AFTERLAND

AfterLand is an artistic research project with a focus on the social and ecological sustainability of the Danube Delta. The project’s aim is to bring into discussion and critically evaluate the potential for catalyzing social change through an integrated art-science approach. Artists, scientific researchers, and social analysts will investigate and address local needs for the conservation of heritage, biodiversity, and culture, presenting these narratives in the form of a mixed exhibition of interactive artistic works. The involvement of artists in such research projects has become an essential element and a powerful means of addressing sensitive issues, providing a platform to stimulate reflection on human behavior and how it can positively impact society and the environment. The project will take the form of a symposium, followed by an exhibition dedicated to identifying and presenting narratives that can serve both as triggers and motivators for dialogue between artistic, scientific, and humanistic disciplines, as well as a means of investigating and presenting artistic research as a significant part of broader interdisciplinary research.

MEET THE ARTISTS

Ioana Vreme Moser

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Ioana Vreme Moser is a sound artist engaged with hardware electronics, speculative research, and tactile experimentation. In her practice, she uses rough electronic processes to obtain different materialities of sound. She places electronic components and control voltages in different situations of interaction with her body, organic materials, lost and found items, and environmental stimuli. From these collisions, synthesized sounds emerge to carry personal narrations and observations on the history of electronics, their production chains, wastelands, and entanglements in the natural world.

Clara Boj & Diego Diaz

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Clara Boj & Diego Diaz have been working together since 2000. Their work critically engages new media technologies and the notion of public space within the hybrid city. Their main projects propose new devices (conceptual and technological) to reformulate the perception and experience of urban environments. In this direction, they like to bring their work directly to the street and provoke encounter between people, physical places and the digital space. In many of their projects, they explore nonlinear narrative using geolocation devices and other locative media resources to create narratives that combine layers of physical and digital information.

Floriama Cândea

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Floriama Cândea explores the dynamics between objects and the way we perceive them by creating hybrid visual identities. Her versatile toolkit spans interactive, kinetic, and video installations to sculpture, experimental electronics, drawing, and printing, with an additional focus on creating visuals using bio-based materials. With the complex relation between science, philosophy and tech, at the core of her practice, she questions our role as well as the stakes of the Anthropocene, at the dawn of a possible new era.

Sébastien Robert

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Sébastien Robert is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher who develops a practice at the intersection of visual and sound art, technology, science and ethnography. Through his work and research, Sébastien searches for possibilities to create an engaged and expanding artistic dialogue between non-Western perspectives and new technology while questioning our perception of our environment and highlighting the epistemological diversity of the world we inhabit.

Mark IJzerman

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Mark IJzerman is an interdisciplinary artist exploring planetary processes such as eroding biodiversity and warming waters from more-than-human perspectives. Working on the intersection of ecology and media art, IJzerman uses digital technologies to create processes that have their own agency to make works creating intimacy between us and the other-than-human. His work is always informed by field research as well as working with other professionals.

Robertina Šebjanič

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Robertina Šebjanič is an artist whose work explores the biological, chemical, (geo)political and cultural realities of aquatic environments and the impact of humanity on other organisms. Her projects call for the development of empathetic strategies aimed at recognising the other (non-human) entities. In her analysis of the Anthropocene and its theoretical framework, the artist uses the terms "aquatocene" and "aquaforming" to refer to the human impact on marine environments.

EXPO

AfterLand explores the complex and multiple dynamics between humans, nature and technology. By addressing the entanglement between human activity, the preservation of the environment and the potential of alternative technologies, the exhibition encourages us to imagine new perspectives.

Water is the symbol par excellence of life on Earth, essential to the fragile balance of the planet’s human and natural ecosystems. Bodies of water, and wetlands in particular, serve as essential habitats for many aquatic and terrestrial species and organisms, shaping biodiversity, but also act as natural filtration systems and carbon sinks, influencing climate patterns. Not to forget that water is also cultural, social, economic and political ; all over the world, societies have been built and organized around watercourses, which have ensured agricultural productivity, forest health, urban development, military power, commercial trade and the cultural wealth of communities throughout history. But the expansion of human activities have provoked a series of unprecedented ecological disasters. We not only lost the balance, we are continuing to alter nature’s cycles. Now, more than ever, it is vital to reverse the trend and move towards a form of recovery. So, when we’re faced with such a vast and intertwined theme, where can we start? And what role do art play in all this?

By addressing the ecological dimension of water and land, AfterLand argues in favor of a sustainable and resilient future, where empathy and benevolence between humans and more-than-humans are the watchwords. Through the prism of the different artists invited, we propose to discover several situations and perspectives linked to land and water territories, and recontextualise them in a given time and space. Both realistic and metaphorical, the presented works address land use, deforestation, fluidics as an alternative to electronics, micro life and macro views on our lands, all highlighting the importance of adopting a holistic and integrated approach to ecology.

The particularity of the participating artists lies in their practice; all of them place a huge emphasis on artistic research, working at the crossroads of disciplines and valuing the collaborative aspect. By tackling such a challenging theme, they bring us into the heart of rich, poetic works with complex levels of interpretation and, above all, invite us to think about the alternatives available to us.

curators: Diane Pricop, Floriama Candea Photos: Tudor Codre Isac

A TRIP TO DANUBE DELTA

What can be art’s role when it encounters wild, beautiful areas such as wetlands? What can we learn from such complex ecosystems and their human and non-human inhabitants? What types of cultural and artistic projects can be produced in balance with nature, science, and local communities? The AfterLand projects hosted seven artists in the Danube Delta, together with cultural managers from QuoArtis Foundation , ARTSHARE , and Obsolete Studio , tradition keepers, and slow tourism promoters such as Muzeul Ivan Patzaichin , and scientists from the National Research and Development Institute in the Danube Delta. Together, they explored and tried to understand the Danube Delta habitats and the complex changes in this environment marked by human impact, global warming, farming, or depopulation.

WITH THE SUPPORT OF: