IDEA - The Practice of Reflection |
One of the key platforms in the field of visual arts in Romania, IDEA (Cluj) stands for "a systematic critical and analytical attempt to promote practices of reflection that are absent from Romanian debates on art and social issues, for an advancement of the aesthetical education and of the impact of art in the public realm."
Launched in 1999 as "Balkon" magazine, and developed in its current form starting with 2003, "IDEA arts+society" magazine presents and discusses events and institutions relevant to the Romanian and international artistic scene, as well as individual or group projects of Romanian artists, embedded in consistent theoretical dossiers. It is published in three issues per year in Romanian and English.
The magazine's agenda has been carried out since 2001 by the IDEA Publishing House as well, which proposes a comprehensive collection of works in the theory and philosophy of contemporary art, as well as social critique and contemporary philosophy.
The Romanian Cultural Institute in New York invites you to a retrospective of the artistic projects featured, over the years, in “gallery” section of the IDEA arts + society magazine. The exhibition opening will feature an interactive panel discussion about IDEA’s practice of criticism and the activities of Protokoll Studio – a curatorial project associated with IDEA’ s general platform. Panel members will include IDEA director Timotei Nadasan and editors Alex. Cistelecan, Adrian T. S�rbu and Attila Tordai-S.
"Allegiance to the exigency of genuine theory – a theory which is, first of all, its own practice – this is the program of IDEA arts + society magazine (Cluj, Romania). This means: the practice of the concerned eye, which can be rigorous solely through the unconditional solidarity with the concrete. It is a practice of thinking unaligned with any aestheticism, hostile to any institutionalized transcendence, immune to the biased fiction of ideological neutrality, and remote from the pernicious language of our contemporary culture of “experts.” In brief, it is the practice of critical and defiant reflection, dramatically lacking in the intellectual-civic debates of present-day Romania. The graphical and logical operator “+” functions as the material figura of all these dimensions, including artistic education and the utilization of art as a positive force in society. The various ways of deciphering this sign reflect the manifold articulations between the artistic and the social realm. That is, the political."
(Image: Cover, last issue of IDEA arts+society, #25 - 2006)
| THU, March 29, 2007, 7 pm
RCINY - THE ROMANIAN GALLERY
FREE ADMISSION.
RSVP mailto:icrny@icrny.org212-687-0180
To learn more about IDEA... |
