Ideas for Planet Earth

Guests: Adriana Radu, Alina Dumitriu, Anca Bucur, Andreea Petrut, Carolina Vozian, David Schwartz, Eugen Jebeleanu, Florin Poenaru, Georgiana Lican, Ileana Negrea, Ioana Gheorghiu, Ionuț Sociu, Irina Botea, Iulia Popovici, Luiza Vasiliu, Marius Vintilă, Mihai Burcea, Mihai Lukács, Nicoleta Moise, Niko G, Paula Dunker, Raluca Voinea & Vlad Basalici, Tudorina Mihai, Veda Popovici, Viktoriya Medvedeva, CEVA Educational Center for Performing Arts;

Biographies

Adriana Radu is the founder of SEXUL vs BARZA, she has two degrees in literature in Lyon, France and a Master in Public Health in Berlin, Germany. In 2018 and 2020 she co-wrote, respectively wrote and directed the plays Protejat/Neprotejat and Portret al artistei ca tânără influenceriță.

Alina Dumitriu is a human rights activist with an emphasis on health, a social worker and a psychotherapist. She leads the Sens Pozitiv Association. She has been working for 17 years with people living with HIV, Tuberculosis, chronic hepatitis B and C and other STIs throughout Romania and with those at high risk of infection: people who use injecting drugs, homeless people, people who practice sex work, LGBTQIA and Roma communities.

Anca Bucur is a poet and visual artist. Her practice is based on research and it crosses different environments and registers, at the crossroads between anthropology and ecology. She completed her studies in 2018 at the University of Bucharest, specialized in literature and cultural studies. She is interested in the epistemological dimension of the artistic object and its potential to intervene critically in the construction of socio-economic and political narratives. She is part of the frACTalia editorial team. She works and lives in Bucharest.

Andreea Petruț has been working in the NGO environment for more than 10 years. She has organized projects involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers, coordinated advocacy and communication campaigns in areas such as education, anti-corruption, human rights and environmental protection, and mobilized grassroots communities. For 3 years she has been coordinating the communication team of the Act for Tomorrow association, an environmental N, and although it was established just 3 and a half years ago, it has become one of the most relevant environmental and sustainability organizations in Romania. Andreea wants her work to make the world a better place for today, but also for future generations. She fights for a society that leaves no one behind and where respect for nature is a priority.

Carolina Vozian is a writer and cultural worker. As a child, she loved to immerse herself in stories and to write her own, in their various forms: journals, prose, theater/performance texts, essays, all sorts of fragmentary hybrids, and sometimes poetry. In recent years she has facilitated creative writing workshops, coordinated an anthology of speculative prose (Lumile noastre posibile), written a queer play (Negreșită) and various other texts that have appeared in magazines and collective volumes.

David Schwartz is a director, theorist and teacher, living and working in Bucharest. He is interested in investigating social transformations in the post-socialist period; labour relations, mechanisms of resistance and labour cooperation; art as a means of education and political emancipation. He is a member of the Vârsta4 community art collective at the Moses Rosen retirement home in Bucharest, coordinator of the Platforma de Teatru Politic and a university lecturer at the U.N.A.T.C. Bucharest. He has a PhD in the history and theory of local political theater, at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj. In 2013 he co-initiated and coordinated for five years Gazeta de Artă Politică and was a founding member and coordinator of the theatre program at MACAZ Teatru Coop between 2016 and 2019.

After graduating from acting at UNATC – Bucharest and finished a Master of Directing and Dramaturgy in Paris, Eugen Jebeleanu dedicated his activity to directing theatre, opera and, more recently, film. In 2010 he founded, together with the playwright Yann Verburgh, Company 28, and later Cie des Ogres in 2017, collaborating in recent years with the most important theatres in the country, including those in Sibiu. He also directed numerous shows, performed on stages in France and Germany. In 2017, he directed Căpcăuni, a project that was awarded by the Fédération d’Associations de Théâtre Populaire (FATP). For the show Itinerarii. Într-o zi, lumea se va schimba, he received in 2019 the award for best director at the UNITER Awards Gala. He collaborated with the Lyon Opera on John Adams’s I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. In 2020, he made his debut as a film director with the feature film Câmp de maci, awarded at the TIFF 2021 Festival for Best Director.

Florin Poenaru is a lecturer in sociology at the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from Central European University and was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at City University of New York. He works on topics related to class, post-socialism and theories of history. He is a co-editor of CriticAtac, a founding member of Lefteast and a Bilten author. He published Locuri comune: clasă, anti-comunism, stânga (Tact, 2017).

Georgiana Aldessa Lincan – is a Roma feminist activist, with expertise in advocacy and grassroots community organization with groups of Roma women and Roma youth. She has been working for E-Romnja – the Association for the Promotion of Roma Women’s Rights since 2013. She graduated the master’s degree in Politics, Gender and Minorities within SNSPA. Through her work, she wants to create safe spaces for Roma girls, giving them the opportunity to freely express their ideas and opinions in an intersectional feminist group where they feel supported regardless of their choices.

Ileana Negrea is a poet, activist, creator of micro-communities. She writes from points of intersection, about them. She believes in writing as therapy and manifesto. Her debut volume, Jumătate din viața mea de acum, frACTalia 2021 Publishing House, was nominated for the Sofia Nădejde and Cultural Observatory Awards and received the Opus Primum Mihai Eminescu Award.

Ioana Gheorghiu crosses the temporal modalities of performance using text and visual arts tools to operate in the interstices between language, sound and body. She works with drawing, video and actions to conceptually address guiding principles of urbanism, music and sports. She solves in a poetical-concrete manner unfair cases for animals or birds. She uses performance frames inspired by academic debate competitions or musical scores. Working with sound, she composes with affinity sequences for radio theater and sound poetry. She has worked on local long-term performance research platforms such as Imagine Human (2019) and Black Hyperbox (2016), and has participated in intensive international performance seminars such as “Abandoned Practices” (Prague), danceWEB Vienna and others. She participated in exhibitions and presented solo and group performances at Rosas Studios Brussels, The National Center for Dance Bucharest, tranzit Bucharest, Anca Poterașu Gallery, WASP, Lateral Art Space and Pilot – Fabrica de Pensule Cluj, Chorbadjisko Cultural Center, Immunology Laboratory Bucharest, Atelier 35, Platform Space (MNAC), Alfred ve dvore Theater Prague, CIAC Pont-Aven.

Irina Botea Bucan has developed an artist-educator-researcher methodology, which constantly call into question the dominant socio-political ideas, with a focus on human and non-human entities as vehicles/carriers of meaning. Her artistic universe includes and combines approaches such as performance, reconstruction, simulated auditions, elements of live cinema and cine-vérité, as well as negotiation and navigation in the filming process in which performers are equal participants. She has participated in recent years with exhibitions or screenings at the 55th Venice Art Biennale, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Jeu de Paume Paris; MNAC-National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest; Mystetskyi Arsenal Kyiv; Columbia University New York. Irina currently teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at the National University of Arts-UNArte Bucharest, and is also pursuing a doctorate at Goldsmiths University in London. She has given workshops and presentations at DePaul University in Chicago & Columbia University NY (USA), NTU Center for Contemporary Arts Singapore, OSA Budapest (Hungary), Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture & Ecole supérieure des Arts décoratifs in Strasbourg (France), University Ben Gurion (Israel), University College of London & Center for South East European Studies in London (UK), Piet Zwart Institute (Rotterdam), Bezalel – Har Hatzofim Photography Department (Jerusalem), etc.

Iulia Popovici (Bucharest) is a performing arts critic and curator. She is also an expert in Romanian and European cultural programs. In 2016, she was an adviser to the Minister of Culture, and in 2021, for 7 months, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Culture. She has published extensively on the alternative performing arts scene, collectives and artists in Romania and Eastern Europe, the social challenges of contemporary arts and changing working practices. Between 2011 and 2018, she co-curated the Independent Performing Arts Platform of the Temps d’Images Festival. She organized a series of independent showcases and performing arts programs in Romania and abroad. Most recent publication: Metaforă. Concept. Protest. Performance Art în România și Moldova (with Raluca Voinea; Idea Design & Print / tranzit.ro, 2017).

Luiza Vasiliu was born in Iași and wanted to become an actress. Instead, she arrived at the Faculty of Comparative Literature in Cluj and, after a series of unexpected events, became a journalist. she worked for 6 years at Dilema veche, where he learned the basics of the craft. She is a reporter at Casa Jurnalistului, where he published in 2016 the investigation on the doctor Gheorghe Burnei. She has collaborated with Suplimentul de cultură, Decât o revistă,  Regard, Courrier International. She translated Gide, Vian, Reza, Ronson. Since 2016, he coordinates the cultural publication Scena9.

Mihai Burcea (b. July 31, 1976, Bucharest). Graduate (2005) and doctor of the Faculty of History of the University of Bucharest, with the thesis Luptând pentru o iluzie. Voluntari români în Brigăzile Internaţionale din Spania (2017). Scientific researcher III at the National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism (2018 – present). Founding member of the civic association “Miliţia Spirituală” (2002). Areas of interest: the history of repressive structures from 1945 to 1989, the Communist Party of Romania in the years of illegality, interwar political life. Recent publications: “ Apărând orânduirea de stat “. Siguranța pe urmele lui Gheorghe Crosneff în România interbelică, Bucharest, University of Bucharest Publishing House, 2016. Spectrele lui Dej (co-editor), in collaboration with Ştefan Bosomitu, Iaşi, Polirom Publishing House, 2012. Mihail Roller (1908 – 1958). O scurtă biografie, in collaboration with Ştefan Bosomitu, in “IICCMER Yearbook”, vol. VII – 2012, Iaşi, Polirom Publishing House, 2013. “Inchizitorii partidului”, I. Elvira Gaisinschi in “Arhivele Totalitarismului”, Year XXVIII, no. 106-107, no. 1-2 / 2020.

Mihai Lukács (b. 1980, Cluj-Napoca) is a researcher, theater director, transmedia artist and cultural manager. Since 2020, he has been the president of the Centrul Dialectic. Lukács holds a PhD in Comparative Gender Studies from the Central European University in Budapest with a dissertation on the hysterical modernist directors Stanislavsky, Meyerhold and Artaud. His latest artistic practices speak of local counter-histories and the affective research of sound archives, homosexuality during the communist period, the relationship between Roma and non-Roma, the refugee crisis, sexual liberation, faith and exclusion, housing policies. He has won a number of research fellowships in Bucharest, Budapest, Hong Kong and Vienna. The theatre show “Kali Tras / Black Fear” received the Award for Social Inclusion and Intercultural Dialogue at the Administration of the National Cultural Fund Awards Gala, in 2018. The show “MAMA” received the “Cătălina Buzoianu” Award, given by the Youth Theater within the National Section of the Piatra Neamț Theatre Festival in 2021. He has published articles in Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies, The Attic Magazine, Baricada, Bezna, Egophobia, Gazeta de Artă Politică, Holocaust. Studii şi cercetări, Játéktér, Kilobase, Laudatio, Raffia, Rețeaua Critică, Revista Arta, RomArchive, Studia Dramatica, Studies in Musical Theatre, TLTXT and Trepanatsii.

Niko G (Nicoleta Ghiță) she is a singer and actress. She started her artistic career very early, as an actress in the Playhood teen theater group from Ferentari. In the meantime, she added to her portfolio roles in several shows (which she played as part of Giuvlipen in Bucharest and in the country), but also the role of trainer in projects dedicated to young people. Lately she has focused on writing lyrics and performing songs that she publishes and on her TikTok account.

Nicoleta Moise (b. 1989, Bucharest) works as an artist and journalist. Her practice combines images, video, and text to make visible lesser-known histories or stories, which require time and thoughtful, lengthy work. A selection of her projects includes: “Memory of the World” (2021), “s + s = bff, Liga Femeilor Gorjene” (2020), “How Not to Get Married” (2018), “Nu sînt deplin fericită decât aici, în țara mea” (2016) and “Nu-mi place numai marea, dar și muntele!” (2014).

Paula Dunker promises that her (artistic) work is based on the analysis of the systems of representation, production and creation. She mostly works with the body. Romanian contemporary dance’s daughter, sister of the local political theater, mother in the Bucharest queer clubbing scene, she is (together with Alex Bălă) the initiator of the techno-faggothique music genre. Confronting existing patterns, she helps build up possible new worlds and heal this one.

Raluca Voinea is a curator and art critic, based in Bucharest. Since 2012 she has been co-director of the tranzit.ro Association and until the end of 2019 she took care of one of the institution’s spaces, in Bucharest. This space included an art gallery, a community urban permaculture garden and an Orangery (space for hosting fragile plants and ideas), all developed organically and in response to both the local context and current international debates. In 2021, the ideas and approach that shaped this space are continued in a new project, the Experimental Research Station for Art and Life, a collective project carried out by tranzit.ro together with a group of artists, curators, theorists, economists and other cultural workers in the village of Siliștea Snagovului, 40 km from Bucharest.

Tudorina Mihai. Feminist and social justice activist. She is the president of the Front association and co-administrator of the Feminism Romania Facebook page. For the past 12 years, she has initiated and co-organized projects, debates and public events on issues related to women’s rights and gender equality, in particular on gender-based violence (domestic violence, sexual violence), access to reproductive and sexual rights (abortion, contraception), sex education in schools, gender discrimination in the labour market, among others. She holds a PhD in Political Science from SNSPA Bucharest since 2017, is a translator/interpreter of Spanish, and in her free time she likes to take care of the plants on the balcony.

Veda Popovici is engaged in various political work projects in Bucharest and internationally. In addition to administrative work, she works as an artist and theorist dedicated to decolonial thinking, intersectional feminism, anti-fascism, and the material possibilities of community creation. Her political work has developed in various anti-authoritarian, anarchist and feminist groups such as Macaz, Claca, Biblioteca Alternativă, Dysnomia and Gazeta de Artă Politică Dedicated to the action for housing justice, she co-founded the Common Front for the Right to Housing in Bucharest and the federation for housing justice “Blocul Pentru Locuire”.

Viktoriya (Vika) Medvedeva is a choreographer and performer, awarded with the “Honored Worker of Variety Arts of Ukraine”. She studied at Drahomanov National Pedagogical University and at Totem Dance School Kyiv (Modern Choregraphy). She is a member of Pro Contemporary Kyiv and Holovy Dance group, dancer at Totem Dance Theater, collaborated with h.dance group Minsk; she is also a  choreographer in the cultural association KULT PROSVET.

CEVA Educational Center for Performing Arts (established in 2018) is a space for experiment and critical thinking dedicated to teenagers from Târgu Neamț and neighboring areas. The main aim of the center is to reactivate the local community through culture and to offer alternative proffessional perspectives to the youth it involves. CEVA employs theater and performing arts as tools and methods to research current social themes, in correlation with concrete local realities. CEVA stands for Community, Education, Future and Art, concepts which have guided the actions, directions and organic development of the center so far.