S.A.B.A. (Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu)
Constellations of Desires
Coordinated by: Cătălin Gheorghe
Aparte Project Space, Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, Iași, February 2016
An exhibition realized within the program carried out by Vector Studio in partnership with the Research Center for Aesthetics and Artistic Research of UNAGE.
Exhibition argument:
As early as from the first effects of the financial situation coming into public awareness in 2008, the continuous crisis that, paradoxically, feeds the Empire of Capital speeded up the need for the introduction of protection measures. That was the moment of the public promotion of austerity measures, a priority on the political agenda and a shift, from the perspective of a “necessary evil” policy, towards a complete disarmament of the citizens and of the state the latter make up.
Although the capitalist/Western world has been, following years of neoliberal fragmentation of the social corpus, in a complete state of austerity, in the near future it is still headed for the threat of a new financial crisis. Even before it became a central topic on the political agenda, used as an economic instrument for counteracting the financial disaster left behind by the Volatile-virtual-speculative Market, austerity, within the limits of economic precariousness, has shaped the bodies and minds of the citizens of this world, systematically eliminating from their horizon any attempt at any alternative configuration of life/politics/economics. Years of austerity measures with a strong impact on the human mind have affected people’s ability to imagine, speculate and look beyond the present in order to seek/build utopian alternative scenarios.
The aim of “Constellations of desires” was to enunciate, via a multitude of media channels and informational levels, the paradigm of the immobility of the collective intellect and of the elimination of social future from the complex constellations of dreams and desires, through austerity and precariousness.
In reaction to this situation, the exhibition attempted to showcase certain issues, such as: how can art and artistic means be instrumentalized in order to over-stimulate the ability so see beyond capitalism and to create a (common) future? Can this objective be reached without exiting the good graces of the audience, which may interpret such actions as propaganda? Moreover, is propaganda through art a vitiated medium through which information can be distributed and constructed?
SABA – Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu (b. 1991, Iași and Timișoara) is an artist couple working together since 2012. Their artistic practice could be positioned at the border between social studies and visual arts, researching for methods and examples where art and artistic means can be instrumentalised in order to overexcite the ability to look beyond capitalism and create a (common) future. Among their recent solo shows are “s.a.b.a 1979-####” (2020, Ljubljana, SI), “It was always in plain sight” (2020, Bucharest, RO), “If Then What After” (2019, Baden, AT), “What Past? What Future?” (2017, Linz, AT), “Depression, Uncertainty and other Symptoms of Mortality” (2016, Lodz, Poland), while their works have been presented in many group exhibitions such as “Rewriting Our Imaginations” (2020, Basel, CH), “Go, Stop, Stay” (2019, Debrecen, HU), “STRIKE GENTLY AWAY ____” (2019, Salzburg, AT), “Displacement and Togetherness” (2019, Brussels, BE), “Capital’s Time Machine” (2018, Bucharest, RO), “Baywatch” (2018, Berlin, DE), “Alternative Facts” (2018, Stuttgart, DE), “Odessa Biennial” (2017, Odessa, Ukraine), to name just a few.
