With experience in marketing research, sociology, and visual studies, Andrei Tudose is a curator, cultural manager, and co-founder of the Marginal Cultural Association and VAGon—in(inter)disciplinary space. His practice is based on a transdisciplinary approach “that blurs the boundaries between fields,” combining the arts, social sciences, and technology and privileging art’s active, societal, and participatory role.

I spoke with Andrei in the context of the extensive mentoring and cultural mediation project Post-Digital Intersections within the national cultural program Timișoara 2023 – European Capital of Culture about the objective of the program and the way it has been carried out so far, about digital art and post-digital, but also about the emancipatory role of art in the contemporary context and its orientation towards the everyday aspects of life: “The post-digital era is moving away from the cryptic area of ​​conceptual and post-conceptual art from the last decades and towards a relevant experience, both emotionally as well as cognitively for the audience.”

Diana Badea: You initiated a complex program called Post-Digital Intersections, a mentoring and cultural mediation project located on the border between art, science, technology, and society. This project took place within the national program Timișoara 2023—European Capital of Culture. Tell us a little about what it consisted of, how it unfolded, and what you aimed for with this project.

Andrei Tudose: Post-Digital Intersections is part of the Open Practice Society platform, an educational alternative of the Marginal organization, through which we offer young people what they often lack to develop artistically – from production budgets and fees to mentoring sessions and advice from slightly more experienced colleagues. In Timișoara, these colleagues were artists and curators of international acclaim – Claudia Schnugg, Annick Bureaud, Anderwald+Grond, and many others.

In June, the exhibition Intersecting Realities was the project’s starting point. The stake was to present another way of looking at the world around us, using art to observe processes that happen at scales imperceptible to the human senses – either we are talking about the very slow melting of glaciers or the rapid disappearance of natural landscapes, the massive number of processes that take place every second in the digital environment, or the traces we leave behind, involuntarily, after every interaction we have with technology.

I also wanted the exhibition to be another way to relate to contemporary art. We have had 3D digital representations juxtaposed with watercolor paintings (such as Kasia Molga’s Chronicles from In-Between 495 to 570 nm project), interactive video sculptures alongside fragile glass objects filled with glacier water (Glacier Trilogy by Theresa Shubert ) or machine learning algorithms that learned to see the world through analog images (The Entropist by Sabine Suru).

During the exhibition, we launched an open call for the young people of Timișoara, from which we selected six very young artists for the mentoring program, which is ongoing right now. The six work alongside some curators and artists involved in the launch exhibition. They also work with six master’s and doctoral students from the Center for Excellence in Image Studies in Bucharest, their collaborators, guided in turn by Annick Bureaud. During the five months of the actual mentoring program, they will develop their projects, refine them, explore new ways of making art, and, in December 2023, put these works in front of the public in an exhibition that will also take place at the Ștefania Palace in Timișoara, naturally closing the circle of the project.
In other words, Post-Digital Intersections is a multi-faceted project through which we aim to show that art can play an active role in societal changes and, at the same time, to support a new generation of artists at the intersection of science, technology and contemporary society. […]

D.B.: Can digital and post-digital art educate and emancipate the viewer?

A.T.: Any form of artistic expression has the role of expanding society’s consciousness of opening new horizons, primarily because, in most cases, it is a vehicle for some uncomfortable questions packaged in a way that often does not directly depend on language, towards example. After a relatively long period of hyper-specialization, including in the artistic field, we are gradually returning to a transdisciplinary approach that blurs the boundaries between fields, a kind of universal ecology in which we begin to appreciate again how everything is interconnected and communicates multilaterally.

From an artistic perspective, I believe in a new Renaissance after a relatively long period in which art had a predominantly aesthetic role, and the artist was a rather reactive presence, responding speculatively to the situations and problems around us. Art’s active, societal role becomes critical when we notice the connections with other fields and how art, technology, and science influence each other and advance together.
Digital and post-digital art were kind of early adopters because we are talking about complex projects that require teams, where it is more difficult for the artist to work alone. Still, I am convinced that this approach will expand in all forms of artistic manifestation, facilitating a closer collaboration within the field, with the other fields, but also with the public, which is no longer just a spectator for some time, often becoming an active presence in the artistic process.*

*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.

Credit cover photo: Sabina-Suru