Three emerging artists were invited to this year’s edition: Larisa Crunţeanu (Romania), Vojin Ivkov (Serbia) and Michal Kindernay (Czech Republic), selected by curator Raluca Elena Doroftei.

Larisa Crunţeanu studied Photography and Video at the National University of Arts Bucharest, and is currently a PhD student at the same institution. She works at the boundary between video and performance, between research and speculation, often in collaboration, generating contexts for new practices and forms of self-management. From 2012 to 2016 she coordinated together with Xandra Popescu the activity of “Atelier 35” project space in Bucharest. She works and lives in Bucharest and Warsaw.

Vojin Ivkov was born in Novi Sad, Serbia. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, New Media Department at the University of Novi Sad. In his recent projects of photography, video and performance, Vojin is preoccupied with preserving and documenting the past and the present. He works and lives in Novi Sad.

Michal Kindernay is an inter-media artist, curator and performer. His works include video performances, interactive installations, experimental documentary projects and sound compositions. He is one of the founders of the “yo-yo” non-profit culture organization, the initiator of the “RurArtMap” project, and was part of the “Školská 28” gallery group in Prague. He is a guest professor at the Centre for Audiovisual Studies in Film and TV at the Academy of Performing Arts. He works and lives in Prague.

Magic Carpets is a platform developed by thirteen European partners - Ideias Emergentes from Portugal, EVA International from Ireland, Folkestone Fringe from UK, KUNSTrePUBLIC from Germany, Prague Biennale from Czech Republic, Openspace from Austria, Latitudo from Italy, LAB 852 from Croatia, Novo kulturno Naselje from Serbia, Meta Cultural Foundation from Romania, New Theater Institute (Homo Novus festival) from Latvia, The Center for Contemporary Art from Georgia, and the Kaunas Biennial from Lithuania - the initiator of the project. The platform is designed for emerging artists - who have the opportunity to be selected by one of the thirteen partners for a one-month residency program. The aim is to encourage artistic productions (in this case video productions for the Slon Residecy) together with local artists and communities. The project is co-funded by the European Union through the 2014-2020 Creative Europe – Culture program. More information about the project can be found on www.magiccarpets.eu.

The video works created at the Slon Residency through the Magic Carpets platform have the opportunity to be included in META Cinema’s selection programs and be promoted and enrolled in national and international competitions. In recent years, the shorts produced in Slon have been selected at prestigious international festivals: CineFestival, Los Angeles (USA) - 2016, Dublin International Short Film and Music Festival (Ireland) - 2016, Festival Corto Corrente Roma (Italy) ) - 2016, Bucharest French Film Festival - 2015, 2016, 2017, Slamdance Film Festival (Utah, USA) - 2016, International Film Festival (Berlin) - 2018, etc.


2018-02-06

Two Romanian short films, produced by Slon Residency, in international premiere in Generation Kplus Competition in Berlin


The short films De Natura by Lucile Hadžhalilović and Trois rêves de ma jeunesse by Valérie Mrejen and Bertrand Schefer, produced during the last two editions of the annual project Slon Residency, organised by META Cinema - META Cultural Foundation, were selected in the official competition Generation Kplus in Berlin.

Slon Residency, initiated by META Cultural Foundation and META Cinema in 2015, aims at connecting Romanian and foreign filmmakers for a period of 10 days, in Slon, a small village in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains. Everything started from a living sculpture created by the Romanian visual artist Romelo Pervolovici, which the film director Eva Pervolovici transformed into a space dedicated to cinema creation. The contemporary aspect of the architecture contrasts with the picturesque of the rural environment of Slon, a setting which international filmmakers discover and (re)value by means of an alternative approach. From fiction, experimental and documentary short films to performance, the audio-visual works produced in Slon reflect the individual artistic differences but also the unity of the setting, as different Romanian realities. The invited filmmakers represent a heteroclite group, an essential criteria for their selection being their creativity and their ability to adapt to specific working conditions and to imagine a story and film it in just ten days. A unique setting, very different styles and stories from one year to another.


De Natura by Lucile Hadžhalilović
Water, earth, air, fire. And two children at the height of summer.

Screening schedule:
February 20th, 2018, 10.00 am, HKW (Premiere)
February 21st, 2018, 9.30, Filmtheater and Friedrichshain
February 22nd, 2018, 10.30, CinemaxX 1
February 22nd, 2018, 14.00, HAU Hebbelam Ufer (HAU 1, Berlinale Talents)
February 23rd, 2018, 10.00, Zoo Palast 2

„De Natura is an improvised poem, a peaceful and cheerful walk of two little girls in the middle of the nature, away from the eyes of grown-ups. But then, the joy starts disappearing gradually, the reverie becomes nostalgia, while at the edge of the road, among the summerʼs putrescence fruits, some faint faces appear. The cycle of life does not lessen the magic of the world, whether it is lit by the moon or by the sun.” (Lucile Hadžhalilović)

with Mihaela and Maria Manta, produced by Romelo Pervolovici and Radu Pervolovici, DoP: George Chiper-Lillemark, edting: Benjamin Hélius, sound engineer: Benoît Maerens, Antoine Bertucci, Matthieu Autin, spécial effects: Marie-Léa Gatti, colorist: Marc Boucrot, artistic director: Eva Pervolovici, director of production: Andreea Drăghicescu, assistant producer: Adrian Drăgoi.


Lucile Hadžhalilović | The film director studied art history before graduating from the Paris film school IDHEC (now La Fémis). Her debut mini-feature La bouche de Jean-Pierre was premiered in Un Certain Regard in Cannes in 1996. The critically acclaimed Innocence was awarded the award for Best Film in San Sebastian in 2004. Her latest film Evolution picked up the Special Jury Prize in San Sebastian in 2015. Additionally, Lucile Hadžihalilović has directed a few short films: Good Boys Use Condoms (1998), Nectar (2014), De Natura (2017).

„A camera crew is waiting for us in Slon, a small village in Romania where we have never been. For the first time, we don’t have a script. Just arrived, we must film. We had located on the map a salt lake where people come to spend their day floating like ballons. We discover a hut in the woods, with a big white dog that looks like the wolf of a Miyazaki tale. We walk on a nearby marketplace with our daughter. And finally we get on a train. Very quickly, it is the look of the child on what surrounds that captures our attention: the surprise of the discovery but also its innocent facility to adapt everywhere. She seems both lost and at home in this landscape that she doesn’t know. We think, fleetingly, to Wim Wenders' film Alice in den Städten. And if the little girl was the real character of our trip? And if all our images were only the dreams that the young actress realized before our very eyes?” (Valérie Mrejen și Bertrand Schefer)

with Adele Hélène Esther Schefer and Bogdan Mareș, produced by Radu Pervolovici, DoP: Zara Popovici, editing: Benjamin Hélius, sound engineering: Benoît Maerens, Mikaël Barre, colorist: Florian Martiny, artistic director: Eva Pervolovici, director of production: Andreea Drăghicescu, assistant producer: Adrian Drăgoi.


Valérie Mrejen | On leaving Art school Valérie Mrejen immediately took an interest in different means of expression in order to better explore the possibilities of the language. She started by editing a number of books - arts before shooting her first videos. Her works have been the subject of numerous exhibitions in France and abroad, mainly at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Virreina in Barcelona, the CCA in San Francisco, and the Laboratorio Arte Alameda in Mexico City. She has directed numerous short films and documentaries. Pork and Milk (2004), Valvert (2008) - and a feature-length fiction, En ville, co-directed with Bertrand Schefer. She has published the novels Mon grand-père (1999), L’Agrume (2001) / Zitrus, Suhrkamp, Eau sauvage (2004), with the Allia publishing house Forêt noire (2012) and Troisième personne (2017) with P.O.L. She was a resident at the Villa Medici in 2002 and at the villa Kujoyama in 2010. Her works can be found in numerous collections (Tate Modern, Musée d’Art Moderne, centre Georges Pompidou, Fondation Louis Vuittton).



Bertrand Schefer | French writer and filmmaker. He lives in Paris. After studying philosophy for six years at La Sorbonne University, he worked with serval publishers and became reader and script consultant for Arte France. He wrote his first novel and his first script ten years ago. En ville (Iris in Bloom), first feature film co-directed with Valérie Mréjen, was released in 2011.


2017-11-24


2017-04-26

Spring 2017 GRAND Opening


MNAC Bucharest happily announces the opening of the new season’s exhibitions on April 27, 7 pm, at the Palace of Parliament.

Save the date!


OPENING: THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 2017, 7pm

The National Museum of Contemporary Art – MNAC Bucharest

The Palace of Parliament


Image credit: Romelo Pervolovici, Wilderness Fire, 2013, oil on canvas, 203 x 160 cm (photo credit Romelo Pervolovici, ©2META) )


Image credit: Maria Manolescu, #103, 2016, dimensions: 183 x 132 cm (photo credit Romelo Pervolovici, ©2META)


METAREALIA – AT THE SAME TIME

2META / Maria Manolescu, Romelo Pervolovici

Curators: Raluca-Elena Doroftei, Andreea Drăghicescu

27.04.2017 - 08.10.2017
3rd floor

METAREALIA – At The Same Time exhibition reveals the most recent activity of 2META - Maria Manolescu and Romelo Pervolovici. Mostly known as media artists, they start using painting as a means of expression in 2010. Their works of art meet and overlap around the meta concept. The 2META painting seeks out breaches of reality, multiple realities, reality after reality – while the 2 artists work together on different canvases. At the same time a unique practice is drawn, with identifiable aesthetics, radically specific and unique. Metarealia defines a hybrid visual space where idea meets matter. (Raluca-Elena Doroftei, Andreea Drăghicescu, 2META)

Architect: Radu Pervolovici

MNAC Coordinator: Magda Predescu

Winner of the MNAC Call for projects 2015



2016-11-10

Metarealia: A Metavisual Discourse/ 2META

(Editura META, București, 2016)

The META Cultural Foundation, together with the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, are organising the launch of the retrospective album Metarealia: a metavisual discourse/ 2META. The event will take place on Friday, 11 November, 19:00, at the Cărturești Verona Bookstore (Str. Arthur Verona 13-15), in the presence of critics and art historians Magda Cârneci and Igor Mocanu, while writer Ion Bogdan Lefter will participate on video.


Please contact us for any other details.

Andreea Drăghicescu

0723.154.052​


2016-11-07

A Century of Romanian Architecture - www.e-architecture.ro

Photography exhibition and the launching of the online encyclopaedia, the 1918-1944 timeframe.


On Wednesday, November 9th, at 6:30 p.m., in Piața Amzei, first floor (Piața Amzei 13), META Cultural Foundation kindly invites you to the opening of the photography exhibition and the launching event for the online encyclopaedia A Century of Romanian Architecture (the 1918-1944 period).

The double event will be attended by Mihaela Criticos, Mariana Croitoru, Anca Filip, Oana Marinache, Mircea Ochinciuc, Gabriela Petrescu, Dragoș Popescu, Sidonia Teodorescu, Ion Bogdan Lefter.

The cultural project is financed by ARCUB and P.M.B. within the program „Bucharest the Invisible City, 2016”, by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, and by the Union of Romanian Architects from the fund „Architecture Stamp” 2016.

The second edition of the project "A Century of Romanian Architecture", dedicated to architecture in the interbellic period, can be accessed at www.e-architecture.ro starting with the 8th November 2016.

The encyclopaedic project, started by META Cultural Foundation, was initiated at the beginning of the 2000s in the form of a printed dictionary, the first stage being materialized in 2001, with the emergence of the dictionary A Century of Romanian Sculpture (A-D), published in the "Sinteze" Collection, META Publishing House. In 2013, with the support of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund (ANCF), partnered with the Romanian Fine Artists’ Union and the National University of Art (UNArte), this was resumed in electronic format, the first edition of the online encyclopaedia, called A Century of Romanian Sculpture (A - M), being launched in the autumn of 2013. The second edition of the project that took place in 2014, with the financial support of AFCN, comprises the second part of the dictionary (N-Z) and it was launched in the autumn of last year. (www.sculpture.ro)

In 2015, META Cultural Foundation returned with a new encyclopaedia, this time dedicated to Romanian architecture and integrated in a wider cultural program which consists of two complementary cultural projects, and which this year is at the second edition:

  1.   The Romanian architecture bilingual online encyclopaedia, second edition, 1918-1944 - www.e-architecture.ro

  2.   The photography exhibition A Century of Romanian Architecture (1918-1944), open in the period 9 November - 4 December 2016.

With a specific and well documented content, the encyclopaedia and the exhibition aim at achieving an extended vision of Romanian architecture of the last 100 years in four separate stages (2015 – 1890-1918, 2016 – 1918-1947, 2017 – 1947-1989, 2018 – 1989-2018), in the proposed format – online and bilingual/exhibition, which will contain data of a both historical and critic content, ample information of the 20th century history but also more recent information regarding the architectural activity of the ones selected, already famous names and new ones, belonging to the younger architects, as well.   The online edition is the first bilingual encyclopaedia with free access that has been dedicated to the architects in Romania and it currently gathers the files of more than 60 architects that worked during the 1890-1918 timeframe.

The encyclopaedia will not represent a mere tool designed as a database, useful to all the students, the architect-professors and the architects, the architecture theoreticians, the cultural operators, the editors, the professors, the managers of museums or cultural centres, but it will also feature a critical apparatus, META Cultural Foundation currently collaborating with a team of architect-professors including: Ana-Maria Zahariade, Mihaela Criticos, Mircea Ochinciuc, Arpad Zachi, Dragoș Ciolacu, Mariana Croitoru, Anca Filip, Oana Marinache, Gabriela Petrescu, Sidonia Teodorescu, Andrei Răzvan Voinea, a team that it intends to expand for the following stages.

A Century of Romanian Architecture will remain an open project, as a work in progress platform which can be permanently updated even by any virtual visitor that wishes to make changes, corrections or additions to the already existing files on the site. They will be able to complete the files accessing the "Contribute" menu, available for every single page and, after the information is verified by the members of our team, the data will be introduced in the encyclopaedia.

META Cultural Foundation, established in 1995 in Bucharest, aims to build a cultural discourse on a contemporary, inter- and multidisciplinary level, to promote Romanian contemporary art on a national and European scale, to open the Romanian cultural backgrounds to the changes that occur on today’s art scene.

Project organized by META Cultural Foundation

Cultural project financed by ARCUB and P.M.B. within the program „Bucharest the Invisible City, 2016”, by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, and by the Union of Romanian Architects from the fund „Architecture Stamp” 2016.

Cultural project hosted by Amzei Market Makers, an initiative by The Institute and ING.

Project conducted with the support of the "Ion Mincu" University of Architecture and Urbanism, The Centre of Excellence in Image Studies and the Faculty of Letters – University of Bucharest, Arhitext Design Foundation, the Central University Library „Carol I”, the UAUIM Library and the UAR Library. 

Media Partners: Arhitext, Contemporanul, Zeppelin, Igloo, Observator Cultural, AgențiadeCarte, Radio România Cultural, Modernism.ro, Iqool, onlinegallery.ro.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unsecoldearhitecturaromaneasca

Contact: Andreea Drăghicescu, metacult@gmail.com, 0723.154.052


2016-11-01

Le Meilleur de Slon – French Film Festival

META Cultural Foundation and META Cinema, toghether with the French Institute of Bucharest, are organizing the event Le Meilleur de Slon – Festivalul de Film Francez, a screening of short films created during the first two editions (2015-2016) of the project International Audio-Visual Creative Residency (Slon, Romania). The screening will take place on Saturday, November 5, at 20:45, in the cinema Elvira Popescu. Directors François Barbier, Andreas Bolm, Lucile Hadžihalilović, Benoît Maerens, Eva Pervolovici, and director of photography George Chiper-Lillemark will be present.



Short film selection from 1st and 2nd editions :

Benoît Maerens. Sans tambour ni trompette. Film performance. Locuitorii satului descoperă o casă prin lumină și sunet.
Festival de court-métrage "Silence, on court!", Paris, Franța
Slamdance film festival, Utah, SUA


François Barbier. Istoria lumină. Mirela, o tânără dansatoare, fragilă și agitată, încearcă să se spovedească preotului din sat...
International Film Festival FERFILM Ferizaj, Kosovo
International Kids Film Festival in San Diego, SUA
CineFestival in Los Angeles, USA
Creation International Film Festival in Ottawa, Canada
International Short Film and Music Festival Dublin, Irlanda
Muestra Audiovisual CINE SINU in Montería, Columbia
Festival "Silence, on court!" in Paris, Franța
Fête des Vendanges de Montmartre 2016 in Paris, Franța
12 Months Film Festival in Cluj, România


Vanja Sviličić. Fata cu mustață. Doi turiști francezi se rătăcesc într-un sat din România. Ocazie de a descoperi prejudecățile legate de Europa de Est
Festival de court-métrage "Silence, on court!", Paris, Franța
Slamdance film festival, Utah, SUA


Eva Pervolovici. Fără titlu. Un pictor, modelul lui, șoferul... o cină în trei neobișnuită, în mijlocul munților.
Festival de court-métrage "Silence, on court!", Paris, Franța
Slamdance film festival, Utah, SUA


Andreas Bolm. Alin. Lui Alin, un adolescent de 14 ani, îi place să se plimbe. Când se plimbă visează. Când visează întâlnește lume.

Lucile Hadžhalilović. De natura. Două fetițe, patru elemente, fructele verii și - trecătoare - moartea.

Contact:
Andreea Drăghicescu,
metacult@gmail.com, 0723.154.052


2016-08-12




2016-05-04

Beginning in May this year, META Cultural Foundation has restarted work on the project A Century of Romanian Sculpture - Online Encyclopedia, with the goal of updating the records created two years ago.

We welcome up-to-date information related to the artists included in the encyclopedia, as well as suggestions for new additions to our project.

We can be contacted by email, at metacult@gmail.com, or through our site, www.sculpture.ro, by filling the "Contribute" form with the addition or modification you wish to suggest.

We can also be found on https://www.facebook.com/sculpture.ro/



2015-11-08

A Century of Romanian Architecture


www.e-architecture.ro


Photography exhibition and the launching of the online encyclopaedia, the 1890-1918 timeframe.


On Tuesday, November 10th, at 7 p.m., in the Underground space on the premises of The Ark, META Cultural Foundation kindly invite you to the opening of the photography exhibition and the launching event for the online encyclopaedia A Century of Romanian Architecture (the 1890-1918 period).


The double event will be attended by Nicolae Lascu, Mihaela Criticos, Arpad Zachi, Mariana Croitoru, Florentina Matache, Gabriela Petrescu, Miruna Stroe, Sidonia Teodorescu, Ion Bogdan Lefter.


A Century of Romanian Architecture can be accessed at http://www.e-architecture.ro/ starting with November 9th 2015.


The encyclopaedic project, started by META Cultural Foundation, was initiated at the beginning of the 2000s in the form of a printed dictionary, the first stage being materialized in 2001, with the emergence of the dictionary A Century of Romanian Sculpture (A-D), published in the "Sinteze" Collection, META Publishing House. In 2013, with the support of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund (ANCF), partnered with the Romanian Fine Artists’ Union and the National University of Art (UNArte), this was resumed in electronic format, the first edition of the online encyclopaedia, called A Century of Romanian Sculpture (A - M), being launched in the autumn of 2013. The second edition of the project that took place in 2014, with the financial support of AFCN, comprises the second part of the dictionary (N-Z) and it was launched in the autumn of last year. (www.sculpture.ro)


This year, META Cultural Foundation returns with a new encyclopaedia, this time dedicated to Romanian architecture and integrated in a wider cultural program which consists of two complementary cultural projects:


1. The Romanian architecture bilingual online encyclopaedia, available from November 9th 2015 at www.e-architecture.ro;
2. The photography exhibition A Century of Romanian Architecture (the 1890-1918 period).


With a specific and well documented content, the encyclopaedia and the exhibition aim at achieving an extended vision of Romanian architecture of the last 100 years in four separate stages (2015 – 1890-1918, 2016 – 1918-1947, 2017 – 1947-1989, 2018 – 1989-2018), in the proposed format – online and bilingual/exhibition, which will contain data of a both historical and critic content, ample information of the 20th century history but also more recent information regarding the architectural activity of the ones selected, already famous names and new ones, belonging to the younger architects, as well. The online edition is the first bilingual encyclopaedia with free access that has been dedicated to the architects in Romania and it currently gathers the files of more than 60 architects that worked during the 1890-1918 timeframe.


The encyclopaedia will not represent a mere tool designed as a database, useful to all the students, the architect-professors and the architects, the architecture theoreticians, the cultural operators, the editors, the professors, the managers of museums or cultural centres, but it will also feature a critical apparatus, META Cultural Foundation currently collaborating with a team of architect-professors including: Ana-Maria Zahariade, Mihaela Criticos, Mircea Ochinciuc, Arpad Zachi, Dragoș Ciolacu, Mariana Croitoru, Oana Marinache, Florentina Matache, Gabriela Petrescu, Miruna Stroe, Sidonia Teodorescu, Răzvan Voinea, a team that it intends to expand for the following stages.


A Century of Romanian Architecture will remain an open project, as a work in progress platform which can be permanently updated even by any virtual visitor that wishes to make changes, corrections or additions to the already existing files on the site. They will be able to complete the files accessing the "Contribute" menu, available for every single page and, after the information is verified by the members of our team, the data will be introduced in the encyclopaedia.


META Cultural Foundation, established in 1995 in Bucharest, aim to build a cultural discourse on a contemporary, inter- and multidisciplinary level, to promote Romanian contemporary art on a national and European scale, to open the Romanian cultural backgrounds to the changes that occur on today’s art scene.


Project organized by META Cultural Foundation


Cultural project financed by The Administration of the National Cultural Fund, Ordinul Arhitecților din România in "Timbrul arhitecturii", A.R.C.U.B. and P.M.B. within the Cultural Program "Ești București".


Project conducted with the support of The Ark, The "Ion Mincu" University of Architecture and Urbanism, The Centre of Excellence in Image Studies and the Faculty of Letters – University of Bucharest, Arhitext Design Foundation, The Contemporary Cultural Identity Association.


Media Partners: Arhitext, Zeppelin, ArtOut, Igloo, Modernism.ro, Observator Cultural, Revista 22, AgențiadeCarte, Ziare.com, Radio România Cultural.


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