EXHIBITION

During the last few decades, the city became a nexus of social struggles and an important point of reference for artists, architects, social scientists, urbanists and activists and this expressed in movements such as the Right to the City that emphasized the need for inclusivity, accessibility, and democracy in urban spaces. The neoliberal turn, that determined a profound transformation of our societies and promoted capital-intensive models of development as compared to the previous, extractivist or labor-intensive ones, also opened various spaces of contestation in which all these social, cultural and political practices were broadly situated.

The history of the Iasi contemporary
During the last few decades, the city became a nexus of social struggles and an important point of reference for artists, architects, social scientists, urbanists and activists and this expressed in movements such as the Right to the City that emphasized the need for inclusivity, accessibility, and democracy in urban spaces. The neoliberal turn, that determined a profound transformation of our societies and promoted capital-intensive models of development as compared to the previous, extractivist or labor-intensive ones, also opened various spaces of contestation in which all these social, cultural and political practices were broadly situated.

The history of the Iasi contemporary art scene itself is connected to these historical transformations of which the proliferation of the biennial culture and its in-depth analysis of the urban spaces is a clear symptom. In the late 90s and the 2000s, the Periferic Biennial focused on the city of Iasi and reflected the political efforts around the expansion of the European Union. Under the banner of decentralization, cities became much more relevant than ever before, while important changes occurred also at the level of the nation states. Thus, in many of the cultural productions of this entire period we have the city as a very important level of analysis and critical scrutiny.

The exhibition Museum Of Real Estate Development attempts to join the discussion regarding the financialization of the economy, whereby financial markets dictate what happens on the markets and exploit the created objects through their financial value (beyond their use or social value), reflects on how financialization affects the ”real economy” in processes such as deindustrialization, privatization, etc and interrogates the interconnection of these processes.

The exhibition takes its cue from Redurb Research Group’s analysis on how our cities change through the real estate development carried out by developers, investors, banks; how real estate development connects multiple geographies of the world through real estate and financial capital flows; why it is a source of capital accumulation but also a beneficiary of many people’s indebtedness; how real estate development was born on former industrial lands and other urban areas, exploiting not only physical urban spaces but also people’s needs for a home, a place where to work, a location for shopping and entertainment; how urban planning is subordinated to the interests of this development, becoming a tool for gentrification or segregation of different kinds; how real estate development captures public spaces and redefines, in function of its interests, the “right to the city”.

Trying to connect to the materiality of these processes, the exhibition gathers artistic, activist or academic positions which problematize the social transformations of the last decades in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond. While doing so, it also questions the role of artists and other public intellectuals in shaping these processes.

Andreas Fogarasi’s video work Europa (2016) “shows the tourism-logos of the countries of Europe, in a steady succession, arranged alphabetically and reduced to black and white (with no gray scales). Together the logos can be (mis-)taken as indicators of the diverse landscapes and identities that shape Europe and the work playfully follows this mistake and looks at the gaps and fault lines that emerge from it. Some logos rely on simple typography, others show abstracted bits of landscape; some quote local folkloristic design, others use universal modernist shapes. Many use free-drawn elements, brushstrokes, hearts. In their quest for uniqueness, ultimately, they appear all the same”. OK (Travertine) (2023) Travertine cladding (Unirii Square, Iasi, Romania)/ travertine sample, and Work / Life 2022/24 Linoleum floor (office building at Franz Josefs Kai 51, Vienna, architect Josef Becvar, 1970, demolished 2019) are part of Andreas Fogarasi’s Nine Buildings, Stripped, a long-term project that “documents the changing architectural surfaces of the city by collecting actual fragments of buildings, both demolished and newly built. The results are “material packages”, wall-mounted sculptures composed of original parts of buildings that no longer exist and samples or parts of the structures that replaced them (facade elements, floorboards, tiles, glass panels, doors, bricks, color samples, etc.).”

Škart Group’s series of drawing Tenants Traumas (2024) takes as a starting point the “experiences, or traumas of being a tenant in the big city” for people and small art institutions alike. ”I left my hometown at the age of 19, going to study in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In the next 30 years, I changed around 17 different apartments as a subtenant. Sometimes, while waiting to find another place to stay, I was a guest at friends’ flats for a couple of weeks.” (Đorđe Balmazović, 2024).

Filmed during an artistic residency in Singapore, Mona Vătamanu and Florin Tudor videos deal with the quasi absence of the workers from our current collective worldview. The end of the working day (2015) documents the returning journey from work of a group of young men working in the area of HarbourFront to their sleeping places nearby to Changi airport in Singapore. A rigorous visual representation of the marxist theory of alienation, When I work I miss them, when I sleep also I miss them (2015) “captures fragments of reality for just as long as light is being provided by the welding process.”
Persepolis (1999 – 2006 and 2024) overviews the deep skyline of the city of Bucharest composed of few overlapping architectural layers. The continuous ideological transition reflects the interplay between these layers and it is melted into the technological regime change, be that in the construction of buildings or in the medium of photography itself.

s.a.b.a (Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu)’ Video Monuments (2018) focus on a generation of workers that fueled the socialist political project in Central and Eastern Europe. Following the path of social and economic survival strategies before and after 1989, the videos also point towards stories about smuggling and entrepreneurial attempts that cast a prototype of capitalist persona starting with the late 70’s throughout the transition years of the 90’s.”

Vladimir Us & Oberliht Association installation Chișinău Civic Center – beyond the red lines (2024) give an overview of more of a decade of activities (artistic interventions, architecture workshops, community events, etc) organized by Oberliht Association around Zaikin Park, a piece of green area located in the historic part of the city of Chisinau that was caught between the red lines of Cantemir Boulevard, a piece of infrastructure that was planned during socialist period but never actually materialized. The General Urbanistic Plan of Chisinau acts both as a protector of this small park but also as a continuous threat to its very existence.

Preeti Kathuria, Consequent Land (2024) installation ( cotton fabric, paint, ink, cotton rope, clamps) dimensions variable, “is a collective expression of the crisis in the agriculture sector in India that has been addressed by some contemporary artists, many of whom come from the rural context themselves. This installation brings together the titles of artworks that typically address land as a recurrent theme.”

Sarah Muscalu’s work, 4th SHIFT (2023) “represents an investigative, documentary, experimental and performative approach, that consists in a visual collage whose main subject is built around the possibilities of working with the archive. This video installation project proposes the exercise of witnessing the city as an archive, while it is questioning the current condition of urban transformations and collective memory related to the site of the former Textile Factory in Iași.”

The exhibition extends through a series of performative events, on the 4th of August 2024, happening in various on-site locations in the city of Iași initiated by artists, curators and cultural workers such as Cezar Lăzărescu, Cătălin Gheorghe and Cristina Moraru, Andrei Pripasu, Delia Bulgaru, Livia Pancu & Florin Bobu and Andrei Gavril.

To visit the exhibition, please write an email at livia.pancu@tranzit.org

Curated by Florin Bobu & Livia Pancu

Exhibition design by Nicu Oniciuc

The main partner of tranzit.ro is the ERSTE Foundation.

Museum of Real Estate Development is organized by tranzit.ro/ Iasi and 1+1 (Iași) in partnership of Oberliht Association (Chisinau), Fundația Desire (Cluj-Napoca), Asociația Quantic (București) and National University of Arts George Enescu (Iași). This is a cultural project co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. (AFCN). This project does not necessarily represent the position of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how project results can be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.