Club Electro Putere Craiova.
Club Electro Putere at the Venice Biennale
Romanian Cultural Resolution-documentary
31 May–27 November 2011
Opening:
Tuesday, 31 May 2011, 7 pm
Club Electro Putere announces its participation at the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia with the project entitled Romanian Cultural Resolution – documentary exhibited at the New Gallery of the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research in Venice and initiated by Adrian Bojenoiu and Alexandru Niculescu.
Romanian Cultural Resolution – documentary was selected to represent Romania at the Venice Biennale together with the project entitled Performing History, exhibited at the Romanian Pavilion in the Giardini di Castello; (artists Ion Grigorescu, Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová, curators Maria Rus Bojan, Ami Barak, Bogdan Ghiu)
Romanian Cultural Resolution – documentary consists of transferring the activity of the Centre for Contemporary Culture Club Electro Putere from Craiova in the frame of the Venice Biennial with the intention of disseminating the activity of a Romanian independent art center in the international art context, proposing a documentation and research platform of the contemporary Romanian art. RCR – documentary surveys the solutions and tendencies which Romanian visual arts have developed over the last years. This brings into discussion not only the renaissance and reformation of the contemporary artistic discourse but also an entire range of problems and circumstances that illustrate the artist's fragile status in his local context and the adjustment of the international artistic context to the idea of spectacle and mercantilism.
Romanian Cultural Resolution – documentary has several stages during the Biennial: presentation of a documentary film based on interviews, presentation of a photographic archive of the exhibitional RCR project from Werkschau Spinnerei, Leipzig and from Club Electro Putere, Craiova, presentation of a selection of Romanian art books representative for the art context of the last 20 years, the release of the Romanian Cultural Resolution catalogue by Hatje Cantz publishing house, the vernisage of the project The Iron Curtain, a Memory Box, initiated by Ştefan Constantinescu and Xandra Popescu produced in partnership with the artists: Deimantas Narkevicius, Peter Forgacs, Zuzanna Janin, Via Lewandowski, Liliana Moro, Karen Mirza, Brad Butler, Yvez Netzamer, The Åbäke Collective.
Club Electro Putere is a Romanian centre for contemporary culture founded in 2009 by Adrian Bojenoiu and Alexandru Niculescu. The history of Club Electro Putere begins in the seventies: it was founded to organize cultural activities for the proletariat working in the "Electroputere" plant, which produced electric motors for locomotives and industry. At the same time, it functioned until 1989 as a center of control and propaganda for the Communist Party. After the fall of Communism, the cultural activities carried on there declined dramatically, and ceased in 1995. That year marked the beginning of a period when the public taste for new media and forms of entertainment coming from the West became ever more apparent, and gradually led to the disappearance of a cultural context hitherto identified with the middle-classes. Between 1995 and 2000 the space was used variously as a pub, a night club, and a fitness and health club, until it finally closed. In 2009 it resumed the title of Centre for Contemporary Culture.
The CEP activity is focused on inquiring into contemporary human practices concentrated on cultural manifestations. The purpose of the centre is to enable inter-human cultural exchanges by connecting different levels of reality and expression. The cultural activities of CEP question the status of contemporary culture having the aim of decoding the existing expression and communication forms in order to produce and promote alternative narrative structures.
Adrian Bojenoiu, born in 1976, lives and works in Craiova. Adrian studied philosophy at the Babes-Bolyai University from Cluj and he got his PhD in philosophy at the Charles de Gaulle Lille3 University (2004-2009). His research domains are esthetics, art critique and French contemporary philosophy. He took part in numerous conferences and debates, 2007 Actualites du concept d'espace: Géographie, Philosophie, Art, École Normale Superieure, Lyon, 2006 L'Europe à venir: Sécularisation, Justice, Démocratie, UBB Cluj. 2005 Langues et langage, École Normale Supérieure, Paris.
Alexandru Niculescu, born in 1979, lives and works in Craiova. He graduated from The University of Art in Bucharest and won the 'Vasile Pârvan' Grant at the Romanian Academy in Rome (2006-2008) and 'Theodor Aman' at the Academy of Visual Art in Leipzig (2008-2010). In 2007 he gets public attention with the exhibition "Times New Român", project which aims to question different types of practices of social territorialization in the extended european space centered upon "the expression of Romanian forms of manifestation" as a conceptual issue.
The participation of the Romanian Cultural Resolution – documentary project to the 54th International Art Exhibition- La Biennale di Venezia is financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Romanian Cultural Institute and will be achieved in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Romania.
Club Electro Putere - the program at the Venice Biennale:
New Gallery
Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research,
Cannaregio 2214 - 30121 Venice
Romanian Cultural Resolution-documentary
31 May–27 November
Opening:
Tuesday, 31 May 2011, 7 pm
The Iron Curtain, a Memory Box
1 September–27 November
Opening:
Thursday, 1 September, 6 pm
Club Electro Putere – the program in Romania:
Calea Bucureşti 56
200515 Craiova, Romania
Here and Then
15 April–6 May 2011
artists: Alexandra Croitoru & Ştefan Tiron, Ion Grigorescu, Julian Mereuţă,
Aurelia Mihai, Ciprian Mureşan, Miklos Onucsan and Marina Albu, Răzvan Botiş,
Ştefan Sava
curator Magda Radu
Opening:
Friday, 15 April 2011, 6 pm
Lia & Dan Perjovschi
9 October–12 November 2011
Opening:
Saturday, 15 October 2011, 11 am
