back to contents ________next

 

 

SYMBOL, COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA IN TRADITIONAL AND CONTEMPORARY ROMANIAN CULTURE 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fourth edition of the biannual gatherings at the Valcea Village Museum aims to approach issues of great interest in contemporary culture, with a view to continue the series of dialogues between tradition and postmodernism, initiated in 2000 by the HAR foundation, in a complex program.

While communication is the implicit subject, the main purpose of the symposiums our program features tackles also symbols and media (the latter representing the means, the supports and the languages for transmitting the artistic message). Those came naturally to our attention as indispensable tools of any kind of communication.

The present moment requires a re-evaluation of these subjects from better-balanced positions, in the context of an evident ideology, not at all benefic, on the ways we consider culture, with specific manifestations in the Romanian sphere of influence.

Just as we did during previous editions of the Bujoreni meetings, the organizers have proposed to the participants many ways of approaching such disputed themes: viva-voce lectures, book launches, fine art and heraldic displays, and also a contemporary music concert. The participants, men of culture in many areas of expertise, started passionate debates, mostly reflected in the new issue of the Ianus magazine.

 

 

DAY I

 

End of September and weekend beginning at the Bujoreni Village Museum.

In order to enter the atmosphere, already familiar to many of us, we have proposed a tour of the museum to all first comers, mostly because the landscape, regardless of season, entices to contemplating the miracle of nature, and autumn, most of all, induces a proclivity to meditation.

The wooden constructions, the inn and the 18th-century school, together with the tower, the traditional tools, have already been subject to debates and appreciations, which constituted the first step for the easier communication for the next two days.

The guests were surprised to discover contemporary works of art sprinkled among traditional houses, well fitted into the scenery, sculptures, objects d’art and even an installation with communication as a subject (not an accident). At a first site, one could notice on the porches of some peasant houses, some paintings and graphic sketches, many of them vividly coloured and strange as presence in this space, in which apparently time seems to   have forgotten to flow.

The traditional “tzuica” served at the inn warms up the hearts and unties the tongues. “The strategy” of our hosts from Valcea never fails. Everybody invited to participate arrived came before dawn. 

 

 

DAY II

 

Since the forth edition of the Tradition and Postmodernism symposium is shorter, we tried to concentrate most of the actions of the program on Saturday.

Early in the morning, the participants were invited inside the 18th century school, belonging to the museum patrimony, and which became by now, the place of the already well-known debates, first for the first presentation of the volume of essays Symbols and Orthodoxy of professor Florin Mihailescu. The book appeared for the first time in 2001 edited by Rosmarin Publishing House, was presented by Alexandru Nancu, Mihai Dinculescu and the author.

Punctual and always ready to show the world our actions, the Valcea television Channel 1 mentioned all of the events in the Village Museum. Daniela Stefanescu and her colleagues were already there.

And since we began with an opening, we will continue with another, this time the 3rd isssue/2001 of the Ianus magazine. At this event, the lecturers were numerous, because this publication is the fruit of tight teamwork. The theme of this 3rd issue of the magazine is skill and initialisation. Words of appreciation were delivered by Eugen Deca, the manager of our host institution, Pavel Susara, art critic and the architect Augustin Ioan. 

After a worth-waiting coffee brake, while the participants were getting acquainted with the Ianus magazine, the usual tour of the museum served to open the exhibitions prepared with dedication the week before. 

 

Communication session in the classroom of the Village Museum School in Valcea.

 

Florin Mihăescu at the launch of his volume «Symbol and Christian Orthodoxy»

Sunday the discussions went on under an old walnut tree in front of the inn.

 

The opening of the  «Symbol and communication in contemporary fine arts» display.

Alexandru Matei and Viorica Vatamanu during the night concert.

 

The tower hosted the exhibition titled Heraldic symbols. Distinguishing marks of the traditional order, with Alexandru Nancu as curator.

The exhibition revealed a selection of heraldic distinguishing marks discovered after tenuous documentation, aiming to evidence one of the oldest and most profoundly motivated means of using the symbols.

At the border between art and science, heraldic science, a discipline almost totally ignored nowadays, reflects the order of the lost traditional world. The exhibition is also an invitation to rediscover this ancient discipline, as a source of remembering and understanding the major symbols.

The second exhibition is much more complex, taking a big part of the museum, from the entrance to the inn and almost up to the exit. Under the title Symbol and communication in contemporary fine arts it displays the works of 20 artists of different generations and preoccupations. Their selection was not casual, and the heterogeneousness of the speech intends to put out the multiple possibilities of communicating one artistically articulated message, more media and more types of sensibility. Luiza Barcan opened the display.         

At noon the CD 5 wooden churches from northern Oltenia was presented. It is an electronic replica of the five monographs dedicated to the wooden churches in Gramesti, Capaceni-Racovita, Ciungetu, Malaia and Marita, all of them monuments of the 17th -19th centuries, never before studied. The monographs and the CD are the fruit of a very complex inquiry made in the year 2000, part of the EUROART project, by a team composed of: Alexandru Nancu, Luiza Barcan, Cătălin Berescu and Sorin Olteanu.

Right after the CD presentation, the scientific communication session began and lasted until late in the evening. One of the participants was the young researcher Silviu Lupascu, a specialist in the sufi doctrine, with the report entitled The rose of divinity-The divine sun, as well as the architect Augustin Ioan with some considerations on symbolism in contemporary architecture. The ethnologist Serban Anghelescu presented a very interesting subject: Symbolic rocks in the Old Testament, and the semiologist Florin Mihailescu talked about the nature and symbolism reflected in the Gospels. The architect Catalin Berescu proposed an exciting debate on the subject of the old and the new in the new ­media.

While at the school the debates are at their peak, somewhere at the end of the museum, on the porch of a traditional house, far from curious looks, percussion instruments are installed. Inside the house the last rehearsals before the concert take place consuming the most intense emotions of the group composed of the actress Viorica Vatamanu and the percussionist Alexandru Matei, because that evening they will have had their first concert together. Everybody knows that a concert will take place but nobody knows exactly what it is about.

Alexandru Matei became known to the public in Valcea in 1999 when he concerted with a band called The Game, as part of the program Art on the way to the museum, initiated and organized by our foundation on the occasion of the total eclipse of the sun. You may also remember that the same group held a Byzantine music concert during the first edition of the Tradition and postmodernism symposium, at the Bujoreni Village Museum. Now something else is being prepared, and the scent of a special artistic event floats in the air.

We interrupted the communication session only because night fell, we all went up to the porch of the house that was had taken a little of the spirit of the people in it. We all found our place in the big patio of the peasant house and we stood in the dark.

 

People were whispering. John Feraru did some last testing to the amplification box. The concert is going to be recorded. After a few moments of waiting, the only one who assisted to the rehearsals of the two artists, Alexandru Nancu delivers a short presentation of the group and of the music that we are going to hear. The idea that takes shape is that Viorica Vatamanu si Alexandru Matei have adapted in a purely contemporary style religious and archaic folk music, drawing a bridge between the two shores represented by past and present.

The two artists make their appearance on the porch and asked the audience not to applaud between songs. The concert begins with a bell board sound and the music we listened to was so unexpected that you didn’t hear a breath in the crowd. Viorica Vatamanu’s special voice and the songs that they sang cut deep into each and everyone’s soul triggering unsuspected or long forgotten feelings. The repertoire itself sends you in the past while the interpretation is very modern. Alexandru Matei didn’t provide accompaniment for the singer he proposed a complement of the songs with percussion instruments.

The show had also a motto, a fragment from the Ecclesiast spoken by the actress between the vocal songs. Time enough for all things under the heavens speaks the Ecclesiast and indeed what better time for this splendid show, not to mention the chosen place. For an hour, we just listened, without seeing each other, because only the stars light the ad-hoc stage on the porch and the patio. What transpired then, with us as witnesses was more than a simple artistic show it was an intense living experience, original, miraculous parenthesis to life’s worries. The last percussion sounded the end of the concert. Applause could not possibly repay the two artists, because what they gave was more than aesthetic pleasure. For an hour I was in heaven said Gigi Dican to the two artists and only now they understood the miracle that happened in front of us.

 

 

DAY III

 

The forth day of the symposium was more concentrated. The scientific communications started the second day didn’t finish and we dedicated them the first part of Sunday. The echoes of the percussion show stayed with our souls and as always when quietness fell upon Valcea’s Village Museum it worked as a ointment on the people present. Departure was drawing near however. New friendships are forged here and the people who were involved in the program in one way or another feel the need to see each other again.

 Luiza Barcan and Radu George Serafim are invited to Doru Motoc’s live television show on Valcea Channel 1. The show is brilliantly titled That which remains, because it is a program dedicated to Romanian culture. The last part of the communications takes place simultaneously with the show called of course Tradition and postmodernism. Because the classroom was not warm enough, somebody got the idea that the public and the reviewers should move under the walnut in front of the inn, a place for coffee and chat in early mornings and the evenings. The idea is warmly appreciated and absolutely everybody gathers in a circle under the tree. A gentle autumn sun calls to melancholy but even so the debates are animated. They are fired up by the art critic Pavel Şuşară with a paper entitled The artistic form between opacity and transparency, then by the architect Ion Cornea with The secret architecture of the symbol. More than the day before, the assistance was involved in the debates and arguments flowed.

Mariana Stănescu and Constantin Costache presented a complex and more specialized theme: new techniques and methods in preserving the cultural-historic patrimony. Even if it looked arid the subject proposed by Sorin Olteanu, Notions of general epigraphy, is presented with much talent, so no one was confused.

Lunch and the very close moment of goodbye ended the forth edition of our symposium, as always with the hope that we will be meeting again in the same place and in the same spirits.

 

This new issue of Ianus magazine, opening now in front of you greatly reflects the debates of last autumn symposium, as well as ulterior approaches, featuring articles signed by great who couldn’t take active and direct part in the symposium.

We tried to present from a objective point of view a wide variety of opinions regarding our theme: symbol, communication, media and thus, in the end, even if some inaccuracies will appear, all approaches aim to complete a view on a theme of stringent immediacy.

 

HAR Foundation

 

back to contents ________next