Digital Portfolio

ANDREEA ILIESCU

Andreea Iliescu is a multimedia digital designer based in London. Her work investigates the social, political and economic conflicts affecting disenfranchised communities, with a focus on BIPOC. In her practice, she draws inspiration from black, indigenous and otherthan-human epistemologies and converges interests in film and animation, experimental music and practices of alternative worldbuilding.

Iliescu graduated with a MA Architecture from the Royal College of Art. She was hired by one of the teams at the Terraforming Project at Strelka Institute and worked as a 3D Designer for Europe’s leading experience design company, Event Communications.

Her work was featured at the Ugly Duck in Bermondsey, South London, under the exhibition titled “WORLDING: Beyond Racial Capitalism”, alongside fellow RCA students from Architectural Design Studio (ADS) 2 and at Istanbul Technical University with [speculative nematode] under the tutelage of Aslihan Senel. Iliescu contributed photography, CGI imagery and essays to Toronto-based publication of contemporary arts and culture, New Currency.

Royal College of Art ANDREEA ILIESCU

Rigged 3D Scan of author’s body, Work in Progress.

SOUNDSCAPES OF RESISTANCE

RCA MA Architecture Thesis Project, YR2

ADS2 Black Horizons: Worlding within the ruins of racial capitalism

Tutors: Dele Adeyemo, Ibiye Camp, Damaso Randulfe

The project proposes to work at the intersection between underground rave culture and post-industrial landscapes.

“Soundscapes of resistance” focuses on one moment within the Amazon global network - the typology of the Amazon Fulfillment Centre. Amazon acts as an efficient model in the planning, controlling and policing of their warehouses, which effectively prevents workers from unionizing. Subverting the balance of distribution of power in these spaces would allow the workers to be in a position to negotiate for the bettering of the working conditions.

The warehouse typology is also historically linked to another kind of event: underground raves, that have their origin in 1980s Detroit. Initially, these events were a means to revert power relations by engaging people in complex operations of temporarily altering unlicensed spaces without authorities finding out. Building on the genealogical relationship between underground rave culture, post-industrial landscapes and global economies, the proposal utilises learnings from rave culture and applies them in the Amazon warehouse to disrupt the order of the space.

The spatial proposition foregrounds the idea of spatial production, becoming a choreography of 5 micro-strategies of resistance that are presented and distributed through a Manual of Actions for a Global Amazon strike – a precise set of architectural and spatial instructions aimed at undoing the logic of the warehouse.

Video installation

Material: Projection, Screen, Physical installation

Date: June 2022

For film please click here.

For the Manual of Actions, please click here.

For research booklet please click here.

Film stills from Soundscapes of Resistance, Existing actors in the Amazon warehouse

Royal College of Art ANDREEA ILIESCU

Film still from Soundscapes of Resistance, 2022.

Royal College of Art

Subverting the balance of distribution of power by allowing the workers to surveillance the line managers

“If there’s one thing to learn from rave, it’s this: you can do anything, if you do it together.”

– Sheryl Garratt, Sweet Harmony – Rave Today

Film stills from Soundscapes of Resistance, 2022.

Collective forms of absenteeism, going against the surveillance technologies in the space

For existing actors in the space animation, please click here.

Royal College of Art

Barricade formed at the AFC entrance Robotic arm and conveyor belt, available technology in the space Workers boycotting the shift

Film stills from Soundscapes of Resistance, 2022.

Andreea Iliescu

Royal College of Art ANDREEA ILIESCU

“You cannot separate music from the time it’s made in.” –

Jeremy Deller, Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain, 1984-1992.

Film stills from Soundscapes of Resistance, 2022.

OTHERED: A Palimpsest of Stories

RCA MA Architecture Design Project, YR1

ADS8 Data Matter(s): The Gaming Edition

Tutors:

“Othered” utilises the worldbuilding potential of gaming environments to investigate questions of identity and displacement of the Roma community in Romania. The proposal is a film taking the form of a digital palimpsest of narratives where objects act as entry point into their life stories. As a Romanian, I grew up in a country which has systematically denied the rights of the Roma, leading to an inability for them to write their own histories. Aware of my limited view as an outsider, I have developed a body of work by co-opting different voices, accounts and testimonies through an archive of oral histories with the aim to shift the perspective in which the Roma are perceived. Through this project, I claim that this type of storytelling can help alleviate their struggles by bringing to visibility their experiences.

The narrative structure uses a mixed-media approach: photogrammetry scans of the site (discussing the temporality of their environment), 3D animations of the family’s household (to give agency to seemingly inanimate objects of everyday use) and found video footage aimed at their physical portrayal and representation.

Video installation Material: Screen Date: June 2021

For full film please click here.

Royal College of Art

Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Kamil Hilmi Dalkir

Abstracted landscape of the Vacaresti Delta

3D reconstruction of Roma household

Methodology and employed mediums

While on site, I conducted systematic visits to capture imagery and video footage in order to digitise the site through photogrammetry. The following screenshots illustrate the process of generating models in Agisoft Metashape, followed by building the walkthrough in Cinema4D.

Royal College of Art ANDREEA ILIESCU

Abstracted landscape of the Vacaresti Delta C. Constructing photogrammetry walkthrough in Cinema 4D

B. Importing photogrammetry models into Cinema 4D - Worldbuilding process

A Collecting data on site 1. Taking photographs of object/subject 2. Generating Agisoft Metashape pointcloud 3. Dense cloud. 4. Textured model

Photogrammetry stills from “Othered” - the camera moves along the pathway until the abstracted landscape reveals the 3D reconstructed household. For the photogrammetry process of the landscape please click here.

Experimenting with aesthetic choices through narrative and storytelling - 1. The frame of the wedding portrait lies in the garden, inviting the viewer into the family’s story; 2. Floral fabrics are an important tradition of Romani communities; 3 - View inside the shack on a chilly winter morning; 4- Progress development of shack, outside view

Royal College of Art

Finalized imagery - film stills from “Othered: A Palimpsest of Stories”

UNLEARNING OBLIVION (De)Constructing Colonial Narratives

RCA Media Studies MS1 Object as Protagonist

“Unlearning oblivion” investigates the relationship between colonization and museum artefacts, using the Benin bronzes at the British Museum as protagonists. The bronzes were the very plaques used to decorate the walls at the Royal Palace of Benin, providing an important historical record of the Kingdom of Benin. Bronze casting is a very rich artistic practice in Benin - and it has been appreciated for centuries. Having started as a royal art form, only the Oba, the traditional ruler and the custodian of the culture of the Edo people, could commission work from the bronze casters. The purpose was to affirm their power, grandeur and the continuity of the ruling dynasty. The close attention to detail in the making of the bronzes is typical of a Benin artist and nowhere is this more apparent than in the plaques themselves. They continue to amaze scholars and historians because they seem to comprise a complete inventory of the art and culture of Benin. Ultimately, The bronzes led to a greater appreciation of African art and culture within Europe.

Consequently, “Unlearning Oblivion” attempts to intertwine two different narratives by looking at the plaques through a moving image piece – on the one hand, depicting the status-quo of the bronzes themselves as a critical part of the monoculture of the British Museum archive and - on the other - suggesting the identity of the plaques as a symbol laden with stories about the people of Benin, how they lived their lives and engaged with their cultural practices. The moving image is accompanied by the reading of a poem by Derek Walcott, “A far cry from Africa”, which talks about the poet’s duality as being British of African descent.

[1] Tim Barringer& Tom Flynn, Colonialism and the object – Empire, material culture and the museum

[2] The Guardian, Should museums return their colonial artefacts https://www.theguardian. com/culture/2019/jun/29/should-museums-return-their-colonial-artefacts [accessed 19th November 2020]

[3] Ariella Aisha Azoulay interview, https://www.guernicamag.com/miscellaneous-files-ariellaaisha-azoulay/ [accessed 18th November 2020]

For full film please click here.

Video installation

Material: Screen Date: March 2021.

Royal College of Art

Tutors: Kamil Hilmi Dalkir

“This object, like millions of others, was part of the fabric of life, not part of the monoculture we now call ‘museum.’ ”

- Ariella Aisha Azoulay [3]

A dichotomy between the craft of bronze casting in Benin and the plaques in the British Museum.

Through the techniques of severe crop and freeze frame, the two narratives (past and present) with their corresponding colours sepia and black&white, the Benin bronzes appear personified; a dichotomy emerges between the Nigerian craft of bronze casting and the statues that nowadays form part of he British Museum archive.

STALKER-19

The dissertation thesis is an analysis and appreciation of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film ‘Stalker’; finding parallels and taking it as a means of understanding life under the COVID-19 pandemic, the text is a personal and close reading of the film. The writing is used as a conversational method to bring the reader along on the journey of the film, as an object of interest in itself, but also as a prism for examining the world during the first lockdown in the UK. Stills from the film sit alongside snapshots from life in 2020, creating a parallel between the two modes of spatiality and using the film as a means for reflecting on the present.

For full publication please click here.

Royal College of Art ANDREEA ILIESCU

RCA MA CHS Dissertation Tutor: Chris Fite-Wassilak

Excerpts from ‘Stalker-19’

MICROPLOT

The project is a call to recalibrate our approach to design by recognizing the microbiome as an additional parameter and overlooked agent of terraforming. The technological mediation of the continuous, interchangeable and entangled relationships between microbiomes, environments and ourselves allows for higher resolutions of perception in the way we compose synthetic landscapes. When germ theory originally framed microbes as pathogens, design was driven by “sterilization” and aimed at the “extermination” of microbial life and the production of highly tempered and sealed environments, propelling a culture of cleanliness. With the potential advancement and accessibility of metagenomic sequencing, we may be at the cusp of refining our understanding of these microbial systems, and reframing our design practices from the reactory to the nuanced, adaptive, and proactive. Manifesting alternative, more precise compositions across various sites and scales of intervention, the project narrates how sequencing could become a potential design tool to inform deliberate terraforming.

Video installation Material: Screen Date: July 2021

For full video please click here.

Royal College of Art

Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design

The Terraforming Project Collaboration with Eva Lindsay, Alla Semenovskaya and Dhruv Shah

Final output stills - chapters on ‘Recalibration’ and ‘Beyond Eradication’

Stills from the point cloud animations

Royal College of Art

Underground station in Moscow

View from afar - Moscow infrastructure

WORLDING Beyond Racial Capitalism

ADS2 Black Horizons Live Project

From the 12th - 14th November, 2021 the students of ADS2 took over the Ugly Duck, Bermondsey to curate an immersive multimedia installation, readings and open discussions engaging visitors on the topic of ‘Worlding: Beyond Racial Capitalism’. as part of our Live Project. ADS2 recognises the production of architecture as a social act. The exhibition’s format aims to subvert the traditional process of researching into a live and interactive experiment, featuring work from current and past students of the studio. This year, we are concerned with what emerges from the ruins of racial capitalism, and how we can sustain forms of non-extractive worlding beyond those ruins. We aim to do this by learning from the global south and drawing on black, indigenous and other–than–human epistemologies to develop a new paradigm for architectural production.

Our student contributors are Joseph Singleton, Nico Jeuch, Francesca Beltrame, Andreea Iliescu, Elizabeth Cox, Tiffany Leeling, Sheryl Wan Shei Beh, Ramit Saksena, Vincent Wang. Tian Yang, Zakiyyah Haffejee and Lauren-Lois Duuah.

Immersive video installation

Material: Projections, Multimedia video Date: November 2021

Royal College of Art

Ugly Duck, Bermondsey

Pictures from the opening of the LIVE Show. Photographs taken by Elizabeth Cox.

Royal College of Art

Photograph taken at the Live Show at the opening night in November by Tian Yang.

ADDITIONAL WORKS

speculative[istanbul]nematode

Inspired by the post-human environmentalist and feminist debate on collective and performative subjectivities, namely Donna Haraway’s suggestion of ‘making kin’ and ‘becoming with’ (2016), Speculative Nematode will suggest making and becoming with others to be able to survive in the contemporary disturbing times of ecological, economic, and political crises, all too harshly experienced in Istanbul.

Physical and Digital installation

Material: Projections, Multimedia video, Sound, Sculpture

Date: September 2022

For more information please click here.

Coordinated by Aslihan Senel, Oyku Simsek and Elif Adiguzel Istanbul Technical University (ITU) Taşkışla

SUMMER OF UNREAL

Developed

Animation stills, July 2021.

as part of the Summer of Unreal bootcamp organized by Pearson College in partnership with EPIC Games.

SPLITTING THE ATOM

Massive Attack music video

Work in Progress music video for Massive Attack - Splitting the Atom, imagery generated by inserting song lyrics as prompts into Midjourney AI.

Still images, October 2022.

Royal College of Art

Multimedia

Digital Designer

andreea.iliescu@network.rca.ac.uk andreea.iliescu7@yahoo.ro

EDUCATION

Royal College of Art, MA Architecture CHS Dissertation Thesis Distinction

Cardiff University, BSc Architecture

Second Class Honours, Division One (2:1) Lecture Series Director, SAWSA (Student Association at the Welsh School of Architecture)

ETSAM, Polytechnic University of Madrid Erasmus Exchange, autumn semester

“Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism

First year Architecture studies

‘Gheorghe Lazar’ National High School, Bucharest Mathematics and Computer Science profile

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

SOFTWARE PROFICIENCY

Agisoft Metashape

Adobe Creative Suite

Premiere Pro After Effects

AutoCAD Cinema4D Vectorworks 2D/3D

Ableton LIVE Suite Rhinoceros

Unreal Engine Unity 3D TouchDesigner

LANGUAGES

Native Romanian

Bilingual English Proficient Spanish Intermediate French Intermediate Portuguese

Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design Design Assistant for the Terraforming Project, MicroPLOT (collaboration with Eva Lindsay, Alla Semenovskaya and Dhruv Shah)

London OPEN House Volunteer Volunteer tour guide at Trellick Tower

Event Communications

Junior 3D Exhibition Designer

Developed 2D drawings, 3D models and renders for the concept stage of Eden Project Qingdao (in collaboration with Grimshaw Architects) 3D Modelled and rendered artefacts and aided scheme design phase of culture galleries of Hong Kong Museum of History

Actively participated in client meetings and CPDs and collaborated across disciplines with content designers and technicians

EatOffYourStreet

construction project involved in design, construction and planting of community edible garden in Stockwell, South London

AIESEC Brazil

X4Change Global Volunteer at Crianca Felins NGO Rio de Janeiro

Implemented and oversaw childcare activities centred on promoting English learning and imaginative play

Notch Architects&Makers

freelance Part I Architectural Assistant for Project Architect Matthew Chan Concept stage of interior refurbishment of Jewish Museum, Camden

Martin Edwards Architects

Part I Architectural Assistant

Developed RIBA stages 1-4 Planning and Construction applications for residential extensions across the UK

Drafted 2D drawings, 3D models and architectural visualisations

Actively participated in client meetings and CPDs

Touriscape

(“Transversal Tourism&Landscape International Congress, Malaga) Coordinator as part of the Congress Organisation Committee

iHTT Institute (“Habitat, Tourism and Territory”, Barcelona)

Research Assistant for Emotional Data, a Customer Experience Analysis startup concerned with improving user experience in retail and hotel environments

SalaFERUSIC Architects, Barcelona Design Assistant

UNHCR, Bucharest Intern, translated the Manual for Legal Border Officers from English to Romanian

COURSES

Summer of Unreal, London Unreal Engine bootcamp, organized by Pearson College in partnership with EPIC Games

Cinema4D Animation Masterclass, Udemy

The Ultimate Guide for Beginners

Adobe Creative Suite Advanced Course, M3 Studio, Madrid

Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator

EXHIBITIONS

speculative nematode [istanbul]

Speculative design workshop and final exhibition showcasing human, non-human and more-than-human entanglements in Istanbul, organised by Dr. Aslihan Senel as part of Istanbul Technical University (ITU)

Royal College of

Andreea Iliescu

SELECTED WORKS