 
Our I First Our Looking: Interview with Performance Workshop participants at Atelier 35, Bucharest, Romania
The following interview is a performer-centered echo of a bunch of cool art students and Irina Botea (the organizer of the Dec 2012-Jan 2013 workshop) with whom I had wine in the back of the famed Bucharest gallery, Atelier 35. Spaces called Atelier 35, which are geared toward younger artists, dot across Romania and are used as outlets for formal experimentation. The outstanding fact about these spaces is that these, often centrally located galleries in urban centers, were used for the same purposes even during Ceausescu’s paranoid reign.
Because I enjoyed my conversation with the performers so much, I asked them the following question. Their email responses follow my question. What does your work protest? I ask this question because it seems the most basic and therefore most relevant question given the subject under consideration: the replacement of the beautiful patina of old windows all over Romania with hermetic modern and homogenous Termopane.
Allow me to rephrase the same question and add some context and nuance. In light of Adorno’s claim that art documents history (however much through the conscious or unconscious relational aesthetics of the artist-viewer encounter), what does your project-performance-discussion about old windows being replaced by Termopane document? If you don’t think this work (in its intention or in its effect) documents anything, what idea does the work decorate? If you don’t think the work documents or decorates anything, what does it do and how does it do it?
I asked the performers not to discuss the question or their responses before emailing me. Here is what 5 of 13 performers had to say:
“Our work is about how we relate to the artificial window, it’s about how our lives are influenced by it, about how we isolate each other from each other, how our lives become more and more artificial and “virtual”, at the same time, with the rise of new technologies. Before the change, the old window allowed a conversation or, better said, maintained a relation between the two spaces—the one that’s inside of the building (our private space)—and the urban space. Termopane cease this communication, take control, and create a cold wall between the outside world and us by promising to protect us from whatever is on the other side. But the unseen part of this protection is that it can easily turn to alienation.â€Â – Kiki Mihuta
“I think that our work questions the termopane the window and everything that comes with (the termopane is not good or bad). This was a subject that we received during a workshop. We tried to understand what was going on. And I was amazed when you ask us about “protest” the first time over wine in the back of the gallery. I can see the need for the word “protest” once I think about the fact that currently we are in the middle of an accelerated form of capitalism that has put us in the situation where we are losing something every day. You win as much as you lose, but you don’t have the time to understand the loss. You see all over the word these small groups that can’t face the new and they get lost in it (I don’t want to be taken as a traditionalist). I am talking here about the glaziers (“Geamgii†in Romanian), the old glasscutters calling out their trade between blocs carrying the glass panes on their backs. After recognizing this larger context I simply ask myself ” Against whom would such a project be protesting?”†Ileana Faur
“First of all we do not protest against double-glazed windows. We started out by looking into what seemed like a trend, a fad even but we considered it with a friendly look and after weeks of intense discussions we gained some insights into the effects of double-glazing one’s house – some of them being on the one hand, isolation and its “by-products†(e.g., not being able to react to what happens outside anymore since Termopane create an almost soundproof house) and a deeper appreciation of the sounds in one’s own house on the other hand. Secondly, I strongly believe that we react, we reflect on something that cannot be overlooked since it has an impact on both our city and its inhabitants. And yes, our work does document this to the extent to which we acknowledge the existence of something that impacts us. This is reflected in our performance. – Delia Gheorghiu
“Our work focused on the impact of this replacement (of old windows with multiple-layer double-glazed windows) on the people who purchase them. In Romania, this transition is advertised and widely acclaimed as being more than just necessary – but the default upgrade, perfect for every house. While questioning this widespread idealistic belief that Termopane are the right (almost the only valid) choice, we pursued in deconstructing its “promisesâ€. And since you referenced Adorno’s claim that art documents history, one of the key aspects this work documented is how the perfect isolation, the safety promised by the Termopane comes with an unexpected turn: isolation means protection, security, intimacy but it also raises questions regarding responsibility and anxiety. These new guidelines of the private space influence people’s social and psychological behaviors, by means of a rather unnoticeable slow process of adaptation.†Ioana Gheorghiu
“Looking back at the way the project developed and evolved from the beginning up to the present time, I can relate to it only as a work in progress. I do not think that the aim of our work was to protests against something in particular. As far as I’m concerned, I consider it to be an attempt at understanding the current situation and its implications: types of isolation, comfort zones, relation between public and intimate space, social interactions etc. However, taking into consideration the historical aspect, it is clear that the replacement of old windows with termopane began after the fall of the communist regime, which might lead to new ways of interpreting the current situation. As political factors have direct implications in the social sphere, the phenomenon can also raise questions regarding the consequences of political changes taking place in time and the way in which they affect the social behavior of inhabitants.†Raluca Croitoru
Tanta completed his MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2000 and his PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin in 2009 with literary specialization in twentieth-century American poetry, first-generation American poets, and the European Avant-garde. His journal publications include: Ploughshares, EPOCH, Circumference Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Watchword, Columbia Poetry Review, The Laurel Review, and Drunken Boat. Currently, he is editing two anthologies of poetry while teaching literature in the American Studies Program at the University of Bucharest in Romania as a Fulbright Scholar.
- The absence of Romanian feminism - June 18, 2013
- Are immigrants better at putting deconstruction to work? - May 22, 2013
- J=o=u=i=s=s=a=n=c=e Knows Best - April 18, 2013
