 Hello, welcome to Cluj, welcome to Cinema Arta, a new and an old cinema at the same time. I'm Miki Brannishte, cultural manager and curator. I worked for Tondimash Festival for ten years. I don't know, maybe some of you surely know about this festival, but I will briefly introduce it. It started in 2002 in France as an initiative of art television and then it developed at the European scale. The main purpose was to develop interdisciplinary projects where the image, the video image and the photo image have a dramaturgical role in the performing arts. We started in Romania with this interest to the form more. I tried to, together with the team of the festival, to give a local dimension for this festival and to respond to the urgencies of the local scene. Step by step we transform our interest from the form to the content. This is how our festival gets more and more political, let's say. But after ten editions we realized that even if we already proved that we can do a good festival there is no place for the further development of it. And the fragility of the project was the same as at the beginning. But in fact at the beginning it was not that fragile because we had three years of European funding and after these three years we continued the project without this funding, with local funds and national funds. But ten years of work were not enough in order to have a stability for the project. And this is also the place, the festival was the place where the performing arts scene in Romania could be seen by international programmers. Together with Julia Popovic, curator and the critical theatre from Bucharest we developed in the frame of the festival a project called the Romanian Platform of Independent Performing Arts. And there was the place where you could see the most interesting performances in Romania. So coming back on the specificities of the performing arts scene in Romania we, together with Julia, wanted to emphasize the new direction, let's say, embraced by the younger generation of theatre directors and also contemporary dance practitioners that were reflecting on the society and what is happening around us and also globally, not only locally. And this support towards these artists also engaged a new generation after this first names as Giannina Carbonaro, let's say, or David Givarts or Bogdan Giorgescu. And now I'm very happy that in between Vava and Kingo, I will present a little bit later. Sorry, I started directly like this. There is Petro Ionescu, representative of Young Space, called Reactor. And she is part of the new generation that I'm very happy that exists and can continue the work, started in the beginning of 2000. I think just to make a little reference to history, the independent scene started in Romania at the mid-90s with some small initiatives in contemporary dance and theatre. But at year 2000, there was a major project called MAD, managed by Vava and Mihai Mihalca, that lasted three years. It was a joint venture. I will talk about this. And then this was before the most important founder of the independent scene, the Afecene, the national cultural fund that appeared in 2004, no, 2005. So 14 years ago, and in all these 14 years, their funds succeeded to develop a scene. But I think in our opinion, develop is not enough. Now, after 14 years, these people who started that moment are in a moment of their professional life that they need to pass to another level, and there is no other level for the moment. I don't know exactly what, oh yeah, about the moment situation. There are a lot of initiatives, more or less volatile. The duration of a life of a project is around three years, let's say, and some of us are happy that lasted more than three years. And again, some of us cannot see a future in our professional life due to the local or also global movements, global situation. What it may be new for us because we just are more and more aware of it is the fact that one of our important needs, like the space, became to be very threatened. But this is also the case in France. For example, I know about Mandevra, who had a big problem with the mayor. Kluge is a more and more gentrified city, and together with Kingo, we started 10 years ago this project. Of course, together with other 28 persons, not only the two of us, we started the Painbrush Factory project, who today will still have two months of stay in the same place and from the next year, we will move to another small venue. One of the important needs for independent arts in performing arts in Romania is the space and also other similar projects in Bucharest have the same problem. It's not only happening to us. It's a general problem, and I think this is the moment for us to step in a new period. Maybe just before I spoke with some friends here, and Zhegorz was telling us about an artist that came to Kluge two times at least, a Polish artist that now it's thinking his projects without the need of space, without the need of lights, and he's trying to be more autonomous, but I'm thinking for how long can we be autonomous in this way? For sure, we need to find a way to a transition, but a transition to what? I'm very glad that we have this opportunity to participate in the reshape project. I think we all need to reshape our thinking, our ways of doing things, and I'm really asking myself if this engine of the independent scene, which is the auto-exploitation, it's so embedded in ourselves, could we reshape ourselves or not? I think this is the success story of the paintbrush factory, in my opinion, was based on the auto-exploitation. I think not only our story, it's a general fact. But can we reshape ourselves having this so deeply in our way of living, in our way of thinking? But we will come to this question later. I would like to give the phone to the girls and ladies. Sorry for this informal saying. So if you want to start now to present your... Hello, nice to see you all here and happy to have international events, inclusion, people who have good new different energies coming from different places into our city. My name is Kingo, Kingo Kellerman. I am running an organization which is called Ground Floor Group. It's quite old, it's 15 years old, and in its current state, the organization is hibernating, and I will come to that in a minute. We started back in 2004 starting with a contact improvisation festival and organizing it for eight times in eight years. It was our idea to bring this movement form to Romania. There was no such event in Romania and there were no festivals, and there were no trainers and people and practitioners of contact improvisation, and we thought it's a good opportunity to change or make a shift especially in the acting teaching because actors were, at that time, if I may generalize a bit here in Romania, more rationalized in their education. So the body was somehow left out of this, and we wanted to bring back the body to the actor. The acting scene and also the dancers came, so it was a nice festival which lasted eight years, and as Miki told about Tam Dimash Festival, we had the same feeling after eight years of organizing and organizing and organizing and starting and applying for funds to organize this festival that we are in the beginning. You have eight years, you have international trainers, you have performances, you have more trained bodies around you, but you are still in the beginning of lacking funds for the next year, and it was really hard to organize in this way, so we decided to stop that. I also run a festival which was called Vizavi, and it was a dance festival, and it wasn't curated, or if I would say it was curated at the Hungarian Ministry of Culture, because I invited artists who had funds for traveling, and that was a Hungarian artist's dance and theatre people, and that was a fund of the Ministry of Culture of Hungary for some time. They were giving funds for people to tour, so I wrote a dozen of letters of invitation towards artists I was interested in, and I was saying, if you apply for a fund to come, to close, you can, and it happened three or four times that we had this Vizavi festival. In the meantime, I also produced work of choreographer Ferenc Szinko, and we had, together with Miki and Kollektiva, we had a collaboration which was called Parallel, which was a really, I would say now, good show, which travelled broadly and in Romania at all festivals, and it was in 2014 and 15 when we travelled, it was the most travelled show of Romania, both independent and big theatre performances included, and we also produced other performances as well, so as a producer I was touring a lot in the last three, four years with these shows, and I was also in the venture of Fabrika de Pensule, that was our home for the last ten years. We had a studio there which we constructed and painted with our hands and put the floor down with our hands, and it was like an old industrial building, which was, I wouldn't say, occupied by artists, which was paid by artists to the owner. You can see some pictures of them, some shows at Fabrika, I guess. Soon, okay. And the studio space of this big, the performing space of this big industrial building, which was also home for visual artists and organisations, was shared by some of us, and it was a nice way of working together with Miki and Rarica and Alt-Art and some other organisations. We couldn't have the chance to fool the studio with programming alone, so it was really good that we shared the space and we had a really nice dynamic of organising events, and we also shared the space, smaller studio space, with the Centro-National Ardance Louie, which was a residency space called DRAP. So it was a really good home for us for ten years, and I wish we would have a picture of how is it looking now, because all the walls are down and there is open office space for IT companies in this place, and the irony of it is that when the company moved inside their new headquarters in October, they organised a big party and they said, we moved to Fabrika de Pençolet to be among the artists. And we were like, you just replaced us and we closed because of that development and because of the thing that the building is refurbished and now it's working as IT offices, and there is this ironic or I don't know if it's ironic or it's arrogant or it's just a way of not seeing reality. I don't know. But it was really, they organised a party and their communication was that we moved to be closer to the artists. They are the new creative class now. So shortly this is the story of how these years have been and why I'm saying I'm hibernating or the organisation is hibernating. It's precisely because what Miki said about the funds and the fact that we need to... I'm not sure if you know this, but there are no operational funds for cultural organisations in Romania. So that means you invent a project and then you apply and if you get some funds then you can apply for some more from somewhere else and then you can do the project. But otherwise for office, for staff members, for non-creative people like for communication and all that, you don't have funds. So that's why all the projects need to include all these costs and when your projects are not funded anymore or the competition is very high so you really need to reinvent all the time new things even if the old things are really good and working but you still need to reinvent the new things so you can get some funds. And this is sort of a cycle which I opted out like three years ago and after finishing the tours of our last show which was parental control and went to Budapest and went also to Lublin, we decided to sort of hibernate this cycle and see if we can... if we will have the energy to do something in the future out of this cycle and how is that possible. So that's why it's a hibernating process right now. Okay, can I go on? Okay, I am Petro Ionescu. I am part of the staff of Rector. As Miki said, it's a new space but for us it's not so new. The venue opened in March 2014 and the main idea of this... we are also an NGO, we are project-based that means that we don't have constant funds for our activity. But the main idea of this venue was to host and to produce artistic projects for young artists and the main thing that we are interested in is producing contemporary and Romanian dramaturgy. That means that we are working with living playwrights and writers only. And we have different platforms on which we work on and... is it okay? And we have a platform dedicated to freshly graduate students in different fields, artistic fields that means a sonography, directing, playwriting, actors and music and choreography. And this is dedicated only to freshly graduate students. We also have a residency for playwrights and we have another project dedicated to teenagers. It's called Fresh Start... oh, Teen Spirit. Sorry, we have a lot of names so I'm not going to say them all. So Teen Spirit is for teenagers because it's a neglected category here in Romania. On the other side we also have a platform for kids. It's called Mini Raktor and it has a constant season each year. Now we are in our sixth season already, also for the theater productions dedicated to youngs and adults and also the season for kids. We have a small studio. We also have a rehearsal room. We have a tiny office. Everything is happening in the same space. We have a beautiful yard that you might see if you will come to see our theater productions during the reshape or the tour exactly. And what's very important for us is this idea of maintaining this season that we have each year because we have a lot of production already since we are somehow obliged to produce a lot because every time we apply for funds the production part is very important. So far in five years and a half we have 36 theater productions for youngs and for a mature audience and 15 productions for kids, for children. And in this rhythm it's very difficult to keep up with the production because during a year, for example last year, 2018 we had seven theater productions which is very heavy and the problem is that we don't have enough space to rehearse. So as I said we have a small studio. We have another rehearsal room which is a lot smaller than the studio and the studio is small. The capacity is around 70 people in the audience. And yes, we are overproducing somehow. It's this rhythm of a factory somehow. And at the same time we have a lot of collaborators. So in order to keep the people and the collaborators among us we have to give them something to work and to have this season and we have around three performances per week. But it's very difficult, financial wise it's very difficult to keep this. Of course we are multitasking that means that for example I am a project coordinator I write applications but I'm also a stage dramaturg or a playwright or everything that it's needed given the circumstances. And my colleagues, Juan Amardare and Doru Talos who are not here they are the co-managers because they started they initiated this whole project. They are actors, co-managers, financial directors, project coordinators and of course they are also performing in the performances that they are involved. And we have technical team and they are also directors and drivers for the tours that we have because this is another important thing in order to get the funds you need to have mobility. So that means that we need to go to other cities or towns and to perform there. And starting this year we managed to have a project that it's very important to us because we managed to open to have a season in Zalo which is a close city to Cluj and there's no theater there. There is a cultural house something like that but they don't have a theater in that city. So each Sunday we are going there as well and we perform in the morning the performance for kids and in the evening we have theater production for adults and sometimes the teams are overlapping because the actors that are performing in the performances for children they are also performing in the night or they are doing the technical part for the performance that it's during the evening. So yeah, concerning the part of over exploitation and stuff like that we are nearly there or we are just near burnout let's say but in the same time we had an important growth and it was very important for us to have this possibility to maintain the season and to have, we have around 40 collaborators and we have like, I wouldn't say a constant team of artists but somehow we have people that are closer to the space and they are involved in more activities and we are around 10 people that are there all the time and we are 6 people in the office that means 6 people that are doing the bureaucratical work and the financial reports and everything that is needed for our sustaining there. And we also pay rent for the venue that we are in so that's another cost that it's very giving the gentrification here in Cluj, I would say we are lucky because we are like almost center of the city let's say because when we opened in 2014 it wasn't really center but now it seems like we are near the center of the city because it expands very much we are pretty close to a paintbrush factory as well, 15 minutes away or something like that and I think that would be it. Hello, I'm Vava Stefanescu I'm a choreographer and I'm running now the National Dance Center in Bucharest which I would say even my presence here it's a curiosity because normally I shouldn't be here as a representative of a state establishment actually National Dance Center is a state establishment which would have all the means and all the resources to fulfill state mission like in equivalence with a national theater but it's quite opposite of it. The National Dance Center was created after a model after the model of multi-art dance center that I created in 2000 as an NGO and it was created the mud center was created because we need it so the needing it's the main word and the mantra for all the years from then now, like 90 years we functioned under the we need what it's needed so actually mud center sat the three components of activity education and artistic formation and production and distribution of productions and mediatic and cross interdisciplinary performance whatever theory, conference, concerts and all this meeting place with other domain of artistic arts mud center last three years only and we said it's a failure it was very internal driven structure and with no context at all like nobody, I mean there were people in the ministry of culture culture at that time who were very amazed and questioning why, how is that possible to sustain an NGO first with state money and how is that a theater for dance it's dance or theater or visual arts or what is it and it stayed like that for 19 years like this confusion what is that it's a bird with lion legs and wings well it's a weird animal anyway so three after three years of mud center the community gathered and it was a big pressure over the system and we broke the system and we found a little entrance and we break it and we had like 3000 square meters in the building of national theater right in middle of Bucharest which we adapted and constructed and put it as in 2004 and five and six as national dance center well I was talking about failure not having like I have this experience like 19 years ago well minus three I had this very strong feeling that I know what you are going through and I know everybody here knows a little bit about that about the sentiment of failure when you have to close the space the only space that exists and so on but actually it was a success the mud center was a success it was something that continued in this national state and recognized structure then actually over the years we found out that the system didn't know how to treat us how to deal with this structure which is not like other performing arts structures under the hand wing and because we don't have a team of artists hired we don't have a recurrent program like not a season but a repertoire and we were like seven people working in the three component and also the word needing I mean we had to cover to cover all the needs in the domain of contemporary dance in 2004 which was no education for contemporary dance no audience educated for contemporary dance and open and cross domain or transversal showing or performing or whatever no theory, no critics no production money no so many gaps to cover so we lived and we developed and we stated the things under this needing and at some point only lately we succeeded to get out of this needing and let the context work for us in a way and to live make his work the context, the political context the social changes whatever the artists and it's quite good exercise for all workers in National Dance Center to live the things happening actually. In 2011 the building of National Theatre started to be renovated and we were kicked out without any solution any backing up formula so we received three rooms and a toilet in another building and we had no space at all it's the moment when we opened in Fabrica de Pençolet the residency program and all the community that we succeeded to have around the center in this kind of contamination ideas and the working system was pulverized in everywhere in 2013 we succeeded to rent a space with the same budget like the budget went down and down in all these years like in this gap and we rented a space from a private person and we adapted and some of you know the place the rented space and with the help of the owner now slowly we have a foyer for the pub audience we have a new studio and we tried to get out of this miserability of this situation and we succeeded to have a lot of other means but it's easy when your salaries for the workers are there every month and of course you fight for a budget but you fight for a small budget actually so we work only with independent scene in all the direction and registers and we worked all the time in partnership philosophy so we cannot be alone in this and when we sat in 2005 the National Land Center we were also funding an organization for the contemporary dance the last call for contemporary dance was in 2012 with a jump in 2016 like it was a gap and then we could find organize the call again only in 2016 when we got lucky 2016 was a lucky year we received a building in the center of Bucharest an old building for the Senat of Communist Party there are some images in this moving images but you can continue and I will second and the money to remodulate and adapt for contemporary dance in all the three missions the center 13 million euro it's a loan from the development bank of European Commission and the things are going slowly a little bit back this is it it's nice to see it with people imaginary can you hold it a little bit make it still it's an important moment like the most marginal domain of art in Romania the contemporary dance and the contemporary art I would say go back in the building that represents the biggest power it's very interesting to see that move that we succeeded to make actually there was ciausescu talking and now it's the pluralism of voices and a lot of boiling ideas and are in the power and I would say at this point of the philosophy if you want but it's a lived philosophy I would say that the national dance center it's the fantastic institution yeah can be and the project I would just say a little bit about the project it's the idea is to tear down the interior from top to bottom and to build inside like a core the first level is the laboratory like a small stage very multifunctional with a wall that go back and forth and yeah and then it's an intermediate level you have two quite big studios and then you have the the showing like the big hall, the big stage for how many seats? two hundred two hundred forty, seventy up to three hundred and then Apollo and Bachos the third level they are meeting up there they have like open patio with glass in the middle with trees you have the Mediatek and the archives and then you have a bistro and then you have an open terrace so it's the wonderful image of the center it's quite big it's quite small for the entire activity actually we have three missions three missions three missions I mentioned before so we have to make possible this recipient to receive of artists and idea on every level so I think in two thousand twenty three we invite you there thank you I have a question for Petro and you what are the topics of the performances that you are creating in your spaces? okay yeah I was thinking after that I didn't mention that usually we are socially involved and engaged we are doing projects that vision towards the community that we are in social and political we are directed towards left let's say and we have different projects and we approach different topics I would mention some of them we had a project that was about transition period in Romania what happened after the 90s and wild capitalism that came towards us and in this project we had two theater productions one was about Caritas I don't know how many people are familiar with that it's a pyramid scheme and it was this game let's say there were a lot of people convincing them to deposit a certain amount of money with the promise that they will get eight times back that amount so it was how do you say it in English? anyway it's a con artist you know the person who scam exactly thank you and this lasted for about three years four million people were depositing money there and a lot of them were broke after it they lost their houses or their savings that they made during the communist period yeah and that was one of the production we were documenting this whole game and the other one was about yoga practitioners that started also in the 90s and in 2004 there was a huge scandal with this guru, yoga guru who was accused of sexual assault and pedophilia and sexual practices that were not really I don't know approved by the people back then and there was a huge trial on this person but in the same time the yoga practitioners who didn't have anything to do with this formation or this group because it was a separate group that was practicing yoga in a certain way they are also the police came to their houses and it was a big assault towards them and they didn't have anything to do with this guru as I said so it was stigma let's say on the yoga practitioners back then so these are two of the projects we also had a multi-annual project and we were focused on the vulnerable groups in Romania because last year we had the centenary of Romania the big union and we focused on the categories of people who were let's say marginal somehow and we made three theater productions one about the condition of women in this hundred years, one about the elderly people and another one about the sexual minorities because in Romania until 2001 it was illegal to have a different sexual orientation so let's say we have this kind of topics in our productions I would ask you why do you tackle these kind of issues why do we why do you prefer this and not the other it came with the artists that approached the space somehow and most of us are interested in political issues and in the same time there are things that affects us as well I mean we also work with personal stories we have a lot of theater productions that are made with this devised methods and that means that we work with personal stories and the actors are not doing a part or a role they are performing somehow their own stories and in the same time there are the directors with whom we collaborate and sometimes the topics come with their proposal I want to do performance about let's say the pyramid scheme and it's somehow suitable for us because Karita started in Cluj it was the big boom was here in Cluj so it's related to the community so we are also trying to make performances that are important for Cluj and for what Cluj was or is becoming now Vava maybe you can also answer about the teams that the artists associated with the national dance center are tackling in their performances what do you support what kind of creations do you support as a national I won't go because we are a recipient and we were thinking very much in this perspective we don't do a curatorial I don't know we don't apply a curatorial vision on what's happening there actually our productions are very few like in two years because we don't have budget for this we don't have a lot of budget but there are a lot of performances already done that we invite in a sort of recurrent presentation program and there is an option for ideas that move the perspective that link with the social problems like paul dunka with transgender problem like I don't know or other programs there are different artists they are quite recognized for instating this working with the audience in the process about gypsies Roma population so we are very open to all ideas that push a little bit the thinking push a little bit the reaction of the audience and I can say the audience is quite engaged we know already they come very open to what we present there because they are those who are already converted you know that we are saying I don't know conversion it's converted once we can talk a lot I think they come with no preconception and they come with the willing meeting new ideas which is the main thing and also we invite for instance two days ago from Friday to Sunday we had also in Salaomnia also in our rented space transit days transit and they had like a marathon from six in the evening till four o'clock in the morning like a lot of artists talking about the future about the main problems and urgent problems of climate change and so on and it was an important moment and it's quite fluid people come and go and these kind of things we invite somehow in this Salaomnia but also we succeeded now in last three years to crystallize more the three missions that I was talking and we instated the little school for contemporary dance which is very transversal it's artistic education it's not only dance and then we opened physically the Mediatek and the archives and it's amazing work that was done there it's a lot of documents and so on the recent history of contemporary dance in Romania and well the stage remains open till four o'clock in the morning for everybody because we started like that artists had the key of the space this is very symbolic for your style of management of the institution there are some keywords that were said till now like no context we created a context broke the system then overproduction also and then failure but I would like let's talk about success I would like to move from these keywords and to ask you how do you imagine an ideal period of three years in the life of your organization institution if you have the grants that you would like to have what you would do it's very hard to imagine such a situation I know from the point of view of management of managing an organization it's like you always start from the funds and from the lack of the funds and then you invite or get in or get involved with the projects which you can support but it's your responsibility not to dream the artists would dream but from my point of view if the artist is dreaming say super nice but I cannot support this because I know that I will not have the funds it's so but now we are in a three years of the funding so what you would do in this I would make space for new work of international artists in residences if there is a space to run and if there is money I would invite other people to think in that space so I would know more about my context through their eyes and I would curate the artists who are involved in this but I would like to invite a lot of people to look at our context with their eyes and their cultural background I think it's I think mobility of the artist is in the independent context because if we're talking about mobility of the artists in the performing arts directors are moving a lot they are directing in this place and that place and they are invited into a lot of places but like choreographers are less actors are moving less so it's if we create a context in the independent sector it's about a lot of mobility and a lot of meetings like this then it's nice I was thinking that imagining an ideal phase in our organization it's partly painful and partly needed because this is what somehow keeps us doing what we do so we need this future plan that we will have at some point and I think one of the most important things that we would do is to hire the people that are working constantly there because no one is hired we are having a short period contracts and most of them are like contracts for artists or for doing certain services but not having people employed means that there's also a lack of social measures and social benefits for us we are independent but this word independent it's not the best I think for us we are depending on a lot of things actually so it's weird to call ourselves independent so I think one of the important things is to hire the people and then I think we would ease this rhythm of production because we are we wouldn't have this rush and this overlapping production rhythm somehow and I don't know we are also thinking about expanding somehow because our studio is as I said pretty small and we are forced somehow to limit our artistic vision and concept we have this given space and we have to adapt to it if we want to do bigger production or if we have an idea for a bigger sonography it's impossible to do it of course it's not the main thing in producing theater shows but you get bored at some point the question is you would do the ideal situation for your space and the institution if the next three years will be funded as you wish not for me because if the center would have the money and the space and the ideal situation I would be very far away finally and probably I would ask I would apply to the center for the production for your own production yeah I would instantly open at least in Romania five eco artistic centers ecological artistic in not in the city not in the like I would not like I was thinking like five years ago imagining and it was ideal to open choreographic centers in big cities university cities but now I think it's important to have like ecological platform to meet for artists and organizers as well and probably this I would do like more in healing and raising artistically this kind of yeah I think so you said the three of you your needs for your organization but what would be the common needs of the scene of the independent scene operational funds I think it's the stage of development as we are speaking which is the next stage the next stage is that people and I think Petro was saying the same that people are not working on a project because they also need to pay their salary they are working on a project because they are paid to think about the project and they are paid to develop new projects and it's the basic like the office your salaries and all the basic operational funds are covered because of what all these people showed before so it's like it's not carte blanche because people are they demonstrated the independent scene in Romania especially in performing arts demonstrated that they are flexible and they have really good ideas and they work from morning till evening and they come up with new projects and new ideas and they are super good so let's support them by offering a platform like operational funds and then you work from there because for our organization for example is a two-member organization which are volunteering all the time in these 15 years it's not sustainable that's auto exploitation it's not sustainable so if there are small organizations it's really hard to make the next step of hiring someone who is good at communication or hiring someone else who is good at marketing or hiring someone who is good at fundraising for example like fundraising manager I don't know how many NGOs have fundraising manager which is like the basic thing so we could go and find sponsors for our projects so these kind of operational funds we should cover the basic stuff and that would make the next level for the independent scene to really work on their projects and not managing not only the management behind them I would add the need of a status for the independent cultural worker and for the independent artists because we don't have this in Romania and as I said we are the there's the director of the National Theater in Bucharest and also the president of UNITER that means the theater makers union and he's calling the independent artists working in the theater the unemployed because we don't exist somehow we are the unemployed and not having this status and regulated by the law and by the government we if we don't have a project then we don't exist we don't have medical assurance we don't have the unemployment benefit the financial social help we don't have anything so when you don't have a project you just you're not there you're not figuring anywhere so I think it's very important to develop this part of legalizing somehow our status because we are doing an important part that the institutionalized theaters are not doing they are not involved socially as much as we are they are just checking their repertoire and their productions and their activity there are a few theaters state theaters in Romania that have a coherent program and a coherent concept of their work the theater from Piatranant where is Giannina Carbonado she's a director and an exception somehow and there are 53 or 57 theaters in Romania if we count the new ones in Kalorazio and which with a coherent program we wish them luck but can add something to the question before if we we would live in an ideal context with everything we would need to find another fight for yes and I have a proposal and I wonder what would be that because there are these syndical or state problems to set these managing competences to develop but mainly it's on my view it's based on it's not the money the problem necessarily it's the understanding it's the cultural the culture the open mind of the ones in the power because the new we changed like maybe 19 ministers of culture and the last one started with exchange office and the last one installed 10 days ago and he opened like a sort of television station somewhere in Romania so this is the minister of culture and if we had the terms to enter a dialogue with the authorities until now I wonder how we can continue to how it's possible to have a dialogue on the same understanding of notions and if this happens with us I imagine how this works in smaller cities with the mayors with the structures that authorities that are not so I don't know trained in having artists with proposal with challenges that artists are putting on the table so if seven years ago I we heard really heard a minister of culture saying what they are moving their legs and we need to pay them for that this no it wasn't then and it will be not as long as we don't train the society to understand and to look at each other to enter the dialogue and this conversation is very good this dialogue, this reshape things all conferences but I have the feeling of endless discussions with ourselves and I think we do nothing for a common understanding basic things in order to have a status for an independent artist you have, I mean, you need to know a little bit what he's doing or she's doing or they do it they are doing I want to connect to what you said Baba about this and about the feeling that we need to pick up a new fight I think it's not a new fight and it's an ongoing fight and yes, we changed 19 ministers of culture and we started if those who had the chance started to reintroduce themselves especially in contemporary dance again I'm doing contemporary dance contemporary dance is the definition and you do it with all the ministers and all the people in the ministry because you need to explain all that but my I have a feeling that we have I think I said that before in another panel but we have those who are in the field for a longer time we have somehow the responsibility to share our knowledge to those who are starting this fight right now and this is something which needs to have more attention in a way from our side to share our know-how especially on this topic not only the content and the professional stuff and the management stuff but also this topic of how to deal with a mayor whose only problem is the who's not interested in culture at all how to deal with a local council who has no interest in what you are doing so how to step out of this bubble of ours when we are speaking the same language and we can talk for hours about the same problems in different countries but the same issues with the independent scene and with artists emerging artists and the stages organizations in different development stages but this is what I feel a lack of in a way that me for example I'm very tired already of this ongoing fight and I don't want to fight anymore but I have a lot of knowledge and some people have the energy to fight but don't have the knowledge so how to connect these two things what is the format what is this format of sharing this know-how in a way so we will have it already and when they will get tired they have a lot of energy but they will get tired in 10 years and then new ones are coming and that's super nice super good that people are getting involved in a cultural scene and young people are coming in it's the way life is how to transfer this is a for me it's a question that it's working how to transfer knowledge know-how on how to deal with all these fights and also with the audience because the audience, our audience is live audience that means it's changing it's like it's a new audience coming, younger people are coming to the theater or not coming to the theater or dance because they don't know how to train and develop programs of education for the public also for the politicians but also for our public so they will understand or they will get closer to the arts in this way how? I have one more question for you and then I will we will open the session for the questions I totally agree with the vision about transmission and this is really very important because otherwise nothing will be reshaped and about a new fight in my vision there is already one my question is how do you respond to the more and more large trend of the entrepreneurial realization of culture you that you have a vision of culture as a social tool that you have this vision I don't know when you put the other one question like the ideal situation my first thought was to let the business take over explain more like very challenging but now it's you are confused yeah because from this position we have as national dance center as a state institution as this is somehow to quit and to transform and to reshape is I mean it's the key of continuation of continuity like the possibility to leave it open within this thin walls like the structure but to make it that way that can take any shape any that respond and enter in dialogue with the artists which are on what is the business in this no no it's not the business it's not the business but I think I don't know it's a it's very hard because we need to continue like that because once we drop it it's like we did it for nothing like the state didn't have have to house correctly to recognize this kind of organization non-profit non has to admit and to work with it I wouldn't quit this because there is a lot of and it's a conflict in going to a question it's a conflict between this state budgetary to give me situation and the entrepreneurial which is the National Dance Center is full of entrepreneurs actually independent little groups that they are trying to do something and they organize themselves as they can do they do themselves recognize them as entrepreneurs I don't know but they are in a way they are in a way because they find a lot of money a lot they find money they struggle to organize and to do things and to install things and this is I was just thinking that I don't see a threat a commercialization of art in because I think there is room for us under the sun so there there are art forms which can be commercialized and will have the public for that who will pay for that but I don't I don't see that why is that a problem I only see that from my point of view I'm I will probably do art or contribute or manage art which is not that type but I think that's fine I mean there are different forms and I don't feel threatened by those forms who can be commercialized and can live on their of their income I'm not usually serving it as a public I don't go to this type of event but that's my choice and I think if we have choices that's fine I would add something I think one of the the main issues is the idea of compromise how much do you compromise was the level of compromise when you are transforming culture into business and also the impact that it has on the other on the other the other cultural NGOs smaller than you are or than what you are becoming and it's very difficult because each city or each country has its own dynamics and the clues it's very particular in that case because having a dynamic cultural life comes with this kind of compromise because you are killing somehow the small NGOs or you are producing something that will come back at you in a bad way in a violent way producing gentrification and also having this greedy way of accumulating the cultural capital and this is what it's happening at the city hall somehow because we as an NGO we are important let's say for the cultural life we are part of the statistics of this city we are dynamic we are young and we are creative but this doesn't reflect the financial funds that we are receiving from the city hall and somehow they are building this image they have capitalizing their cultural image on us but we are still precarious so how can what how is this success for whom and we have a success story so far as NGO Raktor is a success but it's not we are just surviving still in this context because Kruj is becoming more and more expensive and the gentrification as we know has also an effect on the cultural life or sometimes the artists are to blame for gentrification but it's not always the case it's just I don't know somehow we are unaware of what we are producing what's the impact of our activity Thank you very much and already questions Hello I have a question for all of you but I think that's the best point actually drawing from what Petro said I think that's your I would like to know how do you engage with your local communities as different organizations and also I was curious to know how you engage with one another I was part of a conversation in 2016 when Kluz was preparing the bit-book for the European Capital of Culture and it was really fascinating to see some of the flagship projects that you were proposing back then that were based on collaboration between the states and smaller NGOs and arts organizations and I was wondering whether you have found a way to do that regardless of the outcome of the ECOC and what is the things that you can share with us about that A difficult question I just tried to repeat the question because I thought it was for them and I wasn't that attentive sorry how this idea of collaboration from the bit-book it's happening now in a way this is the question as the factory together for example we always collaborated with the other partners smaller or bigger than us and I think a nice project that we succeeded to do apart this bit-book was a website a common website called Theatre Incluz and it was the idea which is dying now sorry it was a platform for the common program of Theatre Incluz also independent but also from the state institutions and we did this after a project that was managed by the factory together with Reaktor another space called ZUG and we had a moment of reflection together and we gave feedback on our audiences and we saw what our needs and we tried together to find solutions to this and the idea was to develop the audience of the free spaces at the beginning but we realized that it's more important to be open to the public of the national institutions this is very clear as I can point this project you said or maybe you can speak about this because you collaborate to evolve art for a performance yes we but I don't know if that's the question I will refer to your first question on how do we engage with the community and the audience and on most of our projects we are trying to have some workshops in which we are talking with representative groups of people for what for our topic let's say as I said when we have a production for teenagers then we are trying to make some workshops and some sessions with them and trying to approach them and talk with them and to see their interests and also since you mentioned Patarat is it's a community of Roma people and it's near the airport and this is where the garbage dump is so this community was evacuated for the last 50 years there and especially poor people and Roma people they were evacuated from their social houses and they are living near the garbage dump and you can imagine their situation there there aren't let's say properly houses there it's a very I don't know doomed community somehow and for this project we were doing this performance theater performance starting from this very clear situation here in Cluj but we are also interested in the forced evacuations in Romania because Cluj is not the only city that is having this kind of actions there are evacuations in Bucharest as well in other cities as well or building walls to separate the Roma community the ghettos from the rest of the community this is happening in Bayamare and we were also interested in going there in the community and to talk to the people there and we had a couple of meetings there in Patarat and it was very important for us to know how to represent them because none of the team none of us in the artistic team was Roma or was dealing with this kind of situation being evicted so it was very important to have this to talk with them of course we didn't manage to have as much people as we wanted in our interviews and in our talks with them but it was still an experience to go there and to see how those people are living and there were a lot of kids approaching us as well and talking to us so we basically did this research there and also reading a lot of materials regarding evictions and the laws also because there are some European laws concerning evictions for instance you are not allowed to evict people during winter and this is what happened in Cluj actually people were evicted in December 2011 it was 17th of December when they were evicted it was 5 in the morning when this happened so it's illegal normally it's illegal but they still did it so yeah this is a very particular project and also we always try to have this focus on the audiences and having Q&As after each performance but also have we have this program called framework and this is dedicated to let's say more engaged spectators that want to have debates after the performance or after each activity that we have in a certain project and they are they gather in one of our rehearsing rooms and they are doing this let's say critical debate and having this social input as well about what we are doing there there's another particular performance where we have I guess you will see it because it's included in this program it's called memory balance and here we have a non-professional actress she's 69 years old and she's performing because the performance is about what does it mean to retire what was the experience of elderly people during the transition period and how is it in the present how the elderly people are seen these days because it's a very social invisible category in Romania another question hello this is not very clear in my mind but I guess what I want to the direction that I want to go to or what I would like to hear from you is how you've been dressing this kind of picture of your local positioning and how you see yourself in a local environment and I wonder how you would see yourself on a larger scale I know that all of you or most of you work internationally and are very much connected internationally so I wonder what your own vision of your own place in that environment is a while ago somebody who is highly placed in a French institution told me that there is no such thing as Eastern Europe anymore so I wonder how you feel about that and whether that's a reality that you can acknowledge that 89 brought the end of history somehow to all of us now we are all one happy family and so is that something that you can relate to and how is your work also in terms of not just its political impact but also in terms of the artistic and aesthetic value of it seen in this larger environment and then perhaps connected to that I very much relate to what you were saying thinking about transmission and how transmission can happen from one generation of a burnt out activist to another and then I wonder how we can also see that in a larger scale and how the heritage of your activism can be somehow transferred to other situations as well and how can we who are actually now we sitting I can speak for myself sitting in Western Europe in a situation of relative luxury but facing a situation that it's soon to become what you have already been through how can we learn from your activism how can we do this transmission also not just generationally but from one region to another Difficult task Who wants to take it from me until six o'clock There are three questions here Yeah, we are connected we tried to enter different networks but actually we networks like aero waves, like dance roads till two years ago I think started stopped I don't know basically we considered our structure as a recipient like a meeting point of like it's main characteristic so artists are more connected than the institution somehow so this is the advantage of being a fantastic institution because they if the artists are connected the institution can work for them they can the institution adapt the possibilities to help them to support to go further there's less maybe it's less how you call that a desiderate of institutional from institutional point of view like we want to be recognized or connected or work with then I mean it's not that powerful of course we try but we are more letting the artists or helping the artists supporting the artists to have this mobility ground and playground sometimes and make an artist because it's such a big difference between them they they work very different on different and they connect with different so it's more a duty for us to to make this happen more than the institution to get something out of it but we can and then we try more and more to let more the audience that happens abroad I mean this is the effort that we do like to cultivate or to open mind the mind of audience and the other question was so this was the connection with about transmission I'm not a good person to say I mean to answer to this I believe there is no transmission I mean it's like in dance where you don't have a I mean it's like in dance when you I cannot teach you to dance I can transmit some things that you work with and it's yours it's not mine it's not something that you can use I mean you can use it for the starting point it's a but then you are the one who do things and the context will be very different I mean this is a big question for me because we prepare kids for a future that we don't know the future we can look at it but it's not quite clear so I think I know that multi-art dance center experience it's very similar what they are doing what they are experiencing right now with Fabrica de Pençoli experience but I don't think this can be transmitted be aware there will come a moment of failure no I mean I don't believe it so I'm not a good answerer to this question maybe it's a learning process together with the other generation maybe but your question was also about what can you learn from us I think there's nothing to learn I don't agree it's nothing that you can reproduce elsewhere this is what I'm trying to say it's very different each context it's so different and you cannot have a recipe you can take that and that and it will have the same outcome it's very difficult and I'm going back to your question about there's no more Eastern Europe this is like ignoring history I know we have a short memory but you cannot erase this like that and it's not the fact that we have common background because somehow we do have it and it's also this geographically we share somehow some things I don't believe in borders, nations stuff like that but we do have common history to one some point and that's it I'm not saying there's no more Eastern Europe it's as I said ignoring history and ignoring the political factors that get us here somehow and about your first question was about the international context I would say that for us Rector we are not so internationally let's say we went to Seged to a festival this summer and that's it and we are going in Budapest at Dunapart with the performance there and that's it for our international context but we do have collaborations with different NGOs and we have we managed to do that through ITM so we have this exchange programs we hosted some performances here we have good connections in Maribor with Moment I don't know if you're familiar anyway, they are small as us it's a different scale and somehow I think that we are relevant for our context, for the national and local context but internationally we are not doing international performances yet I think there's very specific somehow and we have performances with a lot of texts and it's difficult to get it somewhere else somehow or it's difficult to follow I don't know it's something that we are still trying to reach but it's one of our purposes as well but it's not the main purpose as I said we are relevant here and it's important to be relevant in your community Hi I was wondering as a Western European being part of your community somehow since two, three years I was wondering about the impression that some Western European people have coming here in Romania and saying, yeah in Western Europe it's kind of luxury and that's true in a way and in another way it makes me wonder how the Eastern Europe can be used in Western Europe to make us feel in Western Europe in this kind of luxury and I've always been amazed by the fact that I've seen many Eastern productions in the cinema very much that are greeted with so amazingly by Western Europe because Eastern people are criticizing their own culture and countries and I was wondering if there were some productions Romanian productions making about this fact that in fact in Romania remains something that is not so much contaminated by neoliberalism which we haven't talked about here because reshaping for me the world is being reshaped by neoliberalism since some decades and the way the reshape that you're talking about is like a fight against the reshape by neoliberalism and you have to reshape permanently because you fight like the monster coming and I feel that here in Romania it's a bit late and it's good from this point of view and I was wondering if there were some productions talking about this advantage of Eastern Europe about this small late to talk about it in a positive way and to get out of the way Western Europe asks for Eastern artists to talk about how is it bad to be in Eastern Europe because in Western Europe it's so cool I mean I was about to say before depends we don't have production we are representative only for local depends who is looking at it no, no, no, no I mean it's what you believe but I think who's looking at it I mean if you are looking at that you can understand but it's true that it was well depends with whom you were talking it was a period of time when the productions were very sexy for the West and they were like the years 2000, 2000 maybe 7, 8 they were artists that revisited the values that we are we have here they put like I'm thinking about High Stars in Amnesia Sky it's the first who comes and who was invited in Berlin, in Tanztag Manuel Pelmus and so on who were and now we have a lot of productions like look at Alexandra Piric that it's yesterday, before yesterday she came from Portugal and it's a co-production and well, there is no I think it's a tricky thing here I mean economics has to deal with that I mean it's obvious that Eastern European countries are poor and their economics it's a complex of economy it's a long discussion I think and on the other hand this kind of attitude in the West that we it's a luxury I participated I think 15 years ago in debates or in France and they told me because I was planting what structures exist and how's the finding for contemporary dance and so on and 15 years ago it was the same problem what's the difference and I learned they said at least you have the opportunity to set it right now someone from France tell me I wonder if you wasn't from Honda who told me that in Montpellier meeting with politics for dance cultural politics policies for dance and she said at least you can set it put the ground for like very healthy and as you like for that to break a system I think you are in a difficult situation the people in the West I think it's harder to break some mentalities and for us it's hard to to fight with himeras to fight with the idea that the Americans are coming or we will find I don't know what kind of treasure sorry the last question maybe for her because sorry someone told me that we have to I just wanted to add on that coming from Greece I understand perfectly what you are saying the only thing that makes me feel a little bit weird about it is that I feel that we have to break another system which is exactly the system that grows out of being poor for many years out of not trusting each other and not being able to collaborate unless we have someone coming from the West to show us the way to do that and to give us some money so I think there is a lot of systems and a lot of different layers depending on the context thank you the material things and the recognition the mentality that you are not recognizing your country if someone from West comes and say you are good and like it gives you the label and the recognition and on the other hand there are a lot of exchanges that really happens I mean I don't but this is the mobility and the and it's a long discussion with economics I mean I believe in economy that's why let business do Christina should we finish? Thank you for coming and let's meet afterwards Thank you We are going to visit Reaktov's place tomorrow and a lot of other new interesting places and people tomorrow at the performing art store so I expect you to not I don't expect but if you want to join we start at 10 at Belvedere Thank you for your attention and thank you for the speakers Thank you for the invitation