Author: Ada MUNTEAN
Cosmina Goagea is architect, curator, and program director of the Zeppelin communication and action platform. Her studies and curatorial practices are dedicated to the relations between architecture and society, focusing on improving the city, activating the public space, cultural and social entrepreneurship, urban activism, situation design, and art as an urban practice. She is involved in editorial research, creating experience design exhibitions and projects, and academic activities in Romania and internationally.
Cosmina is the curator of the Places section of the Cultural Program Timișoara 2023 – European Capital of Culture and the curator of the urban installation Tree Nursery. 1306 Plants for Timișoara, organized by the Romanian Order of Architects, Timiș branch, and co-curator, together with Brîndușa Tudor and Corina Oprea, of the central collective exhibition Chronic desire – Sete cronică (17 February and 23 April 2023), which could be visited in multiple spaces in Timișoara: the Maria Theresia Bastion, the Garrison Command, the „Corneliu Mikloși” Public Transport Museum, and the Ștefania Palace.
To learn more about Cosmina’s working process and curatorial vision, I invited her to a discussion where she could tell us more.
Ada Muntean: How would you describe your professional journey? What drew you to curating, and how do you create this connection between architecture and society and curatorial practices?
Cosmina Goagea: We are discussing a path spanning twenty-five years of practice and a few moments of inflection. First, I studied at the Ion Mincu University of Architecture. During this time, I was convinced I would design buildings; I was very concentrated on the practical part and workshop practice, which I greatly liked. But in my sixth year, I had a semiotics class, and things got complicated. I started reading architecture and built environments completely differently. That is also when I took contemporary art classes at UNARTE. Then, in my seventh year, I returned to Mincu, a post-university program called “Quality in Architecture”, where I took courses in public relations, semantics, critical discourse in architecture, cultural anthropology, and sociology.
But the luckiest thing that happened to me was during this seventh year, when I met a group of brilliant people working on a project called Virtualia, with EUROART funding, carried out through the International Center for Contemporary Art. Virtualia was the first online Romanian publication dedicated to the philosophy of space; this was in 1999, so we had dial-up internet (if you went online, you could not use the phone), and I felt that we were taking part in the birth of a world.
The group was initially comprised of architects, but people were also studying art history, philosophy, psychology, music, film, and photography. We had guests in other fields with whom we discussed imaginary space, society, ethics, metadiscourse in architecture, the sex of space, etc. From here, various other editorial and research projects started (the Romanian edition of Octogon magazine, Arhitectura magazine, and, from 2011 to today, Zeppelin magazine). At the same time, I was an assistant at the University of Architecture at the Department of Design in the visual communication and semiotics classes and the design and product workshop.
I was increasingly interested in the relevance of the fields of architecture and design to the everyday life of people in the city, their real experiences and how it overlapped with the designers’ intentions, how these are reflected in the professional subculture, and how we translate technical things in a language intelligible for the general public. We began presenting the results of our research to an unspecialized audience through books, exhibitions, conferences, and public space interventions.
A vital launch pad for us (which we were utterly unaware of then) was when we made the exhibition at the Romanian pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, the project Remix! Fragments of a country, through which we entered an international stage with all the collaborations that emerged. From art exhibitions as urban practice, the next step for our studio (now called Zeppelin Design) was to create projects for museums, often involving complex tasks, from curatorial approaches and structuring information into thematic categories to projecting interactive exhibition systems and the visiting experience. In these endeavors, my role is mostly in the conceptual and research area, in dialogue with specialists from all other fields.
I firmly believe that the museum as an institution must overcome its didactic tone in Romania and offer quality public teaching and education services. And curators and designers can have a significant impact here.
A.D.: What qualities should a good curator have, and how would you describe a relevant curatorial vision?
C.G.: The first stage in proposing a curatorial theme for an exhibition or cultural program is the documentation and research phase. An essential quality, I think, is curiosity, the passion of finding out everything you can about a given phenomenon from as many perspectives as possible and in various cultural contexts. Next comes the curatorial selection of the content (whatever form it might take: artwork, art practices, interventions, texts, films, spaces, etc.), for which you need to be able to integrate multiple layers of signification, edit the resonance that the works have with the overarching theme and the ways the works relate to each other.
I think it is a matter of proportion and arranging nuances. Then, a curatorial vision crystallizes as you keep in mind the audience you are addressing, the messages you want to reach them, and the methods through which this transfer occurs. I think a valid discourse is one that makes sense in the present and from the perspective of tomorrow, and for my practice specifically, it is one that is aware of the aspects of contemporary city life. A good curator, I believe, is even better if he has the courage and, of course, humor.
*The interview can be read in its entirety in the first printed issue of Empower Artists Magazine available for purchase online here or physically in Cărturești and La Două Bufnițe bookstores.
Translated by Rareș Grozea.
*Credit photo: Dragoș Lumpan
