Urban B

2009-07-10T00:34:00.001-07:00

We have a new site. Please click on http://focar.artforclick.com/ for visit.
Thank tou!
focAR group

FLAG

2009-07-09T12:55:00.001-07:00

218

2009-07-09T12:45:00.001-07:00

MOnuMENTS

2009-06-08T11:57:00.000-07:00

MOnuMENTS is an artistic project, which proposes a cultural and social refelction; MOnuMENTS decomposes and realizes a map of public monuments from Romania in several stages, questioning a dialogue between rural and urban spaces, between mentalities form different parts of the country. MOnuMENTS presents the moment when the monument was erected and the moment when we documented. MOnuMENTS started from our need to explore and assimilate our own history through these static signs.

MOnuMENTS project

2009-05-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

Coordinator: focAR group: Alina Tudor & Razvan Neagoe
Documentation Alexandru Bounegru

26 may 2009

The term Monument (from the latin word monere = to remind, to signal, to commemorate) defines a construction or a complex of buildings designed to commemorate an important personality or an important event or major events in the life of a community, country, etc. Monuments hold and transmit historical and political information. Public monuments have always had a dual character – on one hand to commemorate the official history, often doubled by an ideological discourse, on the other hand being the target of controversies from different social groups opposed to various ideological discourses. As a result, the history of public monuments evolved always between those two extremes – the acceptance and the pious evocation of a glorious past and denial. Studiyng the public monuments is always a necesary approach, as these petrified signs offer numerous information about various ideologies and historical moments.
MOnuMENTS is an artistic project, which proposes a cultural and social refelction; MOnuMENTS decomposes and realizes a map of public monuments from Romania in several stages, questioning a dialogue between rural and urban spaces, between mentalities form different parts of the country. MOnuMENTS present the moment when the monument was erected and the moment when we documented.
MOnuMENTS started from our need to explore and assimilate our own history through these static signs.
MOnuMENTS also hold an educational character. Every important monument gave birth to furious debates in the time of its erection. Taking photographs of the monuments we classified them by the era when they were build, by the technique and by the area where they were placed. We noticed that the symbol on the pedestal defines also the period and the recipient. The eagle (a specific symbol of Romania) and the soldier from Carol or Ferdinand period, was transposed in the representative figures of the communist regime as the Russian soldier or the Romanian soldier, Mircea, Stephen the Great, Michael the Brave, the peasant, the miner or the worker. After the Revolution, the public monuments were fiercely contested and numerous controversies appeared regarding their status. Usually the author or the subject or the technique were the target of contestation. A good example of a monument that sparked serious debates is the “Monument for the Revolution heroes from December 1989” from Revolution Square in Bucharest.
MOnuMENTS is a natural, organic response from the artists to all these mutations and reconfigurations. 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 MonuMENTS project will start with the first journey in which we will document monuments located on the Constanta – Bucuresti route. The action – performance will start at 10.00 and will finish at 18.00. Most of the monuments commemorate the heroes from the two world wars or different representative personalities for Romanian space. The action will consist in the placement of a flower bouquet at each monument and in holding a silent moment in the memory of those who realized the monuments (sculptors, architects, sponsors, members of the community, etc.) We will start in Constanta, and the route will continue through Murflatar, Castelu, Cernavoda, Fetesti, Dragos Voda, Dor Marunt,Lehliu, Stefanesti, Tamadan, Branesti, Pantelimon, the final point being in Bucharest, in the square Valter Maracineanu. Alexandru Bounegru will realize the documentation.

Agenda - "You can’t live a life from memories"

2009-04-30T10:21:00.001-07:00

"In Romania this day was celebrated for the first time by the socialist movement in 1890. During the communist regime, the authorities held huge demonstrations on the main boulevards; the workers, disposed in long columns and wearing festive clothing had to chant communist slogans and wave huge hangers. After 1990, the emphasis on the propaganda diminished highly, and the people enjoy the First of May in outdoors, on the seaside or in the mountains, savoring the traditional dishes: mici and beer." "You can’t live a life from memories" is part of the program "Agenda" focAR and Alexandru Bounegru (documentaries). "Agenda" is a social project that raises awareness on the individual chased by the consumerist society, while questioning its functioning principles

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Urban Jealousy in Belgrade

2009-03-26T10:57:00.000-07:00

The 1st International Roaming Biennial of Tehran

April 3-10,2009

Venues:3rd AprilMagacin MKM, Kraljevića Marka 4 and 8

4th AprilCZKD – Centar za Kulturnu Dekontaminaciju / Center for Cultural Decontamination,Birčaninova 21

8th AprilDom Omladine - Screenings

http://www.biennialtehran.com/

U.T. 44/26

2009-03-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

Red Spot - TVR - news

2009-01-28T06:33:00.000-08:00

Red Spot - Antena 1 - news and PROTV

2009-01-28T06:17:00.000-08:00

Red Spot - Jurnal Cultural - 28 noiembrie 2008

2009-01-28T06:04:00.000-08:00

red spot project - MTV

2009-01-28T05:32:00.000-08:00

Red Spot

2009-01-28T03:21:00.001-08:00

Red Spot

2009-01-28T03:13:00.000-08:00

International Roaming Biennial of Tehran

2008-12-07T01:30:00.000-08:00

The 1st International Roaming Biennial of Tehran,
Berlin 20 Nov.2008 - 7 Dec. 2008
Urban Jealousy in Berlin

International Roaming Biennial of Tehran, curated and organized by Amirali Ghasemi and Serhat Koksal,chose Istanbul as its first station .The idea of this independent, low-budget exhibition started out both as a critique of the situation in Tehran, and of the international "biennialization" and '' gentrification '' process .Featured works by artists from different countries from all around the world, selected from an open submission call, whichhas had an overwhelming response.Berlin is it's 2nd station.

http://www.biennialtehran.com/

red spot - next

2008-11-03T11:14:00.001-08:00

Bucharest metroART.

2008-10-22T05:09:00.001-07:00

Banlieues d'Europe

2008-10-05T03:41:00.000-07:00

11-13 septembre 2008, Lyon, France

Togheter with Emil Burbea, Silvia Cazacu coordonator Banlieues d’Europ’est and Irina Cios, curator, director CIAC Bucharest

ART within: the artist in the workspace

2008-10-01T01:37:00.000-07:00

Urban Jealousy

2008-10-01T01:35:00.000-07:00

Urban Jealousy
the 1st International Roaming Biennial of Tehran
30th May - 6th July 2008
Curated by Serhat koksal and Amirali Ghasemi
http://www.biennialtehran.com/

Call Box - Urban-Rural - HUMAn 2008

2008-09-29T10:27:00.001-07:00

Call Box - Urban Traces/EXIST

2008-09-29T09:57:00.001-07:00

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 every day life helping us to make connections and keep in touch with everyone. In every apartment there is a stable phone and every individual has one or two mobiles, in every boulevard or street you can find 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 for the older generation. The offers of the mobile phone companies made it very accessible to the new generations. The phone became more than a means of communication, but almost a way of living. Its brand, color, the gesture with which one answers the mobile or the call bell sound shows the identity of the individual who possesses it.On the other hand the call box is forgotten. It has become a lost social place. It is physically assaulted by the urban society, for the windows of the call box are usually broken. People pass indifferently by it: no one sees it, no one asks any questions about it, being sometimes used as a shelter against rain.Nobody wanders if this box would not be ignored, then the place in itself would be better and some normal urban gestures would be restored. The project “Exist” re-uses a small space forgotten in order to remind the public the common values of communication in a normal society.We bring into discussion the urban identity through the call box. In this way the individual is invited to participate, to look for a position, an attitude so that he may launch a social gesture. UT project was set as an objective practical test of such approaches capable of producing urban spaces that got deteriorated or had not been used enough.

Bucharest metroART - Gara de Nord 1 station - I Love Bucharest project

2008-08-03T04:55:00.000-07:00

for details:

ilovebucharest.org/metroart

bucharestmetroart.blogspot.com

ilovebucharest.blogspot.com

Drawing for Bucharest - mesh - i love bucharest

2008-07-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

256 m

for detail:

ilovebucharest.blogspot.com

for detail :

mObile gallery/focAR group | Alina TUDOR & Razvan NEAGOE/URBAN TRACES - TELEPHONE

2008-07-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

The bank of images - PUBLIC TELEPHONE

http://oberliht.org.md/GM.html

a side event to the INTERVENTIONS3* project

http://oberliht.org.md/interventii3.html

Bucharest metroART - Piata Victoriei

2008-06-22T03:46:00.000-07:00

I Love Bucharest project (www.ilovebucharest.blogspot.com/)

NAG#2 - red spot project

2008-05-25T02:30:00.000-07:00

Bucharest 2

2008-05-09T05:40:00.001-07:00

Bucharest

2008-05-07T00:13:00.001-07:00

Urban Traces

2008-01-22T11:55:00.000-08:00

PROTEST in opposition to U.A.P.R

2007-12-19T12:56:00.000-08:00

U.T. 44 , 26 - just first day

2007-12-19T12:52:00.001-08:00

U.T. 44 , 26

2007-10-25T10:37:00.001-07:00

red spot - 22-23 september - dambovita

2007-10-05T11:42:00.001-07:00

"Volume Control" project - focAR group and arh. Adriana Mereuta

2007-09-21T04:37:00.000-07:00

urban traces - our house

2007-09-14T04:41:00.001-07:00

70%

2007-08-31T06:48:00.001-07:00

Urban Traces - social gesture

2007-07-28T03:39:00.001-07:00

Urban Traces - social gesture

2007-07-28T03:38:00.001-07:00

red spot - public art project

2007-07-23T04:25:00.000-07:00

As part of the “Start Dambovita” event which took place between 16-20.07.2007 in Bucharest, Halelor Street (Piata Uniri in front of Hanul lui Manuc) and was organized with the help of the General Council of Bucharest, the Public Utilities Department, Luxten and the National Water Company Romania.

We have started based on the idea that Bucharest cannot be but the object of a horizontal analysis and it simply cannot be set as an urban artefact. As long as the virulent changes, which affect all the social structures, represent the natural answer as a defence against this mutation, this project is a cultural gesture.

The 2 artists of the focAR Group – Razvan Neagoe and Alina Tudor – share, once again, as part of their preoccupation, a special interest for the urban, public space.

The RED SPOT project is equally an artistic project as it is architectural one. Through double nature it sets the viewer in an aesthetic space of urban and human interrogation relative to Dambovita. Close to Dambovita, the river reality – “we have to live with this” – is being interrogated, thus becoming a subject of the daily life and experience, and even more – it is being granted a visual aesthetic alternative.

The red spots on the sides of Dambovita are the magicians of a fault – Dambovita River, which crosses and transcends Bucharest. The meeting in between the heterogeneous elements of the contemporary reality – starting with the mutual perception of an usual space, neutral and violently ignored, and moving to the personal experience of such a place – represents the basis of the work of the 2 artists.

The place – the Halelor Street zone – wasn’t chosen by random; in the Bucharest urban space with cohabitants of such complex and different natures, the transit areas become the magnets around which the human phenomenon gravitates and develops.

The natural curve of the river and the placing of the red spots at the minimal level in the regions where the water defies the walls, going underneath the platform in Piata Unirii, is the source – from a visual perspective – of the need for positive space, a need increasing exponentially. The domino effect as a rule in Bucharest of the RED SPOT project will “light up” the city with the hope and trust that the future will help us evade the past errors. RED SPOT is fundamentally an artistic project because it is able of absorbing the reality and moving it in an aesthetic zone.

Adriana Mereuta

red spot project

2007-07-20T07:44:00.001-07:00

stARTdambovita - public art

2007-07-19T09:01:00.000-07:00

stART dambovita; http://dambovita.blogspot.com/

2007-07-14T10:39:00.001-07:00

Urban Traces - social gesture (galeria veche gallery - Cluj)

2007-06-07T03:53:00.000-07:00

Urban Traces - social gesture (galeria veche gallery - Cluj)

2007-06-03T03:33:00.001-07:00

Urban Traces - social gesture - street delivery - arthur verona street

2007-06-03T03:12:00.000-07:00

Urban Traces - social gesture

2007-05-28T06:55:00.001-07:00

IDENTITY – not ethnic, sexual, religious,communitary, zonal or any other sort but, an URBAN ONE, an identity created by urban society, which determines us, an identity given by the coloured monochrome of every day and every night in cities where we are born, wegrow up, we live and work, a barrowed identity, impersonal and non-personal. Un unidentifiable identity, imprinted by every detail of the urban life from the residential district with its blocks, shops, supermarket and mall to the politics and culture of the city evidenced by its characteristic means of behaviour and communication.

URBAN TRACES is an exhibition mainly in white and black, where colours just point those traces that we do not perceive as not being our own, identitary traces because they penetrate and mould us more often ingradiating with ourselves so naturally that their adaptation, their penetration in the proper identity becomes more natural than human nature and at the same time of such an evidence that surpasses any of our possible perception and becomes “the beam” in the common eye approaching and making us uniform.

focAR Group provoke us to see our selves in another way, they throw down the unfingered-glove but full of sinuous and winding angles, a glove we all wear, as a matter of fact, the glove of the city, of our “castle” that lost its defending towers long time ago in which we move daily after some rules, which we did not choose and which are not necessarily ours, we just adopted it without putting any question.
focAR Group (Alina Tudor & Razvan Neagoe) provoke us to look ourselves in this suggestive mirror, which hides us, reflecting precisely the common identity, urban identity, outlining our kerchief with urban traces.
URBAN TRACES is both a record and a photo of identity in the urban environment with all that it implies, with the determination of a false understanding of identity submitted to taboos of thinking and behaving.

Off with your Kerchiefs!!!

Urban Traces - social gesture

2007-05-28T06:50:00.000-07:00

Identity trances and urban lines (routes) - Cristiana Radu

2007-05-28T06:47:00.000-07:00

FocAR Group studies lead to an art strongly connected with reality, politically and socially implied, an art not considered external in relation with society but brings forward the principles necessary to set it in motion. In contrast with the ivory of modernity of ”art for art” their works absorb in them conditions in which they are created; the artist deeply implied in daily occurence creates norms and informs society. Urban Traces present exhibition of FocAR Group has as subject identity – identity as an artist, as an individual, as a nation. The subject is one essential for our orientation in our world, complex, implying many fields such as art, philosophy, psychology and sociology. Being of an acute actuality this subject has been recently reactivated by Romania’s adhering to EU.The Mass-media productions and performances we see represent vehicles of an actual ardent issue such as integration, globalisation, localization, politics, minorities. The authors are intersted in what really defines us today, in a world of simulacra more real than reality, in which advertising assault us in every corner of the street, in which options are readily provided and identity is the definition of a service offered by an advertising agency. The real statements, the shirts, which the artists put on them are neither black nor green but are inscribed with all shortcomings of today’ssociety which they assume and show us.
The expression is synthetic, in white and black inviting to trenchant options. Actually, the dirty grey of the capital was filtered, dissolved in white and black and has become a trace, a writing in which the two rewrite the history of their own skin, in fact they rewrite on themselves as well as their own artistic destiny. Writing has become an image keeping yet its load critical and evident in the state of an explicit inscription. The film, the central part of this exhibition appeals to (and assaults) tactile sense, hearing and visual one, and associates the archaic body painting with writing as a cultural sign. Another obvious contrast is that between image and sound background, the opposed presences getting into relation two terms – interior and exterior black and white, interior silence and street noise, diversity and uniformity. The urban noise the sound background and imagistic one which accompanies our lives are the result of the capital man’s desensitization, blunting his sensitivity has become a phenomenon profound and irreversible. In reply, the images on the gallery walls, the film stills become stencils ready to be sent back as the feed back to the street by which was caused.
Urban identity of our post-modern society is completed and confrunted with the one coming from somewhere from the archaic of a zone with a specific cultural load that of the famous Cucuteni culture. Along with the question what defines us stands the one regarding the confrontation between the old and the new. The same formula of the film for documentary with the view of performance and the same gesture of applying a visual code on their own skin represent the imagistic binder connecting the two exhibitions the ideated binder being the same; the pursuit of identity, this time emerging from the past. It is revived, quite properly an archaic zone of tradition – dusting it off and approaching to it with means of contemporary art. The two exhibitions are complementary, the front and the back of a complex reality situated between local and global – ours, herefrom and as it is now.

Urban Traces - social gesture (cupola gallery - Iasi)

2007-05-28T06:39:00.001-07:00

Urban Traces - social gesture (cupola gallery - Iasi)

2007-05-28T06:19:00.000-07:00

Urban Traces - social gesture (flat 87)

2007-05-28T06:07:00.000-07:00

Urban Traces - social gesture (grigore mora gallery)

2007-05-28T05:58:00.000-07:00