ON THE THRESHOLD: CONFORMISM, DISSENT AND (DE)SYNCHRONIZATIONS IN ROMANIAN MEDIA ART IN THE 1960 AND 1970S
ON THE THRESHOLD: CONFORMISM, DISSENT AND (DE)SYNCHRONIZATIONS IN ROMANIAN MEDIA ART IN THE 1960 AND 1970S

Summary/Abstract: My essay investigates the artistic practices made in Romania in the decades 1960-1970 which employ media and technology as principal means of productionand presentation, while offering an insight into the cultural, social and politicaldeterminants underlying their production. By Media art I understand art formsproduced by electronic means and which are mainly time-based: video,experimental film, sound, computer-based images, presented as single channelworks or as installations. The focus of my study is equally on the means ofexpression (the (un)problematization of the medium, themes, narrative strategies,technologies, apparatus) and on the conditions of manifestation of these artisticproductions (the cultural and political framework of the period in Romania andEastern Europe, issues related to cultural and technological (de)synchronization,institutional and public reception, critical positioning and subversion, humorand irony as survival strategies, processes of signification and the regimes ofmemory associated with media art practices). Three representative artists andgroups of the period will be discussed – kinema ikon, Sigma, and Ion Grigorescu.They are different in terms of approach, strategy and artistic values, but theircommon ground is equally represented by their significant interest in the movingimage, and by their constant efforts to innovate the artistic language and therelationship with the context.

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