The piece deals with an embodied dematerialization of a grid, a structure. Through a hypnotic process the listener is guided to embody the struggles of Ailanthus Altissima, The Tree of Heaven entangled in the fences of Bucharest and to exit this limitation mentally.
The piece was produced for the “on off structures” exhibition at Atelier 35, Bucharest, and is site specific.
Photo: Vlad Brăteanu, remapping body #4, 2019
Vlad Brăteanu is a visual artist living and working in Berlin. He graduated an MA in Photography and Moving Image at the National University of Arts, Bucharest in 2018 and studied Philosophy in Contemporary Art with Catherine Malabou at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm in 2016. His early practice designated an interest into the process of photography as an intuitive gesture, a snap shot, a figurative sketch, all from a documentary perspective. With a strong and long practice of photography, some of his early works employ seeing, memory perception, visual signs and indexes as main focus. Through constant playful semiotics of imagery, Brăteanu’s more recent practice unveils a shift to conceptual photography, to the grid and the symbol. In his 2016 exhibition “remapping bodies” he highlighted a photography series depicting entangled and merged tree branches into fences on the streets of Bucharest. Through an exercise of reflection about the merging process, remapping bodies analyzed conditions of plasticity, restraint and tension in the realm of nature. The shift from embedded movement captured in the differing series of photographs to embodied movement surfaced out by his current research into altered states of consciousness, namely hypnotic practices, is becoming visible in his current practice. He is the co-founder of Template, an artist initiative and exhibition project that started in Bucharest in 2018 and activated various unused architectural structures located in the city be rendering them as temporary, scaled-down exhibition sites.
Text and voice: Vlad Brăteanu
Recording and editing: Vlad Brăteanu
Mixing: Mara Mărăcinescu
