On Saturday, November 2, in Petru Rareș Square in Timișoara, the launch of the Intergalactic Explorer in Tme and Spaces: Timișoara station fanzine took place. This event marks the completion of a project initiated by the artist George Marian Preduț to rediscover unused spaces in the city.
“The project started from recognizing a common problem faced by many cities, including Timișoara: the presence of forgotten and unused spaces, which gradually turn into uninhabited places in the urban landscape. Although these places have lost their original function, they still hide an untapped potential that can bring benefits to the community.
The aim of this endeavor was to identify these forgotten spaces, to document and reinterpret them through a narrative perspective, with the help of urban exploration and photographic documentation. Through photos and a character built especially for the project, we want to offer the residents of Timișoara a new perspective on the urban landscape, inviting them to rediscover their city.
The central element of the project is the presence of the explorer character, a creation that is part of the Little Chaos project, coming from another space and time, exploring the city in an urban drift. The Intergalactic Explorer in Time and Spaces: Timișoara station project is a continuation of the Șona Air artistic residency, where the character “The Villager” also explored new places in the village through photography.
The photos taken from this character’s perspective are gathered in a fanzine launched on November 2 in Petru Rareș Square, where the character passed through. The launch event allowed the public to discover the stories of these spaces in a flea market atmosphere alongside the local community. In addition to the fanzine, the explorer character will be present in the space, with a sound background of the explored spaces and a tactile notebook, in which he collected elements that piqued his interest during the journey. In this way, a multisensory experience will be achieved,” said the artist George Marian Preduț.
About the artist:
With an interest in photography in the urban environment and its transfer to the textile environment, George studied Arts and Textile Design (UNArte Bucharest) and Psychology (SNSPA Bucharest). In both his bachelor’s and master’s thesis, he aimed to approach the theme of the city from two different perspectives. In his undergraduate degree, he proposed the Urban Contrast project, emphasizing the differences between the architectural styles of the buildings.
For the master’s project, the theme chosen was 556 – Bucharest Subjective, a chronology of Bucharest, experimenting with textile materials and their textures. The project was exhibited together with an installation in which the construction materials used in the composition of the city were integrated.
As an Erasmus student at the Faculty of Arts in Grenoble, he developed a project on public-private space, Balcoane, also exhibited at Unagaleria. At the Art Quarter in Budapest, he documented the work of artists-in-residence, the photographs of which were exhibited in 2018 in the exhibition Progress. Since 2011, he has been keeping an analogue photography journal at ilikegoodstories.com, capturing landscape, architecture and art in public space from an observational, poetic and subversive perspective of the seeing eye. He explored the relationship between character and space in the Șona Air residency, held in February – April 2024. He is part of the Super:Serios collective and develops the Little Chaos project.
This artistic creation was made possible through Energie funding! Creative grants, awarded by the Municipality of Timișoara through the Center for Projects. The creation does not necessarily represent the position of the Center for Projects of the Municipality of Timișoara, and it is not responsible for its content or the way it can be used.
