Co-enrolment: https://base.uni-ak.ac.at/courses/2023W/S04943/

The course intends to contribute to a wider and more complex understanding of spatial, economical, cultural and social differentiation within the same borders. Having the form of a research trip in South-West Romania, during the course we will be looking together at cities such as: Timisoara, Drobeta-Turnu Severin, Tg. Jiu and Bucharest as well as rural areas such as Silistea Snagovului (Gruiu, near Bucharest) where The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life (https://ro.tranzit.org/en/project/0/2021-05-01/the-experimental-station-for-research-on-art-and-life) is taking life from 2021 in a process based on sustainable, ecological and ethical principles. Thus, we will first have the opportunity to think about how does a city "becomes" a ”European Capital of Culture”, in Timisoara's case and what does this mean for the cultural ecosystem on the long run. Further into the trip we will be traveling on the Northern bank of the Danube, in the city of Drobeta Turnu Severin, close to Iron Gates and the two hydroelectric dams with two powers stations on the Danube, joint-venture between the governments of Socialist Romania and Yugoslavia, completed in 1972. There we will be joined by Bojana Piškur, a writer and curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, who will give an introduction on the topic The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). A short trip will be made to Tg. Jiu, the city where Brancusi's Endless Column, Table of Silence and The Gate of the Kiss (1938) are situated. Than we will be heading to Bucharest and spend the last days in Romania in meetings with various guests specialised in topics such as: ecology, forms of co-ownership, information technology as well as contemporary art forms of production. We will visit sites such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Vacaresti “delta” (a natural preserved ecosystem), the University of Bucharest, Malmaison Studios (a hub of artists’ studios and galleries) and others. At the Station we will have a workshop on topics related to ecology, natural resoursces and rurality.

Students will be requested to collect through material means a series of testimonies of their encounter with these new geographies and create a narrative of "becoming" for each, connecting them with a particular period of time (pre WWII, socialism, transition to capitalism and turbo-capitalism and or // a future utopian time at their choice and imagination). A diary / samizdat proposal is also possible.