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Raphaëlle SleuRS

Cultural project management

Erasmus Student

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ContentsArtEncounters ................................................................

Education program ........................................................

Places of exhibition and artists ....................................

Volunteers ......................................................................

Data ................................................................................

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ArtEncounters was a contemporary art exhibi-tion in Timisoara during last october. From 3rd october to 31st october 2015, people from Ti-misoara could find more than 12 places around the city with workshops, exhibitions, talks with artists… It was a biennale of art with artists whose worked about Romania concepts or whose are from Romania. With more than 16 000 visitors, this first edition was a great suc-cess.

I met Anouk Lederlé, who was in the heart of this project, in fact, she did a master’s degree in cultural policy and management at the uni-versity of Belgrade and her subject of memory talked about the importance of ArtEncounters in the perspective of Timisoara, capital of culture in Europe 2021. It’s also thanks to her I became volunteer for this event.

But what is ArtEncounters ? Who were the or-ganizers and what were the goals ?

First when we’re talking about an art event, we need to talk about the curators. Curators are the person in charge to select the artists and to give the way of the exhibition. For ArtEncoun-ters, the main curators were Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Shumacher. Both of them have ex-cellent knowledges of Est Europe and Europe in general. They were responsible or curators of exhibitions all around Europe like Germany and Austria. And since 2010 they were working together, as for example, at the Office for art in Berlin and they started to work around the Eas-tern Europe being curators of the “fragile sense of hope” in 2014.

Secondly, for the organization of an art event, and event in general, we need to talk about the

financement and who ordered this exhibition. This event starts with a man, Ovidiu Sandor. Ovidiu Sandor is a businessman and also an art collector. It’s thanks to him that ArtEncoun-ters exists. Ovidiu Sandor is involved in the romania art and he’s the president of the “Ar-tEncounters Foundation”, founded in 2015. The goals of this foundation is to develop the art in Romania, the art from romania and mostly the contemporary art, in a national and internatio-nal level. Develop romanian art means support young artists, promote artistic productions and new forms of artistic practices/expressions. It’s also a very good way to create the encounter between a large public came from all horizons and the artists.

The first draft of ArtEncounters was far away from what it’s been. Indeed, Ovidiu Sandor was thinking about just an exhibition of contempora-ry art. But rapidly, this draft became a huge pro-ject, after only 8 months, it became a biennale, organized in two towns, in Arad and Timisoara.

8 months to organize the project, who were the partners, who financed ?

For the financial part, Ovidiu Sandor contacted the town of Timisoara in order to get some fi-nancial support. We can’t forgot that Timisoa-ra is one of the candidate to be capital of the culture in Europe for 2021. So it was a really in-teresting project in the way of the elections, Ti-misoara didn’t hesitate to get support and was very enthusiastic by the idea. The others funds came from private institutions or people being part of Ovidiu Sandor’s relations. The whole project cost 200 000 euros , 50 000 euros from the support of Timisoara and the rest from the private funds.

Since this moment, the organization started and the first meeting with partners began. All cultural institutions of Timisoara as theatre and cultural institutes have been contacted and each of them had a main role for ArtEncoun-ters. The main cultural institutions were the German cultural center for the part of logistics and transportation and the french cultural cen-ter for the education program and volunteers management.

ArtEncounters Timisoara3rd - 31st October 2015

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How could the french cultural center and the creation of education programs get young people interested in contemporary art ?

The french cultural center, presided by Daniel Malbert, has been contacted for its knowledges in education in order to create a program for children and pupils from kindergarten to highschool. This program was called “Pas-seport”, was composed in 4 differents levels adapted for each age. The goal of those pro-grams was to get in young people to ask ques-tion about art, to discover this contemporary world, to involve their culture. Most of them ne-ver been in a art museum and never been in touch with art.

Let’s see closer this educa-tion program !

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Education Program

This education program was coordinated by Ingrid and Delia from the french institute. With the help of Anouk, who knew already the or-ganisation of Art Encounters and the different artists, they chose 3 places to discover with the schools. The education program gave ludic ga-mes for pupils, and some information to know better the artists and art contemporary culture. Teachers could also find a trail if they want to discover the others places. The main goal of the education program was to keep some me-mories for the children and to get them to ask questions. In fact, according to Anouk, only 10% of them were already been in a art exhi-bition, for most of them it was a first encounter with art.

Dear teachers, would you like to come with your pupils discover an exhibition of art ?!

Ingrid and Delia contacted all the schools of Ti-misoara, from kindergarten to highschool, final-ly more than 4000 pupils came to ArtEncoun-ters with more than 110 teachers. But their job didn’t stop there, they also followed teachers in this experience in order to help them with the encounter between art and pupils. A daytime was organized just for the teachers to show them the different exhibitions and the education program was in free access on the ArtEncoun-ters’s website. During the visit with their pupils, the teachers were followed by the cultural me-diators. In total, there had been more than

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4 600 pupils discovering this event. From which 161 came from kindergarten, 955 from primary, 1295 from middle school, 2195 from high school.

What do pupils have retained about ArtEn-counters ?

I was interested to know what pupils thought about their experiences with ArtEncounters, so I met a class from High School and their teacher. They shared with me their visions of art and this exhibition. Only few of them were already been in an art institution, including Opera, Theatre and art museum. To complete the exhibition, at the end, the teacher gave them some works to do, a paper about the ex-hibition. Being in a bilingual class, pupils com-binated french and art !It’s through talks with their and more with their written work I get their feelings. Their com-ments were made by innocence and poetry, but I can see the curiosity created by ArtEn-counters.

“Art Encounters est un point où les artistes et les amateurs d’art se ren-contrent pour parler, communiquer et changer d’opinions.” Szokola Adelina

“L’art donne naissance à des signi-fications et “définitions”. Pourquoi une galerie d’art et nécessaire ? Pour apprendre le secret des grands artistes. Souvent le secret n’est pas déchiffré, mais l’essentiel est de “rester dans le brouillon”, de ne pas forcément donner de définition, les règles varient d’une personne à une autre.” Seimac Narcisa

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Lycée Calderon - Classe 9D

Coloana Infinitului - Brancusi“Art encounters a comme but de créer un dia-logue entre les artistes et le public, de deve-lopper l’art en sociét锓L’art se fait avec du temps” Chroui-Cozma Ioana

I propose to see some artist’s works through the view of the pupils … (I let the comments in french, they translated romanian to french for the teacher and I think the simplicity of their comments takes place on it).

Alwin Lay

“J’ai vu des autres photos qui présentent la vie quotidienne dans la régime Ceaucescu. Ces photos sont comme un film d’horreur. On peut voir des rues désolées, des files de peuple qui attendent pour la nourriture et des gens qui ne sourient pas. Cette exposition m’a aidé à comprendre le passé de mon pays pendant le régime Ceaucescu. Après avoir visiter l’exposi-tion, je peux dire que la la population de cette periode n’ont pas été très heureux parce qu’ils devaient attendre pour la nour-riture et parce qu’ils n’avaient pas le droit de s’exprimer.” Dusen Andreea

Andrei Pendele

“Ils voulaient faire de l’arbre un symbole plus riche pour ne pas montrer la pauvreté et le peu de ressources” Marusania Petronela

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Places of exhibitions and ArtistsThe choice of the different places for this exhibition is really important and give a real meaning for ar-tist’s works. Moreover it get interested visitors because places were really uncommon and some of them formerly abandoned like Cazarma U which was before a brownfield, or the very old synagogue in the city center. A lot of visitors came to visit more by curiosity to see what’s happening in this diffe-rent places that they were never been able to visit, than for the artistic exhibition. But it was a good thing because visitors discovered both an uncommon place and an international contemporary art exhibition. Some of the places get meaning through the exhibition, like the museum of revolution, which hosted an exhibition about art against communism historical period.

Cazarma U : the Art Guest HouseArtEncounters was also the moment to discover the contemporary art from Romania. One of the places of exhibition in ArtEncounters was just composed by different art galleries in Ro-mania : the Art Guest House in Cazarma U. People could see how the art is involved in Romania just going in one exhibition. It was a really good point to realize the importance of romanian artist in the artistic world and to have an overview of all galleries of the country. Visitors could find more than 30 artists exposed in galleries from Bucharest, Timisoara, Cluj-Napoca and Craiova.

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The synagogue and Iona Nemesh : A private experience for each visitorsThe synagogue was choose to present a work of Iona Nemesh, this place was in total accordance with the artist’s work. Iona Nemesh was on track for a career as professional handball player when she had some knees problems and an injury which forced her to stop her career. After that, she had to change the plan of her life and decided to become an artist, starting at the art academy of Bucharest. One of her work was called “the Wall project”. This project was a way to take stock in her life, on the wall of her dinner room she pinned things she wanted to do in her life and things she already achieved. Through this “Wall project” she developed a method to analyze her life every day with colors in function of her daily mood, in order to, each year, make a graphic and see what she can control or not in her life. With this project, she also made an interview of herself, recorded, it’s this work which was exposed in the Synagogue. This interview of herself illustrates and comments the development of “the Wall project” but also help people to understand the mental construction of the project. Ioana Nemesh wanted this interview become a personal experience for each visitors who are just sitting and listening her vision of her work. The synagogue, which is a religious and spi-ritual space, was perfect for this personal experience, without parasit noises, let the visitors looking this very old space, built between 1862 and 1865, through listening an art project.

Exhibitions which retrieve a past feeling of artistic vibrancyMore than interesting places, Timisoara had been choose to be the host of this exhibition for its ar-tistic history. Timisoara is knew to be a revolutionary town and open-minded with the international. Through the communism period, the art was kind of died but Timisoara was special and the freedom was fighting with art. Around 1960, Timisoara was one of the most dynamic centers of romanian contemporary arts. There were two main organizations which involved for artistic expression and written the main art history of Timisoara : the Sigma group and the Eastern European Zone Festival which promoted new visual concepts.

During the communism period, a group of artists involved in artistic performances and new way of art : the Sigma Group. Composed by teachers at the fine art academy in Timisoara, Sigma Group was an experimental group active in Timisoara between 1969-1980. In 1978, they exposed their main work : the film Multivision. Composed by colored semi-transparent screens and in the same time projections in black&white and colors, it was the first multimedia installation in Romania.

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Between 1993 and 2002, a new wave of art became with the Eastern European Zone Festival in Timisoara. It was a performance art festival composed by debates (cultural, artistic and politic), on public direct contact, performances and art installations. This event gave a new image to the artistic space in Romania and was the skeleton of what is the romanian contemporary art today. This festi-val was organized in the former Austrian Palace which is now the Art Museum.

Thanks to ArtEncounters, visitors could see their historical works through pictures, movies and works exposed and could understand that Timisoara gets its own history in art. ArtEncounters’s organisation wanted to retrieve this feeling of artistic vibrancy.

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For this huge event, the organizers need volunteers, in order to com-municate with the public, to keep galleries, and to give information. The role of the volunteer is to be the link between the artist and the public, they are really important. In fact, it’s thank to them that the public will understand the diffe-rent works of the artists and give the meaning. And I know what I’m saying because I was in the vo-lunteer team and for me it was a great experience.

How works a volunteer team ? We were managed by the team of the french cultural institute in par-ticular Ingrid and of course Anouk. We are 75 volunteers in totally, some were really invested in this project. Every weeks we had a meeting in order to talks about the

organisation, to know which galle-ries we were going to keep. We could also write our name in an online document, thanks to it we were independant to chose where to go and with whom to work.

A day was organized before the opening of ArtEncounters for volunteers, they learnt to become a cultural mediator. It was a visit of all galleries with a professional mediator who explained them the different works of artists. After that, we could find all information online. Most of the volunteers were Romanian but also spoke english. It was a really good things to help the international level of ArtEn-counters. And it helped me to be integrated into the team.

Be volunteer : an involving workMore than just quote the artist feelings about their works, we needed to give our own feelings and vision, it wasn’t easy at the beginning but we’ve learn’t a lot about it. We needed to have an interac-tion with the public, to share each other our vision. Every mediators had a different vision like every visitors and a simple visit could be very interesting to talk.

Be volunteer and become a young art collectorAt the end of ArtEncounters, a last meeting have been organised in order to taking stock of this first edition. The work of all volunteers represents in total 232 hours of mediation with visitors, organizers were happy of this edition of ArtEncounters. Of course, Ovadia Sandor, the president of the foun-dation, was present and gave to volunteers an amazing gift. Every volunteer did receive an original draw from the artist Dan Perjovschi, a nice way to end this human adventure for lovers of art !

Volunteers

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ArtEncounters with Datas

2 cities : Arad & Timisoara

17 places of exhibitions8 places with cultural mediators10 event locations

75 cultural mediators (volunteers)232 hours of meditation

16069 visitors in 8 places with cultural mediators, from 6th to 31 october

Guest House (Cazarma U) : the most visited602 visitors - Saturday, October 20

117 teachers 4606 students :161 Kindergarten955 Primary1295 Middle school2195 High school

Twitter : @TmArtEncounters47 tweets400 followersInstagram : timisoaraartencounters76 posts221 followers

Facebook : ArtEncounters10 010 likes

G U I D E

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