Caroling with the Goat is a ritual performed traditionally between Christmas and New Year’s Day in many regions of Romania. It’s still practiced today and has counterparts in winter Balkan traditions and winter-spring carnivals worldwide. Like other masked rituals enacted within this transition period, its role is to bring prosperity to the receiving families, the lands and animals of the household, helping to renew Time. During the traditional play in its original rural areas, at one point, the Goat must die in order to be resurrected by the performers. As a society, we are in a limbo. We see the global damage plastic has brought to the ecosystems, the effects of this addiction on the natural environment. We collectively dwell with a choice. Can we dispose of our present consumer habits and take a new turn towards more sustainable practices? Limbo is a video-eco-performance meant to draw an alarm on the current rate of plastic consumption. Concept: Alina Tofan (performer) & Georgiana Vlahbei (image) Assistants: Alexandru Claudiu Maxim, Oana Arsenoi #ecoart #plasticawareness #videoperformance #ecoperformance #artmanifesto
BIOS TEAM Alina Tofan (RO) is a multidisciplinary artist, member of the Time Based Arts group within Arts University Bucharest. Her area of practice explores unique ways of communicating with all the senses. Her goal is to express as many feelings as possible through the body. Georgiana Vlahbei (RO) has been engaged in visual documentation in ethnographic/cultural anthropology research for the past 10 years. Her photography journey began in 2014. In 2020, she had her first exhibition of conceptual photography. Alexandru Claudiu Maxim (RO) is a video artist from the new Romanian wave, interested in inter-disciplinarity. He works both as a visual artist and as a performer, regularly participating in exhibitions.
‘Plastic. Affective memory and waste’ is a cultural project developed by a young creative team from Bucharest, Romania, that proposes a foray into the world of plastics. We encourage public dialogue and question practices, representations and uses of plastics both on an individual level and within the socially shared space. We want to sound the alarm on plastic pollution and unsustainable consumption. The project proposes a symbolic recycling of the remnants of the globalizing capitalism (as it is felt in the Romanian cultural and social context starting from the ‘90s until now); an x-ray of the distance interposed by the plastic filter of consumption between people and the natural environment. The strong social message is delivered through the production of visual works: an art performance, experimental sound design, video-art, video mapping, conceptual photography, a VR experience. Our aim is to provide a starting point for a fresh cultural look and a an artistic reflection on the internalization of plastic in almost all areas of daily life, probing and questioning the effects of this ubiquity.