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Rokolectiv presents a new performative installation initiated by Nona Inescu, in collaboration with Adrian Ganea, Jared Marks and Petra Hermanova. In the impressive space of Scânteia+, a speculative fiction about extinction, de-extinction and deep time unfolds. The installation materializes on the 6th of December between 7 and 10PM, blending video and sculpture with live performance and sound.
Eu, balaur bondoc excavates the buried connection between a 70-million-year-old dwarf dinosaur and a 20th-century Transylvanian baron in a part biographical, part paleontological story that blends science with fiction and speculates on common geological histories.
The eroded plateau of Hațeg, now exposed to wind and weather, was once a tropical island in the Tethys Sea. Here, in the early 1900s, paleontologists unearthed fossils of miniaturized dinosaurs — creatures that had evolved smaller bodies in response to island isolation, such as the dwarf dinosaur Balaur bondoc (who lends their name to the title of the installation). Franz Nopcsa, the openly queer Transylvanian baron and founder of paleobiology, proposed the theory that would explain them: island syndrome. Despite his groundbreaking work and the dramatic murder-suicide that would end his life, Nopcsa remains a marginalized, eccentric, and mostly forgotten character.
Threading these accounts together, the fragmented narrative of the installation jumps between the Late Cretaceous, early last century, and an ominous near future. Two LED screens display footage shot in Hațeg’s high-altitude terrain: rust-red sediment, close-ups of lichen and pebble, then sudden pulls to reveal the vastness of the landscape. Human figures appear, press themselves into the earth, and gradually fade into the rock face until they’re indistinguishable from geological formations.
Amongst rock-like clay sculptures, two performers transmit semi-fictional records from a multi-species cast of characters. This disrupted but true story of death and love takes place where concrete riverbeds, prehistoric seas, and the Temu stratum meet. The performance is completed by Petra Hermanova’s sonic interventions, a balancing act between death and drama.
“Eu, balaur bondoc is a shift of scale and of perception: a poetics of interdependence between organic life, nature, memory, and matter. Nona Inescu’s project rethinks the human relationship to the planet and to what we call progress, reactivating local and marginal narratives from Romania, which, though nearly forgotten, hold planetary resonance.” (Adriana Blidaru)
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Eu, balaur bondoc
Performative installation
06.12 / 19h00 - 22h00 / Scânteia+
Artists: Nona Inescu, Adrian Ganea, Jared Marks, Petra Hermanova
Performers: Owen Ridley-DeMonick, Eliza Trefaș
3D modelling: Marta Mattioli
Video editor: Cătălin Cristuțiu
DOP: Boróka Biró
Producer: Mădălina Brătianu
Looks: Emilian Pospaii
Graphic design: Otilia Fiastru
Technical assistance: Matei Emanuel, Dragoș Petrișor
Thanks to Virgil Scripcariu
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Partners: Catinca Tăbăcaru Gallery, Scânteia+
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This project is co-financed by AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not to be held responsible for the content of the project, nor for the ways in which the results of the project might be used. Those are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the grant.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Scânteia+, Bucharest, Romania
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