“In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile—and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts 
together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our
crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.”
Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt, 1979

 

movable and detachable improvisation i made for tonight's exhibition of customized boards at Ne placa
ce facistarted out as a ceremonial mask inspired by Oceanic and American-Indian artwork, went through
Pitagora's pentagram propeller and culminated in a scale of mystical opposition and ballance. well, you
catch my dizzy drift...there was a whole lot of metaphysical mechanics involved ;)


 

 
 

the barefoot bride/mireasa desculță


 

 

Part of an installation about censorship that was showcased at Atelier 35 gallery in Bucharest.
Contains a 3 portrait story about the censoring of a Romanian play in 1958. Based on some 15 inter-
views, recollections, collected archive documents and biographies, this comic booklet took 1 month
to make and print. The concept belongs to Alexandru Berceanu, who was the coordonator and
gatherer of suspect materials. The event was initiated by Ofensiva Generozității Organization and
published thanks to the kind back-up of the National Cultural Fund Administration (A.F.C.N.).
One month of everyday drawing altogether, and a fucked up month that was...but it was worth it.

 

 

In 1956 the Romanian Workers' Party (P.M.R.) decides to open a theatre in Galați (a small city on
the banks of the Danube). They bring together a fresh batch of graduates from the National University
of Theatre and Cinematography in Bucharest, a small team of technicians, who've just finished their
studies at the local highschools, and two directors in charge of running the show: Ștefan Iordănescu
and Crin Teodorescu. They deicide to invite the young and up-rising director, Valeriu Moisescu, to
handle most of the spectacles. The outcome of this initiative was hard to put together. Questions around
the Fani Tardini Theatre in Galați got us few and very blurry answers. The story of the comics was
pieced together around one play in particular from 1958. Directed by Valeriu Moisescu, and featuring
Gina Patrichi in the leading role, Mireasa Desculță was a play advertising the agricultural cooperativi-
zation that was commenced back in 1949 by the P.M.R. party. The preceding movement in agri-
culture put together by Stalin meant that around 15 million peasants were deported. In Romania the
results were less dramatic, however, back then the country's population was formed by some 75%
peasants. Party officials regularly ordered this sort of plays from writers as a means to educate villagers
about the "unity" and "richness" of their collectivization efforts. Theatre companies frequently made
tours around vast areas promoting the Party's precious teachings. Ironically, Mireasa Desculță, a play
of the Communist propaganda, wound up being censored.

 

 

We met up with 3 former electricians from that time, an upholsterer and one souffleur, but they
couldn't recollect much, except for some technical details. A few had fond memories of their youth
yet despite their efforts to remember this play in particular, none were able. So we finally traced the
last living actor from the cast, one 82 year old Leonard Calea. He and his wife managed to add a few
more valuable pieces to the growing puzzle. In the end we visited the director himself, the secluded,
quiet but charismatic Valeriu Moisescu. He still kept an incredible amount of newspaper clips from
that period, photos and detailed sketches of sets. Still, he had difficulty remembering. He told us that 
the play was run only 10 times, and terminated after being showcased at the Bucharest Drama Festival
of 1958. Also, Mr Moisescu filled us in on his unlikely interpretation of the text of the play. Originally
written by Suto Andras, Mireasa Desculță was a boring, uneventful and tedious 70 page play. Moisescu
cut it up, added dynamic through the use of a turning stage and contrived a mechanism of hypnotizing
the villagers through speakers. Rumour was started by the art-critic of that time, "God" Dumitru Popescu,
that a play with speaks and a turning stage had nothing to do with the image of the peasant of that time.
So Moisescu was fired but hired by the Theatre in Oradea, the press had few words of praise and almost
everyone forgot the play.





The 32 page booklet came out on newspaper, in 1000 copies, and features a silkscreen printed layer on the last inner
cover. This layer is meant to be peeled off, under it rest the real facts about president Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej's
cooperativization campaign, which was completed in 1962. In the installation, that contained this booklet, visitors were
expected to censor the text and images from the comics. Each censurer had 1 hour to complete his cultural mission.
The collection of corrections was displayed in November 2012 at Atelier 35 Gallery.