Open:
Wednesday - Sunday: 10.00 - 18.00
Saturday 24 December: 10.00 - 14.00
Sunday 25 December: CLOSED
Saturday 31 December: 10.00 - 14.00
Sunday 1 January 2012: CLOSED
Mondays and Tuesdays CLOSED

Address: MNAC, Izvor St. 2-4, wing E4, Bucharest, Romania / Entrance from Calea 13 Septembrie


Events

FLUXUS in Germany 1962 - 1994
14.12.2011 - 31.01.2012
curators: René Block and Gabriele Knapstein

opening: 12.12.2011, 19.00
14.12.2011, 18.00 Conffernce sustiained by René Block: "To multiply is human - the Fluxus boxes of George Maciunas and other multiples"

Artists: Nam June Paik, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Henning Christiansen, Robert Filliou, Ben Patterson, Daniel Spoerri, Wolf Vostell, Dieter Roth, Milan Knizak, Endre Tót, Dick Higgins, Emmett Williams, Joe Jones, Ben Vautier, Gerhard Rühm, Geoffrey Hendricks, Takako Saito, George Maciunas, Al Hansen, Tomas Schmit, Arthur Köpcke, Ludwig Gosewitz, Alison Knowles, Robert Rehfeldt, Ute Klophaus, Emmett Williams, John Hunov, John Cage, Armin Hundertmark, Manfred Leve, Ben Vautier, S. D. Sauerbier, Jean-Jacques Lebel

Joseph Beuys - Schweigen, 1973
photo: Frank Kleinbach

Exhibition realised by IFA / Institut fuer Auslandbeziehungen
with the support of the German Embassy and Goethe Institut

Sponsors: Illy, Murfatlar, EON

60 years of creation, tapestries from Matisse to nowadays
Tapestry from the collection of the Gobelins National Manufactury
8.12.2011 - 26.02.2012
opening: 7.12.2011, 18h30

Works by: Matisse, Picasso, Le Corbusier, Miro, Matta, Calder, Delaunay, MAgnelli, Bloch, Gleb, Mathieu, poliakoff, Messagier, Frydman, Oppenheim, Erro, Arroyo, Vasarely, Agam, Dewasne, Buraglio, Schlosser, Prassinos, Cognee, Penalba, Favier, Isober, Chillida, Alechinsky, Hajdu, Portzamparc, Zao Wou Ki, Yong Ping, Segui


Schlosser, Ca sent bon, 1987

The Exhibition URBAN ACTIVISM IN ROMANIA - is a study on independent initiatives, urban activation, entrepreneurship and devised projects. It provides examples of attitudes and positions. The Exhibition highlights interventions in public spaces involving the local community, conversion and recovery of obsolete facilities or buildings, urban cultural re-activation by architectural and artistic means or urban design. However, personal financing strategies are revealed as well as the way social integration is perceived, how to raise groups’ awareness and create communities or formulas of partnership with the local government.

Exhibition in the framework of Zeppelin Festival: http://zeppelin-magazine.net/

Alexandru Solomon - Films. Archive. Installation.
13.10.2011 - 20.11.2011
invited by Ruxandra Balaci
organised by Carmen Iovitu

Why and how
When I was a boy, I liked inventing stories. I remember one that had a lot of success within my
family: it was called “ Sausage at the bottom of the sea”. Then, I grew up and my ability to
invent stories shrinked, while my sense of good observation developed.
I studied in the Art High school and there I learned how to observe nature and study it. Later
on, in the University of Theatre and Film, the issue was not really to follow nature, to observe
what is around you: it was a mess not to be shown. After the fall of the communist regime, i.e.
after the disappearance of Nea Nicu (Nicolae Ceausescu), even though my quick debut (as a camera
man) was in the fiction film, I kept a certain feeling of misfit. I really liked this job, but I
disliked the distance between: tens of technical stuff, machines and months of exhausting preparations
were between the author and his subject, almost like purposely killing the very last
trace of reality. I still have an enormous admiration for the great fiction film directors who are
able to surpass this gap.
Besides the camera man job I had the great opportunity to work with real artists using film in a
different way, without professional prejudices or technical education. Some of my best field
memories is about one morning, while working with Ms. Geta Bratescu a film called “Earthcake”.
Just the two of us, me with my camera, Ms Bratescu with an aluminum foil on her head, wearing
pale make up almost like a ghost, eating this earthcake. We were both in a white space confined
by a white bed sheet.
When, in 1992 in Bucharest, the first big retrospective of the Romanian Avantgarde opened, I was
swept by the freedom and humorous creativity radiating from the exhibits. This was the moment
for my next two films together with Radu Igaszag, two films about the avant-garde (“Shriek into
the Eardrum” and “The Zurich Chronicles”, half documentaries and half video experiments. Gradually,
reading and re-reading and trying to tell the story of some writers and artists, I kept
connecting with those subjects, let’s say, more cultural subjects; in fact I took advantage of
living next to these artists for a while: next to Paul Celan and my father, Petre Solomon (in
“Duo for Paoloncello & Petronome”), next to the photographer Iosif Berman (“ The Man with Thousand
Eyes”) or accompanying Caragiale in Berlin (“ The Sweet Bread of Exile”). First of all, for
me, documentary film means the experience of research, which is free of charge: finding out something
means curiosity together with imagination feeding each other. One travels in time through
the documentary film. Doing it, one must return to reality with new images from a past time.
These stories – while at the beginning they were pretty visual – became in time ever more
connected to the word. And because every day I am getting mad at the world we live in, I started
getting interested in politics or better interested in the old habits we drag along and which
influence our lives. And after 7-8 films I was fed up with the fact that my films would only be
seen in festivals or in private projections. (On the TV screen these films were shown only in
2002, without a specific presentation).
I finally planned an international co production, together with a well known company from France,
also with Arte, BBC, France 2, a co production called “The Great Communist Bank Robbery”. I was
fascinated the story of these communists playing the roles of gangsters in a propaganda film.
Nonconsensual negative characters, while big stars in cinema. I never lost the taste for show –
I believe with all my heart that the documentary film is still cinema and only the teller knows
how to look in this chaotic reality to see an exceptional story to be told later on. Every
artifice is permitted only to be true; it is not allowed to lie.
More over, I like unclear stories, who’s good or who’s bad. Or stories in which the good guys
make wicked things and the bad guys judge them. I like the stories in which truth is hard to
tell because lies are immediately traceable. For all the rest, we have to have our doubts. I
feel happy when people tell me they had an agitated sleep after watching “Great Communist Bank
Robbery”, trying to understand why and how. A good documentary raises discussions, dilemmas,
fights, doesn’t sedate you with certainties.
Well, to cut the theory short: almost for the same reasons I became connected with the theme of
Radio Free Europe. I rarely encounter something so remote (it was broadcasting from Germany)
which would create so much passion (the listeners loved the voices of the speakers, the Ceausescu
family hated them). Not to mention the fact that it had a lot of mystery (it is not known
why the three directors of Free Europe have died one after the other), it had terrorism (I spoke
on the phone with Carlos the Jackal) and secret services involved (I investigated the way in
which the Securitate had planned bombing attacks, radiations poisoning attacks or simply knife
assault). Above all these, it is about the strange power of a sort of media totally deposed
today in the television era. When the radio producers came back to Romania after the Revolution,
they were recognized everywhere, on the street, in the supermarket, in the taxi, or simply after
the sound of their voices. Embraced or detested as if old friends or enemies. They were stars.
Today we hardly know who they are anymore. Something else was really appealing for me in this
subject. Something that was only sound had to be transformed into image, specifically into film.
It was difficult, very difficult: with every step, a new story about Radio Free Europe appeared.
Everyone had their own story; I met tens, hundreds of people who worked there, listened to the
shows or lived traumatic experiences connected to the radio shows. I had to renounce to some of
the stories, but I hope that my film represents just the beginning and these stories will eventually
be told. (…)
This piece of writing has been elaborated beginning with November 2007, on the occasion of the
movie premiere of “Cold Waves, Razboi pe calea undelor”. Meanwhile, other films, other thoughts
intervened and probably I have changed as well. While working at “Cold Waves” the idea of a
third film occurred to me, a film that would complete the series started with “Great Communist
Bank Robbery”. It was supposed to be a film of transition from communism to capitalism in the
surrounding areas, a movie in which television has the main role, in the way in which radio and
cinema were dominating the first two movies. But “Kapitalism…” appeared also in the intention to
approach contemporanity. Contrasting with the previous works, in “Kapitalism…” I took a more
critical stand - it appeared to me that I mustn’t hide behind dilemmas and that I must clearly
find myself a placeto deal with the people I talk about. On the other hand I chose to look at the
real life through the magnifying glass of a distorting fantasy type and which places into
perspective the details of our lives in the last two decades. Meaning, I called for Ceausescu’s
phantom.
I was describing at the beginning of this text what made me get away from the fiction film. But I
got stuck – through my work experience as a camera man, as also through the years of visual
experiments – in the desire to produce artifacts, to “imagine” life - in the deep sense of the
word. And here I am today at the crossroads of contradictions (apparently): between telling a
story with real people and to create them, between keeping a distance (as a documentary) and
defending a stand.
Today I am in this crossroad. This exhibition is a good moment for a look back.
Alexandru Solomon

With the support of: Arte Vizuale Foundation, HiFi Productions

MNAClab

The aim of the program is to support logistically a variety of projects that can be submitted by visual artists, or by composers, choreographers, performers, programmers and technicians. MNAClab will provide assistance for the realization of complete projects (from initial concept to full production) or for the different phases of a project (research of technical and artistic feasibility of a certain idea, creation of software or hardware, testing of completed works).

MNAClab's equipment allows in this moment to record and document sound works, to operate all the aspects of the digital video postproduction, to realize projects that involve HD video cameras, computers or video projectors.

For the projects that involve the research of different aspects in domains such as augmented reality, scientific visualization, audification, haptics, interface and interaction between humans and machines, auralization, etc., MNAClab can initiate the get-together of interdisciplinary teams, or can mediate the connection with the specialists qualified to offer solutions or to realize them.

MNAClab cannot sustain the projects that contain a commercial aspect or have as an objective the financial profits.

The applications can be sent at any time. They will be selected throughout the year. The selection procedure could suppose meetings with the applicants, interviews, feasibility studies and planning of all the project's aspects (concept, technical details, budget, technical and human resources, timeline and identification of external resources). The selection will be directed both to the concept and to the technical aspects of the project, and it can be realized by MNAC's specialists or by its collaborators.

The application must contain:

Letter of intention and the applicant's contact
Project description and materials relevant to the project's understanding (images, sketches, diagrams, algorithms, etc)
Documenting materials: CV, portfolio, press kit, DVD, url with previous works
Information about the next projects
A self-addressed and stamped enveloped in case of materials return

Materials have to be sent by post: Izvor st. 2-4, 050563, Bucharest

or by e-mail: medialab@mnac.ro

You will get an e-mail notification for receiving of the materials. The answer can be expected in maximum two months. We will try to answer in time for the proposals that are bound to a certain sequence of time imposed by the participation in festivals, conferences and exhibitions.

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