tranzit.ro/București and the Last Archive presents Nicoleta Moise's temporary intervention at the Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life, 21st of December 2023, 4-7 p.m.
With tranzit. ro/București, every year on the 21st of December we gather to celebrate we survived for one more year. What about those who didn’t survive? Not because they were old and their time on this earth was peacefully coming to an end, but because of so many other reasons that we find hard to come to terms with?
We cannot fight death, no matter who inflicts it. We can, however, remember those who tried to live.
Photo credits: 1. Irina Antohe, 2. 4. 10. Raluca Voinea,
3. Iuliana Dumitru, 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Mihaela Vezentan, 12. Nicoleta Moise
The intervention on the land of the Station, within the Last Archive project, started initially from the idea that newspapers prepare and print their ‘last minute news’ the night before, which only reach the news stand in the following morning. Something you read or hear now, you don’t know what could mean tomorrow, in a few months or years. My proposal is a symbolic gesture*, at the threshold between day and night, which functioning depends on meteorological conditions and light sensitivity. An installation that only functions fully after the sun sets.
The first level of the intervention: I chose to write the phrase NU MĂ UITA (forget-me-not) on the land of the Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life referencing a dream** from the 12th of July 2021, and the discussion about that dream with Carmen C., Ionuț Cioană's mother, from the 17th of February 2023.
The second level: after a relatively long practice of work with the archives, the invitation to participate in the Last Archive project coincided with the decision to finish my working with archives for an undetermined period of time.
*‘To assume clumsy, but honest works, no matter how obsolete or naïve they could appear to the current context.’ Ionuț Cioană / Mircea Nicolae (1980-2020)
**Ionuț and his plan to make a work with discarded car bodies. A train that was going to Bacău carrying a blue car body. I saw the car body from another train and I wrote down for Ionuț the time when the train left the station. A bond of complicity and understanding had been created between us. Sketch of the work: the blue car body in a wooden frame.” (Nicoleta Moise)
Read more about the project here.
Flower seeds of Forget-Me-Not
Photo: Nicoleta Moise
The Last Archive is an artistic project initiated by artist Vlad Basalici and enacted together with curator Raluca Voinea as part of the programme of tranzit. ro/București.
In 2012, Basalici collected newspapers printed on the 21st of December of that year, the last day before what should have been the Apocalypse presumably announced by the Maya civilization, with this event and the news published about it constituting the basis of The Last Archive.
Starting with 2013, a series of artists were invited to propose an exhibition reflecting on the material of this Archive. Péter Szabó, Monotremu, Giles Eldridge, Vilmos Koter, Kiki Mihuță, Maria Baroncea and Anca Bucur are the artists who enlarged the concept of The Last Archive, through the realisation of a project-exhibition, inaugurated each year on the 21st of December, in the space where tranzit. ro/ București activated between 2012-2019.