S.A.B.A. (Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu)
No Hope for a Future
Curator: Cătălin Gheorghe
Aparte Project Space, Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, Iași, March 2015
An exhibition realized within the program carried out by Vector Studio in partnership with the Research Center for Aesthetics and Artistic Research of UNAGE.
Curatorial argument:
In an inter-media installation in which images and texts invoke each other from their instigating position of chronic manifestos, in the sense of reaching the climax of the time we live (?) in, the works of Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu appeal, through parodies or deconstruction, to the failed promises of Marxist-Leninism, to the anti-totalitarian discourse of the Italian Autonomist movement, to the implications of daily actions psychographed by the Situationist International movement, to fragile economic policies but guaranteed by the European Welfare States, to love dedicated to the agonism of democracy, to the irrecoverability of any possible future.
The future has long ceased to belong to us, being already occupied by various “scenarios” about how we should design our perspectives according to prescriptions of accommodation to the hegemony games played by the insurance brokers of hyperfinanced ideologies.
From the acronym “TINA” (There Is No Alternative), uttered in the context of the eradication from the future towards the present of any borders that would have stood in the way of the imperialist expansion of neoliberalism, to the famous chorus “No Future” shouted by the band Sex Pistols, the anguish of the inability to believe in the placebo effect of speculating hope in order to anesthetize the pain of a deeply depressed present has been enhanced.
Realistic-firm-amused-indignant-but-never-ever-in-a-position-to end-up-in-resignation, Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu oppose a ready-made future, deride political depression and defy the daydreaming induced by the empty promises of “capitalist absolutism”.
Each breath within the exhibition space, as one of the tactical media, seems to have consolidated the idea that it is not the future that we need right now.
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.
