Projects

“The idea of starting a group arisen from our strong will to express and share around an artistic gesture in the Urban and Rural space. Our projects are designed and structured around the identity of the individual chased by the consumerism and society, bringing in the spotlight the principles that keep this society going.”

focAR group (Alina Tudor and Razvan Neagoe)

Je passe / J’habite /Je vis

Starting from the idea that every place is defined by the people who live there, we are now faced with a mixture of nationalities and races which is helped by the tourism to increase its diversity. So that man become beset by men. From the outside. Coming and leaving. Flurry, order and disorder.

Then architecture–city and urban–city too.

Pleasant and civilised congeries of very new and very old. Two notions wich can paradoxically survive and help each other beeing juxtaposed. They highlight each other.

The project’s intention is to reflect inside the outside space as it really looks for the people who visit or live in it. We wanted to understand and watch the City of Lyon from two different points of view, through the inhabitants’ eyes and the tourists’ eyes.
We considered the two different perspectives and mixed them in an art installation.
Living in Lyon we understood there were two worlds coexisting. The inhabitants interfere less with the tourists but from inhabitants’ point of view the tourism means crowd and it can be annoying sometimes.
Using the separation of these worlds as a main idea of the project, the installation is made of four parts:

• THE RECTANGLE: the rectangle is very used in Lyon’s architecture so that we decided to describe it inside the container. It is designed as a rectangle in perspective and it is an expression of the inhabitants and their homes. The rectangle contains a projection on the wall and the floor of the container made by the names of the inhabitants of Lyon.
In the middle of these names there is a watering can as a resonance with the green space of Lyon which needs to be larger. Generally speaking, the watering can is a symbol for growing and looking after; so that we want to keep this idea for the project: the growing and improving green space, the growing and improving living space.

• THE TOURISTIC LAB: tourism can be very annoying for the inhabitants but it represents a very actual side of the city. This lab is made of different things that remind of tourism: kitsch souvenirs, remains of drinks or food (collected from famous places) and pieces of the touristic space (water from Rhone or Saone, sand, leaves, earth etc)
The installation is about the common things you can see and use every day, things that in the tourism terms become different, unusual, souvenirs or piece of landscape.

• THE INHABITANTS LAB: this lab is a representation of the other side of the city, it’s about the inhabitants thoughts and opinions. It is presented as a video projected on the front wall of the container.
It is focused around the inhabitants of the 7th district points of view as a particular case of the city. We chose this area for the film because this is the place where we worked during the art residency and we could observe it more than any other inhabitants’ areas.
Last but not least, the 7th district is not touched yet by tourism; it is still multicoloured and owns a strong personality. Lived by different races and types of people we found it unique and we think it’s a place that should be kept without being majorly changed in terms of multiculturalism.
From this point of view the video is a reflection of the district inside the container. People were invited to answer a few questions about the city, the area and about the tourism as well. Their answers compose an interesting lab of opinions.

• THE VISITORS: the fourth piece of installation is made by the visitors themselves. Our artwork is completed only when the container is visited by 1 or 2 persons.
The 12 square metres surface of the container is the surface corresponding for 1.6 persons in Lyon. The number is obtained dividing the Lyon surface on the number of people founding here (tourists and inhabitants).
Entering the container people can see a real image of the space they belong/use/take.

more details here
Roger Tator gallery, 1 quai Claude Bernard, Lyon, 69007

‘Steps to Identity’ project in the 2010 Biennial Illumini

London is well known for the busy life going underneath it – whether it’s the underground, tunnels, passages or any other place located under the city itself. The Tube is the transportation option chosen by most of the inhabitants of this city, due to the well-known agglomeration above ground, so we can in fact talk about an entire underground development of the city due to this. Difficult to build from a technical perspective, underground London is actually just as accessible as above ground London. Due to this development, underground London has developed its own identify, due to a whole series of elements that define it, the key word here being “diversity”.
The Greenwich passage is a link part of this chain of underground development, an actual tourist spot while also being an access path used very often – yet maintaining a spectacular architecture.
A large number of pedestrians use this pass daily, from different social categories, age groups and ethnic groups.
Thus, the Greenwich passage reveals itself as an corridor animated by the human crowds, a hallway loaded with different silhouettes, some in a hurry, some relaxed, but all and each one of them adding to the identity imprint of this place with every step laid here.

more details here

installation art project

exhibition image

MOnuMENTS (june 2010)

more details: here

MOnuMENTS Documentation

Monument of Independence Independence Square, Iasi, Romania

Monument of Victory Park of Constantza Town Hall, Constantza county, Romania

“THE COUNTRY ELAN” MONUMENT Walter Maracineanu Square, near Cismigiu Garden, Bucharest, Romania

The Travellers Box Project, in addition to MOnuMENTS project (March-April 2010)

In between 14 March – 25 April 2010 focAR group will set off together with “The Travelers Box” Project.
focAR group’s action is part of The Travelers Box Project. The event will take place in the very heart of London.
Transferring the project (MOnuMENTS) in London may bring a new direction to the project. It is now possible to suggest a comparison – the observation of the monuments from the two capitals. The interest points of the research are the concept, the urbanism, the artist, the techniques and the general partner, (the state) as well. Being a visual expression of a public attitude, the monuments history has always developed between the two extremes – the pious acceptance, while evoking a glorious past and disproof.
more details: here

The Travellers Box Project, in addition to MOnuMENTS project (March?April 2010)

On 15th of April focAr group set off together with Travellers Box for the second time. The event took place in the very heart of London and consisted in a performance?journey. The action documented monuments located on the National Gallery – House of Parliament route. These monuments commemorate the heroes from wars or representative personalities for British space. The two members of the group placed a flower bouquet at each monument and held a silent moment in the heroes’ memory.

performance (15 April 2010)

On 10th of April performance in West Ham – “We are the champions” statue (sculptor Philip Jackson ? At the junction of Barking Road and Central Park Road Showing Bobby Moore, holding the Cup, with Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters and Ray Wilson. This shows the four celebrating after England won the World Cup in 1966. The artist has depicted these soccer heroes as being larger than life). The action consisted in the placement of a flower bouquet at the monument and in holding a meditation moment about “heroes” condition.

performance (10 April 2010) West Ham

We keep a “diary” of The Box using photos. As long as we host the Box, we are going to take a photo of The Box daily, trying to notice the evolution of the project. Every day will add something new inside or around The Box.

"Diary" The Travellers Box Project (march-april 2010)

Political Decision (started in April 2010)

“Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in other group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of “social relations involving authority or power” and refers to the regulation of a political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy.”(Wikipedia)
Political Decision is a signal?project, a social one meaning to draw the citizen’s attention on his identity. This concept was developed in a form of work?in?progress activities each activity in it making each time the project even more complex and complete. Therefore it is under a continuous change gathering “traces” with each presentation.

political decision

Red Spot (2008)

RED SPOT is a finger pointing to several problems in the city: buildings, streets, neighbourhoods, in a Bucharest that was little Paris sometimes, now is a city buried under cars, dust, resentments (is it a young European city?), a cultural capital in the future or a chaotic commercial, consumerism city?

Project RED SPOT has proposed to point out to those places which are abandoned. The city centre is such area, and it is forgotten for too long. There are lots of streets fading away in front our eyes meanwhile with listed buildings even, which are very numerous and enhance scruffy and gray atmosphere of Bucharest.

In 2008, the Red Spot project was part of the Programme of public art I love Bucharest, part of the European Year for Intercultural Dialogue, which was supported by ProHelvetia through United Experts. It is an art gesture constructed as a signal-project, a project meant to warn the people of Bucharest –inhabitants and authorities, individuals and private companies – and it had as objectives: a building, a street or a monument.

more details: here

Red Spot

MOnuMENTS project (started in 2007, ongoing)

“MOnuMENTS” is an artistic project, which proposes a cultural and social reflection; aiming at a dialogue between rural and urban spaces, between different mentalities, between past and present. “MOnuMENTS” is a natural, organic response from the artists to all these mutations and reconfigurations of the present time. The immediate result is the documentation of the diversity as a mixture between the urban and rural development, between cultural gestures and collective and individual gestures. The mission of the project is a “work in progress” nature, which means ongoing working possibilities, means associations, changes and social dynamics. We are dealing with cultural gestures as well as individual or collective gestures, in between different representations but using similar techniques. “MOnuMENTS” presents the reality through the enticement of gesture, cultural and imagistic quotes which get filter and interpreted, and the balance in between metaphorical and abstract. Monuments have always had a dual character: on one hand they commemorated history, and on the other hand they have been contested by many social groups which opposed certain ideological tendencies. The studying of monuments is a necessary study everywhere, as they offer many dates that are carved in stone regarding various ideologies and historical moments. Our research started in 2007, but the project officially opened in 2009, when we made a performance aiming to attract the attention of forgotten monuments or the ones in a state of visible decay. This happened on the route from Constantza to Bucharest when we had the opportunity to notice the differences between urban and rural exhibited monuments.

more details: here

Bacau (Romania)

London

Lyon (France)

Memory of the Golden Age (started in 2009, ongoing)

It is a project having a documentary, history, artistic, cultural and social structure, touching on the economics, as well.

more details: here

mixed media

Romania

fabrica in drum spre bicaz 2008

Agenda (performances) (started in 2009, ongoing)

May First celebrations are held everywhere in the world for well over a century now and the diverse significance attached to this date tend to somehow blur on the canvas of a multitude of causes that people congregate around recently.

The origins of these celebrations are easily lost in an immemorial past. Whether it was the night of the Walpurgis in the german countries or the celtic festivals of Beltane (the ancient celtic word for „May”) or countless other popular celebration rites from different areas of Europe, May First was a major pagan celebration. These traditions were recovered by Christianity and integrated in the symbolic patrimony which is visible even nowadays.

May First celebrations in the modern times are inherently connected with the emancipation of the workers and unions forces at the end of the XIX-th century, namely the union street protests from United States and Europe for the „eight hour day” (that success is widely considered as the first step in the emancipation of the proletarian conscience). May First was universally declared the International Workers’ Day at the beginning of XX-th century, being celebrated today in over 100 countries all over the world.

May First is one of the most important days in a year when a plurality of ideological, political, ecological, etc. discourses are signaled through major street demonstrations in cities around the world: different socialist, communist, anarchist groups demonstrate on May First, remembering the predecessor’s fight while signaling pressing contemporary social issues. Many of these demonstrations have in common the impugnment of the capitalist system.

The worker, the man who is working is the central figure of this day. The long story of May First celebrations is marked by the evolution from a pagan celebration of spring and nature to the dynamic, protesting affirmation of the working man’s identity – a long evolution which underlines the dichotomy between the ancient and mythical celebration of the nature’s forces / modern celebration of human forces. The method of celebration remained common – dynamic, sometimes violent, anarchical.

more details: here

performance

Vadu - performance

Ion Corvin forest - performance

216 project (2008)

216 is a personal project of a documentary, artistic, cultural and social structure. 216 represent the number of pregnancy days – from the moment one finds out the great news until the actual birth; and 2008 is obviously the year these days have been spent in.
216 is a photo and video project, which allows us to rediscover ourselves as individuals, through the art of drawing. We have attempted to change the relationship with the everyday, the commonplace, and the usual. The belly has become a social place where we question the urban and rural identity through the lens of a new experience, the experience of preparing for a new life, which in turn triggers a new attitude. We express our thoughts, confusions and feelings encountered during this period regarding the society, the politics, the natural disasters, the global warming, the start of the financial meltdown worldwide, the current situation of art in today’s society, the supermarket, the shopping mall, with the tarmac, the concrete, the grass, the tree, the park, the boulevard, the streets and so on. This way we have auto?invited ourselves to getting involved, to make a stand, to have an attitude, to make a social and cultural gesture in the same time.

216 project

stART Dambovita and Red Spot (2007-2008)

In 2008, the Red Spot project was part of the Programme of public art I love Bucharest, part of the European Year for Intercultural Dialogue, which was supported by ProHelvetia through United Experts. It is an art gesture constructed as a signal?project, a project meant to warn the people of Bucharest –inhabitants and authorities, individuals and private companies – and it had as objectives: a building, a street or a monument.

more details: here

stART Dambovita

Phone Box (2008)

The call box continues the series of non?conventional spaces of Urban Traces, the phone becoming an exponent of the urban society. It is a part of our life helping us to make connections and keep in touch with everyone. In every apartment there is a stable phone every individual has one or two mobile phones, in every boulevard or street there is a call box. The phone means movement and expresses the identity of individual who talks on it. The stable phone used to be a communication means more rapid and it means the identity of the older generation.
The offers of the mobile phones companies are at competition and for the new generations the phone represents more than a means of communication. For them the mobile phone is a way of living. Its brand, colour the gesture with which one answers the mobile, the call bell shows the identity of the individual who possesses it. On the other hand the call box is assaulted. It has become a social place. It is physically assaulted by the urban society. The windows of the call box are usually broken. And yet there are extreme situations when individuals need this call box and make phone calls. People pass indifferently by it. No one sees it no one asks any questions about it. It is sometimes used as a shelter against rain. We bring into discussion the urban and rural identity through the call box. We will express our thoughts confusion and feelings in relation with the society with the concrete, the grass, the tree, the park, the boulevard, the street. In this way the individual is invited to participate, to look for a position, an attitude so that he may launch a social gesture.

more details: here

EXIST

Phone Box

Urban Traces (2007-2008)

UT is a signal?project, a social one, meaning to draw the citizen’s attention on his identity. This concept was developed in a form of work?in?progress activities each activity in it making each time the project even more complex and complete. Therefore it is under a continuous change and modification gathering “traces” with each presentation.
The main idea of the project is “Identity” – the artist’s identity, the individual’s identity, the nation’s identity! Identity – not national, not ethnical, not sexual or religious, not communitarian or zonal or any other kind but an urban identity, an identity created by the urban society which defines us, given by the coloured monochrome of every day and every night of the cities where we are born, grow live and work, a borrowed identity, non?personal impersonal. An identity, unidentified, imprinted with every detail of the urban life starting with block district, shop, super?market mall and ending with the politics and culture of the city, its specific means of behavior and communication.
Urban Traces is a project mainly in black?and?white decomposing the dirty grey of the city and painting the traces we do not perceive as they are proper to us for the very simple reason that they penetrate us and mould us.
The exhibition spaces for the project were both from conventional and non?conventional field trying to cover as many representative elements of the city as possible. Each exhibition had its subject subordinate to the main idea of the project with a view to gather more and more information about what a city means, art in the city, or perception of the urban space.

more details: here

Urban Traces

High up there, there’s a house (2007)

True Story: “In this project a house, a block, a street, a district and city along with two boys and two girls were involved. We had a chapter, a part about vacuum, a part about the history of a house in a block. In this street demolition came first and then the famous blocks?of?flats were raised. The years have passed and these blocks have become history, a history of today’s society. Over the coming years they will be demolished and replaced by new residences. In this very block of flats contrasts, disillusionment, joy have lived and the concrete walls make part of them. The cold concrete has become a part of the people who live inside.
Every individual has its life, its identity. The hosts who put at our disposal their apartment came to the conclusion that the cold concrete may become warm every time they get home, late at night. The concrete is for them like a human being suffering every time they are away for too long and is happy when they smoke inside. We experienced this sensation too: that of a guest welcome by the human concrete and we were impressed by its quality – becoming warm when the inside is populated. The same way we got to meet the human?concrete – the apartment. So we let everyone know that the hosts will be involved in the project called Urban Traces. The human?concrete thrills with joy. It has meant to become a star. So we started the job. Brushes, canvas, a camera and much black and white. “She” wanted to be involved in decoration but the hosts objected to it. “She” is the star and we are going to show it the way it is. Empty like vacuum. Without its masters. As they work all the day to bring her gifts in those six hours of staying together at night. Some days passed and the big day arrived. Guests, discussion and conveniences. But our heroine stayed alone. The access to it was permitted for a single person. With invitation. Stupor! First person to enter said “Only this?”. The human?concrete herd and got angry because it was only it itself as it is every day?empty. A film was on TV for the human?concrete not to forget about its masters… it happened that the masters were written with some sound words of the urban space. After a few minutes people became accustomed with the human?concrete and the human?concrete with them. She was more welcoming, but as empty as it was before and the discussion in the corridor grew stronger. It suffered with every leaving of a visitor. So at night there remained only the two guests involved in this project and the hosts. It become again that human accustomed with the monotony of every day. The moment to enjoy together came but it was too late. Everybody had to go to bed. “

more details: here