Bucharest’s Museum of Contemporary Art runs performing arts programme

In May last year the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest launched a performing arts programme coordinated by director Ioana Paun.

Luana Pleşea, 17.02.2018, 14:32

In May last year the National Museum of
Contemporary Art in Bucharest launched a performing arts programme coordinated
by director Ioana Paun. To what extent was this undertaking necessary? Here is
Ioana Paun herself with more details:

There are many such initiatives in Bucharest
and in many cases their organisers can’t find venues to stage them. They are
hybrid projects, sometimes mixing political arts with lectures, other times
movement or more intimate forms, such as ‘one-on-one’ performances. We needed a
venue that should bring these initiatives together, everything that performance
art means. The Contemporary Art Museum is a space of the new arts, contemporary
art, sometimes the art of the future. So any emerging form of art, hybrid or
experimental art, is most welcome in this museum, especially if the project is
backed by artists and performers. Whereas the National Dance Centre often
showcases performance projects, there are no other venues in Bucharest devoted
to this type of art.

Ioana Paun’s interest for performance art goes
back to the years she took up special classes, working with various Romanian
artists:

For
quite a long time I needed to support these kind of initiatives coming from the
field of theatre, which nevertheless involve artists doing visual art. So I
toyed with this type of art starting 2010, when I took an MA in performance art
at the Goldsmiths Faculty in London. This provided me with a whole different
perspective on the practice of performing arts. So I came to Bucharest and
started organising performance workshops at the Academy of Theatrical Arts and
Cinematography. Attending were students, but also people from outside the
faculty, musicians, anthropologists, people who were eager to explore
performance art. Performance art is still uncharted territory in Romania. Every
year I’ve been trying to organise a new workshop, discover new artists, tell
them everything I’ve learned… And since there are so few festivals devoted to
performing arts, I often looked for a venue that should bring such efforts
together. Because of these workshops I’ve surrounded myself with artists,
who’ve become autonomous and who started working together. I was used to work
with this kind of art, as it doesn’t have a story, as in theatre, or a text it
is based on, as we’re used to seeing in most theatre plays, and is thus harder
to receive by the audience.

Through this project, Ioana Paun proposes a
monthly programme at the National Museum of Contemporary Art:

In principle, there are three events every
month. Every big opening is marked with a performance unfolding throughout the
whole evening. The schedule is available on the museum’s web page and Facebook
page. We usually have performances that have already been created, but which
are very delicate and fragile and which do not yet have a venue to be presented
to the audience, so we invite them to the museum. Such an example is In
Between Two Pills, Cinty Ionescu’s show on depression, which combines video
art with live performance. Then, there is another event happening at the same
time, which is more difficult to set up. It is entitled Nocturnal and it is
at its third edition. It is a dedicated evening during which we listen to
either digital or acoustic vanguard music. So far there have been two events
that have enjoyed great success with music lovers, and the most recent one was
broadcast live. Music events are held once every two months or every 45 days.
Tickets are available online and at the Museum’s ticket office.

This year, the
National Museum of Contemporary Art will host the first performances included
in the Free Territories programme, which inaugurates a new space of the museum
dedicated especially to performances. Here is Ioana Păun with details:

These performances
will feature artists from Bucharest, from other cities of Romania and we also
have two foreign groups. They will bring something new, because they were
produced with much dedication to correspond to the artists’ expectations. We
will make a public call in early February and artists will be able to sign up
during the whole month of February. I’m trying to curate their ideas in line
with what they want. That is why the performances will not be held in the new
hall by all means. They can be held anywhere in Bucharest, in other spaces, in
the public space or in other spaces of the museum, online or on the radio. This
will happen during the entire year, I intend to have some 8 such projects
produced.

The first premiere
of 2018 at the National Contemporary Art Museum will take place on February 8th.
A free adaptation of the book The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion,
the performance entitled NOK!NOK! was written and directed by actress Nicoleta
Lefter and features actress Flavia Giurgiu. Ioana Păun is next at the
microphone to talk about the performing arts programme of the month of
February:

In February we’ll
have one of the nocturnes, and the premiere of the show NOK!NOK! by Nicoleta
Lefter, which talks about the experience of finding out that someone has died,
of how one comes to terms with and overcomes this. There will also be some
performances for couples. Artist Ruxandra Hule has already made such performances.
The show is called Us Against Us. It is a context, which the artist
creates for couples, not necessarily life partners. The couples may consist of
siblings, mothers and sons or daughters, or very close friends. For one hour,
these couples will be working together with her by means of various artistic
instruments in order to touch upon those sensitive aspects in their
relationship that they never talk about. Many people have already been to this
show, they have acquired all sorts of experiences, some more profound and
others more amusing. The artist uses writing, pottery, and text messages to
work with the couples; it is a very personal approach. We’ll also start
performing the show entitled White Horse, which was also produced in the
museum and which is about communist torturer Ioan Ficior. We intend to have a
more humane approach, through art, of the economic, political and social issues
which we are faced with every day.

Less than one year
since its launch, the performing arts programme of the National Contemporary
Art Museum has attracted quite an audience. Ioana Păun says that there are very
different people coming to the show, who somehow expected that to happen.