The traveling exhibition “IdentitAR Feminin“, a multimedia digital project with 3D animations and augmented reality, accompanied by music, sound, reading performances and debates, will be presented in four cities in Romania: Câmpulung Muscel, Sfântu Gheorghe, Suceava and Râmnicu Vâlcea. The tour started on September 7 in the alternative space Convivial in Campulung Muscel.
“Feminine IdentitAR is a universe populated with silhouettes of women and girls in countless roles, faces of the same avatar, which preserves its essence in the storms of unique destinies, described by ten dramaturgical texts signed by young authors from Romania and the Republic of Moldova. The female identity is recovered from a mosaic of poses: daughter of the father or perhaps of the mother, women lost in Eastern European adventures and forced to face poverty, always dreaming of a better life, or captive children in the tragic-comic saga of duty to save her family through a marriage of convenience across the Ocean. Individual destinies vibrate in a universal constant. What is a woman? Maybe it’s Victoria, who is 51 and has a 34-year-old boyfriend, a nervous guy who throws bottles of gin at her. Or, maybe it’s Cami, from Arad, who, at the age of 8, takes the elevator to the top floor of the Savoy Hotel to a room where a Polish woman overturns a bag full of cigarette packs, nylon stockings, bathing suits on the bed too big and dozens of doses of FA spray.
In the communist communal bathroom, the stories of hundreds of women mingle. In the foreground come, one by one, women who struggle with the poverty of transitional times, women in second-hand clothes, mothers who go by bus on the route to the left of the Nistru River, others who dream in the quiet of an apartment on the third floor, with two well-heated rooms, with color TV and two balconies. We learn something about the life of Melanie, an old woman from a windy village who preserves her love through… taxidermy, or about the hopes of a teenage girl looking for her father in wartime but accidentally discovering love. From childhood to adulthood, from adolescence to old age, the female characters described by these texts review the universal aspects related to the perception of the role of women in society. In the background, a second identity is taking shape, the national one, shaped by spaces at the confluence of multiple foreign powers, which have known troubled times, with massive emigration, poverty or lack of hope.
Histories are reinterpreted by visual artists in interdisciplinary works, which give atmosphere and three-dimensionality to the characters, highlighting female destinies and the issues raised by the dramatic texts. The stories, imagined at the confluence of the arts, take wings in a small universe created to enhance sensory experiences and enrich the perception of reality. Music and sounds, lights, movement, voices, 3D animations, and scenery all recompose new worlds, starting from literary expressions. The mind, soul and senses become part of the performance, and the viewer becomes a creator of meaning. A multidisciplinary collective imagined this experience, starting from a selection of dramatic texts by Ada Maria Ichim, screenwriter, theatre and film critic. Part of the Reniform Production team, the visual artists Ioana Nicoară and Sergiu Negulici are authors of animated films and creators of cultural projects appreciated in the country and abroad.
Sergiu Negulici is internationally known for the production “Splendida Moarte Accident” (2017), a short film that won numerous prizes in international animation festivals, including the prize for debut at the International Animation Festival in Annecy, France, or the Grand Prize of the Festival International Animation Festival in Hiroshima, Japan. Ioana Nicoară is a multimedia artist who uses animation, watercolor and augmented reality in her artistic projects. Her projects were exhibited in several cities in the country and at animation festivals in Europe. Makunouchi Bento (Valentin Toma and Felix Petrescu), a duo from Timisoara known on the electronic music scene in Romania, signs the music. Augmentation in the Reniform App is handled by Sabin Şerban, from the Augmented Space Agency.
The exhibition is on tour in four cities, where it will be accompanied by performances, readings and debates. Thus, the program of events is:
- September 7, 2024, Convivial, Câmpulung Muscel, where the exhibition will be accompanied by a reading by the actors Laurentiu Bănescu and Oana Jindiceanu, followed by discussions with the public and the Oigăn concert. The exhibition can be visited between September 9-24 at the Coloniale Cafe;
- September 20 – 26 “Andrei Mureșanu” Theater in Sfântu Gheorghe, with an event and reading performance on September 26;
- September 29 – October 9 Municipal Theater “Matei Vișniec” Suceava, with an event and reading performance on October 9;
- October 11 – 15 at the “Anton Pann” Theater, Râmnicu Vâlcea, with an event and reading performance on October 15.
The augmented reality dimension of the exhibition can be accessed via mobile phone (iOS or Android) by installing the free Reniform App from the App Store | Google Play.
