Constructing an identity: projecting a Romanian image through the Venice Architecture Biennale

Constructing an identity: projecting a Romanian image through the Venice Architecture Biennale

Andra Pop-Jurj MA Architecture Royal College of Art 2020 Tutor: Stamatis Zografos Word count: 10007

Figure 1: The Romanian Pavilion in Venice

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I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Stamatis Zografos for his guidance and support throughout my research, development and writing of this essay.

My very sincere thanks are due to Ana-Maria Zahariade for sharing her memories and experiences about the organization of architectural events in Romania since the 1990s and for helping me piece together the loose strings of information identified throughout my research. I would also like to thank Attila Kim for sharing his experience as commissioner of Romania at the Venice Biennale. Last but not least, I would like to thank the Union of Romanian Architects for providing me with access to their archives.

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Contents 05​ Illustrations 06​ Abstract 07​ Introduction 10​ Chapter I. Before and after: still searching for a national identity Building a European nation state The identity-related indecision

18​ C ​ hapter II.​ ​Exhibiting the nation through architecture

Exhibiting architecture Exhibiting the nation through national pavilions The Romanian Pavilion: A case study

25​ Chapter III. Curating an international image Forgotten Balance: Timișoara 1991-1996, 1996 Mnemonics: Collective memories define our territory, 2018

34​ Conclusion

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Illustrations

Fig. 1​: The Romanian Pavilion in Venice, Attila Kim, [online] available at: https://attilakim.com/Adrian-GHENIE-Darwin-s-Room-Bienala-de-la-Venetia-2015-la-Biennale-di Fig. 2​: Newspaper clipping from newspaper Scânteia [The Spark],13 June 1948, [online] available at: https://www.rfi.ro/politica-121930-pagina-de-istorie-legea-nationalizare-ziua-disparut-capitalism Fig. 3​: The Palace of the Parliament under construction, Bazza/Alamy, 1989 [online] available at: https://romania.europalibera.org/a/fotografii-de-atunci-%C8%99i-de-acum-30-de-ani-revolutia-romana -1989/30162131.html Fig. 4​: Figure 3: Protesters occupying a road in the centre of Timișoara on 16 December 1989 overlaid with a photo from 2018 of the same road, Fortepan, [online] available at: https://romania.europalibera.org/a/fotografii-de-atunci-%C8%99i-de-acum-30-de-ani-revolutia-romana -1989/30162131.html Fig. 5​: Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1938, courtesy of Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia Foto Giacomelli Fig. 6​: Works of architects Şerban Sturdza, I. Andreescu, V. Gaivoronschi, Radu Mihăilescu, 1996, courtesy of the archives of the Union of Romanian Architects Fig. 7​: The main exhibition space, courtesy of the archives of the Union of Romanian Architects Fig. 8​: The main exhibition space, courtesy of the Union of Romanian Architects Fig. 9​: Student works of the ​Timişoar​a Architecture and Urbanism school, courtesy of the archives of the Union of Romanian Architects Fig. 10:​ Entrance into the ‘Mnemonics’ exhibition of the Romanian Pavilion, Mnemonics [online] available at: ​https://mnemonics.ro/ Fig. 11:​ the playground found between socialist apartment buildings, Mnemonics [online] available at: https://mnemonics.ro/ Fig. 12:​ stacked paper models of the socialist apartment buildings, Mnemonics [online] available at: https://mnemonics.ro/ Fig. 13:​ the famous Dacia 1300 parked outside an apartment building, Mnemonics​ [online] available at: ​https://mnemonics.ro/ Fig. 14:​ steel structure outside of an apartment building used for beating rugs and carpets, Mnemonics ​ [online] available at: ​https://mnemonics.ro/

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Abstract

This dissertation examines the representation of the nation through international design exhibitions. The national identity and international image conveyed through Romania’s participation at the Venice Architecture Biennale is analysed as a parallel to its transition from a one-party Socialist Republic to a capitalist democracy. The study of the Romanian social, cultural, economic and political evolution over the last century reveals that great efforts have been made by a number of artists and intellectuals over generations to construct a coherent national image. Romania's struggle to find its place amidst two diverse societies, one governed by Eastern orthodox tradition, spirituality and agriculture and the other by Western rationalism, experimentation and capitalism, is one of the reasons for its present indecision.1 Given that the built environment can be a strategic tool in the negotiation of national identity, the architect plays an important role in the curation of the national identity. Romania’s exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale are seen as discourse generators both at a national and international level. While Romania’s fascinating architectural and cultural scenes have plenty to display and provoke with, some questions remain relevant: Is the pavilion still a national matter? Does it have to be politically charged and does it represent a national discourse or does it have to pose a question beyond the national one, one that could address a wider public aiming for a truly productive dialogue? Whose representational aspirations have to be met by a pavilion and will the works exhibited at the Venice Biennial ever be able to detach themselves from the national context? ​Nonetheless, the biennial remains a mobilizing phenomenon for artists, architects, curators and cultural institutions in the representation of the nation.

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​Keith Hitchins, ​A Concise History of Romania​ (Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 12.

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Introduction

This dissertation explores the representation of the nation through international design exhibitions. More specifically, it looks at the national identity and international image conveyed through Romania’s participation at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

As a Romanian citizen with a dual nationality, brought up quadrilingual, educated in a German school in Transylvania and later in other countries, my notion of identity has always been a transient one. I am not unique in this respect; this is the story of hundreds of thousands of Romanians who choose to leave the country in search of the right answers. I will however attempt to establish a unique perspective on the question of the national and cultural identity of Romanians through their presence on the international stage.

Born out of a personal identity crisis, the urge to understand the complex nature and history of Romania is what sparked my interest in the topic of national identity. The study of the Romanian social, cultural, economic and political evolution over the last century has revealed that great efforts have been made by a number of intellectuals over generations to construct a coherent national image. Romania's struggle to find its place amidst two diverse societies, one governed by Eastern orthodox tradition, spirituality and agriculture and the other by Western rationalism, experimentation and capitalism, is one of the reasons for its present indecision.2 I will first establish a contextual understanding of Romania’s past and present in order to provide a base for the discussion of its identity-related indecision throughout the essay. A brief evolution of architectural exhibitions and the Venice Biennale will be outlined since the eternal question of national representation is valid for the entire context of the Venice Biennale. Given that the built environment can be a strategic tool in the negotiation of national identity, the question of the role of the architect in the curation of the national identity will be explored.

Positioning Romania’s participation in the Venice Architecture Biennale as a mirror of its transition from a one-party Socialist Republic to a capitalist democracy, this essay has four 2

​Hitchins, p. 12.

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key aims. Firstly, to examine the multiple facets of representation from the individual to the nation. Secondly, to investigate the debate between national identity and personal representation in an international context. Thirdly, to conduct an analysis, situated in a Romanian context, into the ways in which different regions and nations act and react culturally within the constraints of national political systems. Finally, it seeks to probe the extent to which political affairs have influenced nation building and the formation of a national and cultural identity.

An investigation of the pavilions and of Romania’s endeavor at each architectural edition has proved useful in the attempt to identify the national image they project but also to understand what and how they contribute to the concrete fabrication of a supposedly ‘international’ space for art. For the purpose of this essay however, I have decided to focus on the 1996 exhibition ‘Forgotten Balance: Timișoara 1991-1996’, Romania’s second submission at the 6th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale and ‘Mnemonics’ from the 2018 16th edition.

Book-ending this study with two editions spanning more than two decades serves to illustrate Romania’s political, socio-economic and cultural transformation. There is a lack of information about Romania’s debut exhibition at the 1991 biennale, perhaps due to it taking place too close to the end of the 1989 Romanian Revolution. This prompted me to shift my focus to the following edition. Ana Maria Zahariade, the co-curator of the 1996 exhibition, was able to offer valuable insight into the context and organizational process from behind the scenes.

Through secondary research I have found a gap in the literature on Romania’s participation at the Venice Architecture Biennale. The lack of discourse on the topic has been confirmed through conversations with prominent Romanian architects Ana Maria Zahariade, Dorin Stefan and Attila Kim. Romania’s participation at the Paris World’s Fairs of the 19th and 20th century and its appearance at the Venice Art Biennale since 1907 have been written about extensively in works such as ‘Images of national identity. Romania at the universal exhibitions in Paris 1867-1937)’ by Laurențiu Vlad (2007), Ruxandra Juvara-Minea’s ‘Romania’s participation at the Venice Biennale’ published in 2000. Daria Ghiu completes the latter in her extensive publication on the highly successful Romanian art scene ‘​In this pavilion one can see art. Romania at the Venice Biennale (1907-2015)​’. While these works have served as a great source of secondary research, they have highlighted the lack of architectural discourse and coverage.

My research has taken the form of documenting rather cursory press coverage on the various editions, collecting exhibition research, reading extensively on the history, philosophy and identity formation of Romania and evaluating the contemporary relevance of this literature. Given the gap in literature mentioned above, my methodology has naturally developed into piecing together information from various sources in an attempt to fill in the blanks with my own hypotheses which I then confirmed and discussed with architect and commissioner of Romania’s participation at the Venice Biennale Attila Kim and Ana Maria Zahariade, whose extensive work in reshaping the post 1989 architectural education set her theoretical and historical research apart in an effort to convey the multifaceted implication of architectural gestures. Although the current COVID-19 pandemic has impacted my access to Romanian libraries and archives, the Romanian Union of Architects has kindly provided me

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with archival images and the catalogue of the ‘Forgotten Balance: Timișoara 1991-1996’ exhibition.

The commemoration of 30 years from the Romanian Revolution and fall of Communism resulted in a series of cultural events both at home and abroad which have inspired the direction of this essay. EUROPALIA’s placing of Romania in the spotlight of their 2019-2020 art biennial has made it possible to visit the exhibition ‘Enchanting Views’ at the CIVA museum in Brussels. ‘Enchanting Views’ is the first exhibition devoted to one of the most coherent and innovative projects of post-war modernity in Romanian architecture, namely the tourist development of the Black Sea coastline during the 1960s and 1970s.

While the Romanian Pavilion in Venice lends itself to be studied as a perfect mirror of the country’s identity related indecision as identified by Daria Ghiu in her work3, the Venice Biennale becomes a useful tool for studying the development of Romania in relation to other European nation states. If the interwar period is the perpetual search for an adequate answer to the question of what the national specific might be, the communist period has the answer and bets on it throughout its self-referential discourse, post-communist Romania is asking whether it needs such an answer and whether there is only one answer. These three states will be illustrated through brief explanations of the respective historical and political background.

​Daria Ghiu, ​În acest pavilion se vede artă. România la Bienala de Artă de la Veneția (1907-2015) [​ ​In this pavilion one can see art. Romania at the Venice Biennale (1907-2015), ​trans. mine], Exhibitions (Bucharest: Idea Design, 2015), p. 16.

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Chapter I. Before and After. Still searching for a national identity

In order to examine the cultural milieu in which Romania’s identity originated it is necessary to present, at least in broad outline, the country’s historical background. Key to understanding Romania’s convoluted national identity is the Romanians’ ambivalent relationship with their past and present. This chapter attempts to offer insight into the history of the country and some of the decisive moments that shaped the nation state into what it is today.

Building a European nation state Born at the crossroads of four previous empires, Romania is a pandemonium of ethnic, religious, economic and ideological groups that, together, can only imagine or invent a nationality. For Western historians, Romania seems to have almost too many pasts.4 For the purpose of this paper, I have chosen to focus on the more recent events in Romanian history which I will be referring to throughout. To be consistent with the literature, I will be using the term ‘interwar’ to refer to the period between the two World Wars, namely the years between 1918 and 1939. From 1881 and until 1947 Romania was a liberal constitutional monarchy and a communist people’s republic until 1989.

As the only Orthodox Latin country today’s ​Romanian language is Latin with Slavic, Hungarian, German and Turkish influences from the medieval period when the Romanian territory was divided into 3 principalities: Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia. These influences are the result of the Slavic invasions between the 7th and 9th centuries, the Hungarian occupation and German colonization starting in the 12th century, continuing in the 19th century with Habsburg occupation in Transylvania and the Ottoman domination between the 14th and 19th centuries in Wallachia and Moldavia. ​Romania became the recogniseable nation-state it is today after the First World War. In 1918, people who had never been ruled by the same authority suddenly had to come together and work side by

​Donald R. Kelley, ‘Romanian Cultural and Political Identity’, ​Journal of the History of Ideas,​ 59.4 (1998), 735–38 <https://doi.org/10.2307/3653941>.

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side under Great Romania’5. As Neagu Djuvara points out, Romanians were rather uniquely united through speaking the same language. ‘We are perhaps the only large country in Europe whose national identity is exclusively based on a common spoken language’. ‘Our “mortar” is the​ language​’ unlike in many other countries where the national ethos was gradually built for many centuries around a common history.6 As part of the Romanian nation-building process, Romania's political and intellectual elites attempted to establish an independent state before the advent of Communist rule in 1947.

Romania’s industry, economy and culture expanded greatly during the interwar period. The efforts of the country's leaders to create the institutions of a modern state, to "Europeanize" without compromising the Romanian national identity, and to find ways of preserving independence in the international political and economic order dominated by the great powers are echoed in the country’s participation at international exhibitions and particularly at the Venice Biennale.

Culturally, this period is marked by a strong relationship with Italy, forged by Nicoale Iorga, one of Romania’s most prolific historians and a strong cultural, academic and political personality. His efforts of opening up the country to the Occident culminated with the opening of the Casa Romena di Venezia in the Palazzo Correr in 1930, which he owned almost entirely, and later the construction of the Romanina Pavilion in Venice, again almost entirely through personal means. Through his presence in Venice and efforts of exhibiting Romania’s art scene he aimed to form the ‘Romanian soul “like you would build a map connecting the dots”’7.

Following the reorganization of Europe agreed upon during the Yalta Conference at the end of WWII, 1945, Romania became part of the Soviet system. The period that began with the Soviet occupation overturned the values of the Romanian society. A great part of our political and intellectual elite was wiped out in prisons, sent to labour camps along the infamous Danube-Black Sea Canal or forced into exile. Not only did the control of the state extend over any industrial, economic, transportation, mining or banking institution, it also took over any socio-cultural establishment. The communization of culture meant all cinemas, libraries, publishing houses, typographies, paper factories etc. were under absolute control of the Party. Access to any critical or threatening literature and pieces of ideological, arts or scientific writing was banned in order to ensure no resistance. Romania’s first decade under communism was marked by its isolation from Western influence. The system of terror meant people thought one thing but had to say another. As Neagu Djuvara puts it, ‘it was a kind of national schizophrenia that lasted 45 years’8. Social and cultural erasure and that of most modernization related efforts meant yet another change in perception, mentality and consequently the national and cultural identity.

​Neagu Djuvara, ​A Brief Illustrated History of Romanians​ (Humanitas, 2017), p. 307. ​Djuvara, p. 307.

7 ​Daria Ghiu​, p. 60.

8 ​Djuvara, p. 339.

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Figure 2: Newspaper clipping from newspaper Scânteia [The Spark] announcing the nationalization of industrial, mining, banking, insurance and transport enterprises ‘torn out of the greedy hands of exploiters become a common good of the entire nation’, 13 June 1948

Following the reorganization and then nationalization of the Romanian Society of Writers in 1947(started in 1944), the architecture profession suffered a progressive annihilation of its freedom of thought and practice after 1952. As soon as the Party became strong enough to use architecture as a propaganda tool, it institutionalized political control over the entire profession. In her book, Ana-Maria Zahariade paints a troubling picture of the resulting delirious urban mutilations of the 1980s: ‘the whole country was a building site: demolitions, absurd projects, similar towns and villages, architectural confusion…’9. The field was entirely ‘emasculated’ and drastically reduced to its technical role10 as described by Ana-Maria Zahariade, in her work ‘Architecture in the Communist Project’ .

The road and rail network was extended significantly but poorly; the large number of factories built accelerated the industrialization of the country followed by a low-quality urbanization - everything was largely done badly. The height of economic fallacy was reached by Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej’s successor - Nicolae Ceaușescu, who is said to have been less oppressive at first.11 It was under his predecessor that the upper social classes were systematically destroyed. Ceaușescu’s obsessive efforts of fitting in with other communist megalomaniacs like Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung forced him into catastrophic errors of economic planning while ordering the construction of several symbols of power.

Communist propaganda was constantly boasting achievements such as the civic centre with its ‘House of the People’ and the luxurious boulevard leading up to it (that ​had​ to be longer than the Champs Elysees in Paris requiring the demolition of entire quarters of Old Bucharest), yet a healthy economic growth, like that of the interwar period, might have saved ​Ana-Maria Zahariade, ​Arhitectura in proiectul comunist: Romania 1944-1989 [​ ​Architecture in the communist project : Romania 1944-1989]​ , trans. by Diana Lupu and Ana-Maria Zahariade (București: Simetria, 2011), p. 87.

10 ​Zahariade, p. 91.

11 ​Djuvara, p. 340.

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the country from the crisis it is still having to deal with today. Despite all these misfortunes, ‘the most tragic consequence of that half-century was that it destroyed our soul’12 writes the historian Neagu Djuvara.

Figure 3: The Palace of the Parliament under construction, Bazza/Alamy, 1989

The ‘Securitate’, one of the Eastern Bloc’s most feared secret police forces, ensured freedom of speech was a life threatening endeavour. The attempts at crafting a modern European nation were now repressed by censorship, duplicity, where hidden messages become more important than the media (texts, radio, television) itself. Most of the country was plunged into poverty, lacking basic amenities such as food, heating and electricity while Ceau​ș​escu and his wife, Elena, lived a luxurious life. ​After the December 1989 Revolution Romania emerged from behind the Iron Curtain and began its democratic and capitalist transition. Even the revolution was defined by confusion and disorientation as people were still shooting at one another for days after following Ceausescu’s execution. out of fear in a ‘terrorism psychosis’13 instigated by Ion Iliescu (ex president), now held accountable for crimes against humanity.

​Djuvara, p. 342. ​Carmen Paun, ‘Thirty Years after Romanian Revolution, Questions Remain’, ​POLITICO,​ 2019 <https://www.politico.eu/article/thirty-years-after-romanian-revolution-questions-remain-death-of-nicol ae-ceausescu/> [accessed 2 July 2020].

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Figure 4: Protesters occupying a road in the centre of Timișoarei on 16 December 1989 overlaid with a photo from 2018 of the same road, Fortepan

An identity crisis of such a unique synthesis of cultures and political regimes does not come as a surprise, neither on a societal, nor on an individual level. Romania's part in European politics, its social and economic transitions, intellectual and cultural renewals and international entanglements have fed into the complex evolution of the Romanians and the identity they have successfully crafted from a unique synthesis of traditions.

Some of the morsels of Romania’s less attractive past are for instance its retrograde movement against liberalism under the aegis of orthodox religion. It has not enjoyed a tradition of religious or ethnic toleration. The changing borders of the modern Romanian state have not only caused the assimilation of multiple nationalities and cultures resulting in a diverse nation but also fuelled internal conflicts among minorities.

The identity indecision In his most controversial work, ‘The Transfiguration of Romania’ (1936) the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran articulates an essentialist picture of Romanian national identity.

Exploring the destiny of Romania through the ambiguities of self-definition and ethnic affinity, he defined the country as ‘small culture’ without a glorious past and luminous destiny. If it was to carry on at the same pace, he claimed Romania’s future was going to be as unattractive and deplorable as her past. A profound transformation was necessary, a transfiguration that should project Romania ‘beyond good and evil, into the state of eternal

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beatification.’14 Cioran believed there was something constantly negative in Romanian history. As a small culture, it did not have the courage to overcome the burden of passivity, of being an immobile object of history. Escaping from the cursed realities of this cultural passivity and historical anonymity must be, Cioran suggested, Romania’s new historical mission. The new Romanian nationalism, Cioran suggested, ought to be ‘fanatical’ and based on ‘a cult of irrational force’, in order to succeed in transforming Romania from a country ‘without history’ into a nation ‘making history’. At the end of his life, Cioran could only see Romania as an unfulfilled nation, still searching for their historical destiny - a phenomenon identified alongside the search for identity by contemporary writers and architects alike.15 Furthermore, Nae Ionescu argued that one can be Romanian only if he participates effectively in ‘Romanianness’ and ‘if, in other words, he realizes concretely, in his individuality, the organic spiritual structure, the essential depository of which is our nation.’16 While philosopher and writer Lucian Blaga was against the normative image of national specificity imposed from above and glorified free creativity, he is known for eulogizing national features as the root of culture. Anchoring epistemological styles in the spirituality of the national community was a logical step in the context of the debate on national specificity determining the cultural scene in the 1920s. In his famous speech of reception at the Romanian Academy, ‘Eulogy of the Romanian village’ from 1937, Blaga identifies the constellation of Romanian culture with the natural framework of village-life where ‘mythology and metaphysics make up the natural and self-evident framework of the village’.17 As he pointed out, the Romanian village did not let itself be tempted and attracted to history made by others ‘over our head’ which alludes to another layer of complexity in the identity building process of the Romanina individual as well as the nation.

Aside from the challenges posed by a turbulent past under diverse and often contradictory influences, the conclusion many readings allude to is that ‘Romania has an original sin of indefinite nature’18. Identity and national specificity have been intensely written about and discussed by Romanian writers and philosophers in the interwar period. While this period was an opportunity to define an identity - whether that is one based on its history, spirituality and village life or formulated anew - the political events that followed forced the young country to adapt itself to new frameworks of thinking and being. But perhaps it was precisely

​Emil Cioran, ‘The Transfiguration of Romania’, in ​Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945, Vol. IV.​, ed. by Diana Mishkova, Marius Turda, and Balázs Trencsényi, trans. by Mária Kovács, Anti-Modernism: Radical Revisions of Collective Identity (Central European University Press, 2014), pp. 356–62 (p. 357).

15 ​Oana Tanase, ‘NEXT. Interviu cu Dorin Stefan [NEXT. Interview with Dorin Stefan, trans. mine]’, Observator Cultural.137 (2002) <https://www.observatorcultural.ro/articol/next-interviu-cu-dorin-stefan/> [accessed 29 April 2020].

16 ​Victor Neumann and Armin Heinen, ​Key Concepts of Romanian History: Alternative Approaches to Socio-Political Languages​, trans. by Camelia-Dana Mihăilescu (Central European University Press, 2013), p. 353.

17 ​Lucian Blaga, ​Izvoade,​ Lucian Blaga Author Series, 2nd edn (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2012), pp.

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18 ​Cioran, p. 362.

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this undefined nature of the Romanians, this permanent geopolitical and cultural in betweenness that rendered a people so adaptable and capable of a rapid modernization. 19 More recently, Vasile Dancu writes about the way in which our society seems to have a particular type of impersonality, an alienation from itself, a lack of participation in its own destiny. ‘We have a potential that we do not bring into existence, we are not able to bring it to surface. Everything is possible, can happen, and can be thought, yet the society does not mobilize itself for this virtuality to become a fact. So we can talk about an absent Romania, a probable Romania’.20 More and more, Romania aside, we live in what sociologists call a new type of individualism, a true release from the human prejudices and beliefs about emancipation from forms of established authority and the accomplishment of a real personal autonomy. A new dimension, a social eluding, an isolation from peers, and a true desire for detachment are added to the dimension of emancipation.

The Evil seems to have gone too far having left a lasting mark on the collective mentality that only a future generation might be able to mend. Fraud was characteristic of the ones above, lying became a form of governance, terror revealed the ‘cowardice of some and the foolish heroism of others’, denunciation was considered a virtue since stealing appeared so legitimate bearing in mind the constant deprivation. Djuvara’s words ‘this collective mentality is now the single most crucial impediment we face in our attempt to integrate into a new world’21 thus comes as no surprise. A culture of honesty and respect for the other needs to be reinstated in order to reestablish a prosperous balance.

An analysis of and comparison to the West seemed useful to illustrate the reasons behind certain tendencies. The half-century that passed since the end of World War II demonstrates that Western Europe is concerned about redefining some of the concepts that determined its policies in the 19th and 20th centuries. New concepts incorporating pluralist perspectives are being developed, along with a legal framework, yet the uncomfortable accents of the former identity ideology have not been fully overcome. Eastern Europe faces more delicate issues.

One of the greatest difficulties facing its social and political democratization is coming to terms with a past that encompasses two totalitarian regimes. Recently liberated from communism, some of the societies of the area face prejudices rooted in the revival of the nationalist discourse. Reforming the idea of a national identity in line with the aspirations of European integration is only beginning and remains quite unfamiliar to the general public.

In this context, Romania is still concerned with asserting and defining a collective identity in virtue of the Romantic concept of Kulturnation, rejecting state dispositions and ignoring the role of societal organization on competition-based criteria.22 As illustrated above, ideas around identity and national specificity are always shifting. The process of formation is a never-ending one and thus, the nation state and its identity are in a constant state of flux and can only be defined according to a specific historical context. As ​Neumann and Heinen, p. 348. ​Vasile Sebastian Dancu, ​Politically Incorrect. Blueprint for a Possible Romania,​ 3rd edn (Cluj-Napoca: Școala Ardeleană, 2017), p. 4.

21 ​Djuvara, p. 342.

22 ​Neumann and Heinen, pp. 377–403.

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identified by Benedict Anderson in his work, the nation as such is an imagined community and thus a socially constructed notion by groups of people who share the same experiences and ideas.23 However, what brings Romanians together is, to some extent, the act of collective forgetting of their turbulent past. As French philosopher Ernest Renan points out in his speech in 1882, ‘forgetting is an essential factor in the creation of a nation and it is for this reason that the progress of historical studies often poses a threat to nationality’.24

​Benedict Richard O’Gorman Anderson, ​Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism​ (Verso, 1991), p. 22.

24 ​Ernest Renan, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? [What is a nation?]’, in ​Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? et autres essais politiques​, trans. by Rundell Ethan (Paris: Presses Pocket, 1992), p. 3.

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Chapter II. Exhibiting the nation through national pavilions

Exhibiting architecture If modern and architecture exhibitions were communicating through real scale prototypes and mock-ups or even through entire neighbourhoods of fully functioning buildings like the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart (1927), or Hansa Viertel in Berlin (1957), the postmoderns were fascinated by the drawing as an end product and saw the exhibition as an alternative space questioning the nature of architecture as artefacts.25 Since the 1970s and 1980s institutions have placed architecture in a new light: the architecture exhibition becomes a new form of cultural production.

Lately architecture seems to operate through a wide range of media. Regardless of whether in exhibitions, books, magazines, films, television or the new media the architecture today is dominated by images. However, exhibiting architecture is a challenging concept ‘as actual buildings cannot be exhibited - models, drawings and other objects must take the place of buildings’.26 As identified by both Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard, images are mere mediators and thus, by their very nature, strip certain dimensions away from the object of focus: its weight, its shape, its smell, its depth, as well as time, continuity and of course, space. When objects lose their intrinsic qualities, they become purely representational.

Altogether, these conditions have sparked a turning point in the public presentation of architecture. As argued by Beatriz Colomina, architecture exhibitions in the modern period served as sites of production and critical action and thus one must pose the question of the role of architecture exhibitions in our contemporary era.27 There has been a growing interest in the study of architecture exhibitions as a ‘genre’ of cultural manifestation and the proliferation of architecture museums and exhibitions from the 1970s onwards. The Venice Biennale, as a key event in the field of architecture and a benchmark in the history of architecture exhibitions serves here as a perspective through ​Léa-Catherine Szacka, ​Exhibiting the Postmodern: The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale (Marsilio, 2016), p. 253.

26 ​Carson Chan, ‘Diary from Venice: Another Biennale’, ​Log​, 21, 2011, 23–31 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/41765391> [accessed 18 April 2020].

27 ​Szacka, p. 16.

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which to question the role of architecture exhibitions in the current times, in particular in relation to the national image and identity representations through pavilions.

The question of methodology posed by Lea-Cathrine Szacka in her book ‘Exhibiting the Postmodern’: ‘How should one study exhibitions as an ephemeral (and highly mediatised) phenomenon?’ highlights the fact that an exhibition is only one small unit to be studied in order to better understand the larger current or phenomenon.28 Thus, the exhibition becomes both a means of communication and a critical and interpretive architectural project.

Exhibitions have a long tradition in relation to architecture. Over time, they have served both as publicity tools, testing grounds, sites of confrontation and debate, places of innovation, ways of documenting history, constructing narratives or promoting new trends. Because of their transient nature, they are difficult to study in their entirety and most importantly, difficult to remember in detail. The only accessible traces become the catalogues, more and more widely produced and published before the exhibition even begins, not being given the opportunity to portray the event itself. However, exhibitions are now being increasingly recorded, mediated and promoted extensively.

The intense activity in the field of architectural exhibitions and exhibitions in general suggests that curating has become an integral - if not the most fashionable - architectural job. Its extent has sparked a new sub-category of architecture - that of exhibitions. The sub-economy that emerges through the proliferation of architecture Biennials and Triennials also implies that disciplinary knowledge and research is no longer limited to academic settings. Exhibitions have thus become an active and dynamic agent in this process.

The general tendency of reinventing the way we exhibit architecture means exhibitors of the Architecture Biennale are evolving, or at least questioning, the standard habits of making architecture exhibitions. For example, the Arsenale section of Aaron Betsky's ’Out There.

Architecture Building’ (2008) was a radical revision of what and how architecture could be expressed without recourse to building design or its graphic representation. Though his motives well-intentioned, his absolute demand for ‘installations’ was met with uneven efforts leaving us with the question: are architecture exhibitions turning into art?

The Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale was founded in 1895, just a year before the first Olympic Games in Athens. Both spectacles live on the idea of a peaceful competition among nations.

Nonetheless, their rules were not fit for service, so the Olympic Games, World’s Fairs and Biennials were cancelled regularly during the World Wars. Biennial culture is a unifying international spectacle that can be disturbed when its political agents do not abide by the rules and, in the marketplace of cultures, human rights are only included in the small print.

At the end of the 19th century, the original Venice Biennale exhibition was situated in a pavilion in the middle of a public park, the Giardini di Castello. The galleries of the central Palazzo delle Esposizioni were shared by Italian regions and select, foreign countries.

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​Szacka, p. 17.

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Following the evolution of Italian diplomatic history, the representatives from the rest of the world were compressed into the regional and national halls of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, and began to expand, in 1907, into the surrounding Giardini. Between 1907 and 1995, the Gardens of the Venice Biennale took on the appearance of a ‘micro-theme park’, defined by its number of national pavilions and themes. 29 Architecture has played a fundamental role in the history of the Biennale, if for nothing else in the construction and successive restorations of the various pavilions in an attempt to adjust to the needs of the exhibited artworks. Even though widely considered problematic and outdated, the Biennale national pavilions prove to be mostly in good health. The context of their reception has, however, changed dramatically since the first edition of the Venice exhibition in 1895. If at the end of the 19th century the Biennale was the only international, large-scale exhibition of this sort, today over 200 biennials are taking place around the world.

Statistically, some do not survive the first or second edition, but the exhibition model keeps proliferating.30 On one hand, biennial culture has been praised for finally abandoning modernist myths of universality, instead embracing multiplicity, hybridity, the interstices, the Wests peripheries and so on. At their best, some insist, biennials offer ‘a glimpse of a transnational utopia’31.

Besides not adopting the pavilion system that Venice inherited from 19th-century World Fairs, the national representation discourse is always somehow implied in contemporary art biennials. This happens perhaps out of the necessity to define an idea of internationality and avoid a delimited regional perspective. In this context, the persistence of national pavilions remains a strong reference point for thinking about international representations in large-scale exhibitions. In fact, when looking closer at the themes proposed by art biennials since the 1990s, we see that national identities are still at the center of large-scale exhibitions, even when their curatorial program officially rejects the pavilion model.

Precedents revolving around national identity, the trespassing of borders, mapping, statehood, economic migration and political and cultural alienation are far from uncommon across biennials and other similar events. Moreover, in practical terms, internationality is implied by the fact that national cultural institutes fund many artists’ participations to biennials.

Today, the making of international art events and our perception of contemporary art practices are powerfully influenced by post-colonial revisions of exclusionary criteria and the ethnophilia of the art system. In this sense, the pavilion results as a mock-up for observing how identity images are created and shown in the interplay between architecture, artistic interventions and national cultural politics. Although the exact circumstances vary across the

​Federica Martini, ​Pavilions / Art in Architecture​, ed. by Robert Ireland (Bruxelles: La Muette, 2013), pp. 101–17.

30 ​‘MAGAZINE’, ​Biennial Foundation​ <https://www.biennialfoundation.org/> [accessed 28 April 2020].

31 ​Claudette Lauzon, ‘“Reluctant Nomads: Biennial Culture and Its Discontents,” RACAR (Revue d’art Canadienne/Canadian Art Review) 36, No. 2 (Fall 2011): 15-30.’, p. 16 <https://www.academia.edu/9685526/_Reluctant_Nomads_Biennial_Culture_and_its_Discontents_R ACAR_Revue_d_art_canadienne_Canadian_Art_Review_36_no._2_fall_2011_15-30> [accessed 28 April 2020].

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decades, national and international relations have played an important role in the curation of the pavilions themselves as revealed by the case study of the Romanian Pavilion.

The Romanian Pavilion: A case study In the traditional area of the Venice Biennale, Giardini della Biennale, not all countries have their own pavilion. Nowadays, there are over 90 countries taking part in each edition of the biennale, yet there are only 32 pavilions. One of them belongs to Romania. The pavilion was constructed by 1938 through personal efforts by the Romanian Historian Nicolae Iorga.32 The pavilion is part of a fascist architectural ensemble designed by Italian architect Brenno Del Giudice in 1932 on Isola Sant' Elena. The buildings, originally allocated to Sweden and Greece, were respectively transferred to Yugoslavia and Romania through national efforts.

The complex was defined in a classical aesthetic of the fascist style and embodied a ‘structure of geometrical, stylized, horizontally articulated volumes, through monumental arcades that were marking the access into each pavilion’. 33 Romanian historian and art critic George Oprescu (1881-1969) appreciate the simplicity of the Romanian pavilion which was ‘ without useless exaggerations’34 comparing it with the Hungarian one whose architecture he considered heavy and excessively ornamented and in which the artworks are doomed to go unnoticed without artificial lighting unlike in the Romanian Pavilion that had a natural source of light.

Figure 5: Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1938, courtesy of Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia Foto Giacomelli ​Daria Ghiu, p. 63. ​Ruxandra Juvara-Minea, ​Participarea Romaniei La Bienala de La Venetia [​ ​Romania’s Participation at the Venice Biennale, t​ rans. mine] (Bucharest: Editura Vremea, 2000), p. 59.

34 ​Daria Ghiu, p. 62.

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It was initially designed as an art salon with three rooms in which the main, tall showroom was being flanked by two smaller ones and it stayed like that until 1962, when the walls were demolished, uniting the three rooms into one single salon. The initial architecture was recreated in 2015, albeit temporarily, by architect Attila Kim for painter Adrian Ghenie's Darwin's Room art exhibition. The partial ​restoration of the pavilion was necessary in order to extend the life of the building and render it worthy of the works of highly valued artists and a large influx of visitors each year.35 Historically, Romania’s participation in the Venice art scene is marked by an interrupted presence and fragments of absence. It first made its appearance in 1907 with the works of Fritz Storck, a modest display, after which it only returned in 1924 in the Palazzo dell’Esposizione with 106 works by 36 artists—this edition was considered Romania's first proper representation at the Biennale. It is a time when Romania understands the importance of being present at such an event and decides to showcase an extensive repertoire of the best and most renowned artists, almost exhausting the country’s art scene.

Yet Romania’s cultural strategy was essentially to demonstrate ​all​ its remarkable works in bursts curated to impress the Occident rather than a long term strategy of cultural representation.36 The construction of an independent pavilion was however never considered

by Romanian authorities. What is more, the Ministry of Finance had initially denied Nicolae Iorga the necessary financial support in the interwar period denoting a certain lack of interest. However, these cultural perceptions have to be considered with respect to the historical circumstances. Romania’s failure to maintain continuity in its cultural politics, however, was due to inner conflicts and political instability which led to its presumed disinterest in national representation in Venice.37 Due to its institutional discontinuity, the Romanian Cultural Institute in Venice has initiated the regulation of the Romanian Pavilion: after more than seventy years the Ministry for Foreign Affairs was to take over the management of the pavilion in 2010. This would contribute ‘to a better organization of the Romanian presence at the Biennial and a stronger visibility at one of the most important international events’ stated the institute in a press release. Documents confirming an ‘inestimable historical value containing the correspondence of Nicolae Iorga’ regarding the construction of the pavilion were identified in the archives of the Venice Biennale, in the land register and the Venice city hall. 38

​AGERPRES and Attila Kim, ‘INTERVIU/Arhitectul Attila Kim: Expoziţiile României la Bienala de la Veneţia trimit un semnal foarte bun despre noi [INTERVIEW with architect Attila Kim: Romania’s exhibition at the Venice Biennale send a very good signal about us, trans. mine]’, ​AGERPRES,​ 2019 <http://www.agerpres.ro/cultura/2019/09/27/interviu-arhitectul-attila-kim-expozitiile-romaniei-la-bienala -de-la-venetia-trimit-un-semnal-foarte-bun-despre-noi--376245> [accessed 7 July 2020].

36 ​Daria Ghiu, p. 63.

37 ​Annika Hossain, Kinga Bodi, and Daria Ghiu, ‘Layers of Exhibition - The Venice Biennial and Comparative Art Historical Writing’, ​Kunsttexte.de/Ostblick,​ 2, 2011 <https://www.academia.edu/28748555/Layers_of_Exhibition_-_The_Venice_Biennial_and_Comparati ve_Art_Historical_Writing> [accessed 6 July 2020].

38 ​Romanian Cultural Institute, ‘An Initiative of IRCCU Venice: The Reglementation of Status of the Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale’ <https://www.icr.ro/pagini/o-initiativa-a-irccu-venetia-reglementarea-statutului-pavilionului-romaniei-labienala-de-la-venetia> [accessed 6 July 2020].

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The terms and conditions of the participation at the Venice Biennale, amended by its organisers in 2016, currently states that a country can only be represented as part of the official programme by one exhibition.39 This exhibition is allowed to take place in other venues than the national pavilion as long as the other venue belongs to a cultural institution of the respective country. Romania is now the only country able to fulfill the new regulations through the Romanian Institute for Culture and Research in Humanities (also known as Casa Romena di Venezia) based in Palazzo Correr. Since 1996 this gallery has intermittently hosted parallel exhibitions representing Romania at the Venice Biennale. Apart from the support guaranteed by having national cultural experts and representatives present on site the Institute for Culture and Research in Humanities contributes a great deal to the organizational process and implementation of the exhibition - the location of this gallery space on one of the main pedestrian streets of Venice represents a considerable advantage for the exposure of the Romanan exhibition.

Attempts at presenting Romania in a wider context have been made repeatedly as curators of the different editions tried to find some hope, to show the world that Romania has had a good, promising start. Thus, many times, the authors of these exhibitions have, almost desperately one could argue, tried to harmonize with the different international tendencies of the time - be that with an excessively social, participatory or historicizing, restorative or recovering focus. And so, instead of putting together an authentic national identity or simply an original opinion, they often just followed the crowd in an attempt to fit in. This attitude can perhaps be attributed to the elementary condition of Romanian culture which, according to literary historian and critic Eugen Lovinescu was being wedged between two worlds (the East and the West), characterized by Latin mentality but kept outside of the main line of Western civilization due to the adversary historical conditions.40 Interviewed after his commissioning of the 2002 edition, architect Dorin Ștefan reminds of Romania’s potential in the interwar period: ‘I then realized for the millionth time that, in the last 100 years, Romania, once wealthy and reputable for all kinds of European premieres, has reached quite a disappointing state.’41 His frustration stems from the insufficient funding that has considerable impact on the design of the exhibition setting it apart from other, more impactful pavilions. The exhibitions are generally achieved with governmental support through a fund destined for promoting the image of Romania and private sponsors.

Yet, given that international relations and a national image are at play, a country must fulfil certain responsibilities and show up regardless of the financial ramifications.

Although the architecture section of the Biennale was only set up in 1980 by Paolo Portoghesi, who opened the Corderie dell'Arsenale to the public for the first time, Romania first exhibited its architecture in 1991. Its absence before that reflects the t​urbulence of the dictatorship​, culminating in the Revolution in 1989. The institutional control exercised by the socialist regime meant that the state (in theory the people, but in reality the Party) was the sole investor, promoter and client. Any other ​investments (...) disappear or become ​AGERPRES and Kim. ​Eugen Lovinescu, ​Istoria civilizației române moderne [​ ​History of modern Romanian civilization, trans. mine] (Bucharest: Ancora, 1925), p. 8.

41 ​Tanase.

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insignificant.’ 42 Nonetheless, the period of creative and professional oppression of the architect has severed his relationship with the public and user and, through the lack of interaction and discourse, undermined his role in today’s society, and implicitly in curation. Thus, after the revolution, the architect had to reinvent herself/himself and deal with the challenges of privatization and struggles of sparking a public discourse while also having to educate the client on the role and importance of working with an architect.43 There was, however, a period of meaningful international exposure and architectural experimentation that is still reminisced or often romanticised today. The period of Socialist modernism of the 1960s and 1970s during which Romania enjoyed remarkable international pres​ence due to its relative openness in the history of Romanian communism. Despite the limitations of the system, the country witnessed a semantic as well as genuine shift from the ‘working people’ as subjects of communist power to ‘citizens’. Having finally come into contact with the lifestyle and mentality of the West due to the large number of international tourists, the Romanian society begins to open up to the rest of the world. This phenomenon, coupled with the day-to-day limitations of a totalitarian system and the instability that defined the 1980s has enticed so many Romanians to escape the country as soon as they could after the revolution. In an exhibition titled ‘Enchanting views’ that travelled throughout Europe, Boris Arvatov claims that ‘a society’s cultural style is created by all its material construction’44.

The assimilation of new values, the modernization of the society, the evolution of cultural devices, and inevitably the architectural movement were fuelled by Romania’s inferiority complex born out of aspiration towards the Western culture and civilization. The new European standards became ingrained in the collective mentality and this constant comparison can still be felt today. The acute self-criticism and sense of lack of national pride can perhaps be attributed to the oppressive Communist regime and the socio-economic struggle felt by the majority of the population. Yet Romania’s fascinating culture and spirit have cultivated internationally renowned works beyond the fields of art, architecture and literature.

Central figures of the Romanian contemporary art scene such as Adrian Ghenie and Geta Brătescu have played an important role in the definition of the pavilion and the image conveyed through its exhibitions. The impact of sculptor Constantin Brâncuși cannot go unmentioned either. His wooden sculptures and their omnipresence in the pavilion inspired an intense identitarian discourse during the Communist period. The artist is in fact considered ‘the image in photographic negative of the Romanian Pavilion and of its identity projections during the nearly one hundred years of existence’45.

​Zahariade, p. 137. ​Ţigănaş, Şerban, ​Arhitecti, arhitectura si orase ​[​Architects, architecture and citites,​ trans. mine] (Bucharest: Simetria, 2014), p. 26.

44 ​Alina Serban, Dimou Kalliopi, and Sorin Istudor, ​Enchanting Views: Romanian Black Sea Tourism Planning and Architecture of the 1960s and 70s​ (Bucharest: Association pepluspartu, 2015).

45 ​Daria Ghiu, p. 377.

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Chapter III. Curating an international image The Union of Architects, a professional association of creators, the successor and preserver of the Romanian Architects Society's traditions, founded in 1891, is in charge of the participation at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Together with the Ministry of Culture and National Identity, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Romanian Cultural Institute, the Union of Architects is responsible for Romania’s participation at the biennale. The mission of the Romanian order of Architects, founded in 2001, of ‘convincing society that architecture represents, first and foremost, an act of culture of public interest with urban, economic, social and ecological implications’46 hints precisely at the lack of public interest and a dire need for more dialogue, both within the architectural discourse and in relation to the public.

Forgotten Balance: Timișoara 1991-1996, 1996 The 1996 Architecture Biennale, titled ‘Sensing the future: the architect as a seismograph’, was curated by Hans Hollein, whose influence in Austrian architecture, art and culture was justified through his experience as head of the Austrian Urbanism and Urban design department and commissioner of the Venice Art Biennale (1978-90). That year, Romania was represented by curators and architects Şerban Sturdza, Ana-Maria Zahariade and Alexandru Beldiman with the exhibition ‘Forgotten balance: Timişoara 1991 - 1996’ and an annex titled ‘Emerging voices from the past’ in ​Romanian Institute for Culture and Research in Humanities located in ​the Palazzo Correr.

Alexandru Beldiman, the head of the Romanian Union of Architects at the time, was in charge of the biennale. He would decide who would take part at such events in the 1990s, while Romania was generally trying to define a new direction. Compared to the later editions, from 2002 onwards, when the participants were chosen through a competitive process, the 1991 and 1996 exhibition logistics were decided in an ad-hoc fashion. Curators, team members and content would be agreed on within the small circle that represented, and was itself, the professional community of architects of that period, predominantly in Bucharest and Timișoara. The early exhibitions at the Biennale represented whatever presentable content Romania could compile at that particular time. The construction industry, like most other fields after the Revolution, was moving forward at a slow pace as not much was being ​‘Main Page, Romanian Union of Architects’ <https://www.uniuneaarhitectilor.ro/> [accessed 29 April 2020].

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built. This period was thus one of fundamental transitions - both for the industry and for the profession of the architect.

As described by its co-curator Ana-Maria Zahariade, the exhibition was somber, modest yet elegant. It revolved around four architects from Timisoara, a city marked by a blossoming cultural and artistic scene that started in the 1970s and peaked after the 1989 Revolution.

Timișoara’s strategic location as a central European city (and an important city during the reign of the Austro-Hunagarian Empire) and its multicultural, multiconfessional, ethnically diverse character laid the foundation of an avant-garde society. Multidisciplinary groups of pioneering artists, mathematicians, musicians, social sciences and literature students breathed tremendous momentum into the cultural scene. Unarguably, it was one the most valuable achievements during the totalitarian regime - one that Romania could proudly exhibit on the international stage of the Venice Biennale.

The group ‘Sigma’, founded around artists and architects (Ştefan Bertalan, Constantin Flondor, Doru Tulcan) and a mathematician (Lucian Codreanu) was equally influenced by a psychiatrist and the experimental approaches of the Bauhaus movement and by constructivist aesthetics. This movement led to revelations and new avenues in the arts sector as well as in the sphere of architectural language.47 These figures, together with others, had considerable influence on several generations of artists and architects through the young architecture school that took on a highly experimental approach for the time. It has also contributed to the development of new forms of teaching and learning of artistic techniques and conceptual investigations with a holistic urban and architectural approach in mind. ‘Still life and life drawing, its interpretation, structuralist thinking, urban interventions and performances and the collaboration with other sciences have constituted points of reference for architectural education that were very different from other schools in Romania and rarely encountered at a European level. (...) They have decisively contributed to the primary formation of future architects‘48.

The exhibition ‘Forgotten balance: Timişoara 1991 - 1996’ was thus a moment of major international exposure of the cities’ architectural scene. Works of the school of architecture were exhibited alongside those of reputable architects such as Şerban Sturdza, I. Andreescu, V. Gaivoronschi, Radu Mihăilescu, whose portraits were exhibited as large black and white prints. ​In the sixties and seventies, young architects like Hans Fackelmann were close to the spirit of the international style.​ Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, architects like Şerban Sturdza, Mihai Botescu and Radu Radoslav were nearing postmodernism in their practice. They were returning to tradition looking for new metamorphoses. This tendency seems to take shape just as a new generation, that of V. Gaivoronschi and I. Andreescu, were gradually adhering to the postmodern current. At the same time, the younger practitioners rediscovered modernism and became active on the cultural scene through study groups, international competitions, symposiums alongside projects realised before and

​Cristian Blidariu, ‘Școala Timişoreană de Arhitectură [The Timişoara School of Architecture, Trans.

Mine]’, 2011 <https://arhitectura-1906.ro/2011/07/scoala-timisoreana-de-arhitectura/> [accessed 29 April 2020].

48 ​Blidariu.

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after the revolution. The title of this exhibition stems from the balanced dialogue that two generations of architects seemed to be in with each other. 49

Figure 6: Works of architects Şerban Sturdza, I. Andreescu, V. Gaivoronschi, Radu Mihăilescu, 1996, courtesy of the Union of Romanian Architects

Figure 7: The main exhibition space showcasing the works of Şerban Sturdza, I. Andreescu, V. Gaivoronschi, Radu Mihăilescu in a unifying black and white aesthetic, courtesy of the Union of Romanian Architects

​Order of Romanian Architects, ‘Arhitectura Din Vestul Romaniei in Context European [Western Romanian Architecture in the European Context, trans. mine]’, ​Ordinul Arhitectilor Din Romania, Filiala Teritoriala Timis​ <http://www.oartimis.ro/despre-oar/istoric/c-19-35> [accessed 29 April 2020].

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Figure 8: The main exhibition space, courtesy of the Union of Romanian Architects

Figure 9: Student works of the T ​ imişoara ​ Architecture and Urbanism school, courtesy of the Union of Romanian Architects

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Mnemonics: collective memories define our territory, 2018 Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara were the curators of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition titled ‘FREESPACE’, a word which describes a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture’s agenda. The 2018 proposal for Romania's Pavilion in Giardini della Biennale and the New Gallery of the Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research in Venice are two components of the Mnemonics concept.

Mnemonics appeals to the ancient technique of collecting memories – ars memoriae, based on the connection between thoughts and a visual support invested with meaning. The ability of space to generate strong memories is the ultimate challenge of architecture and helps endlessly access and re-access the emotions related to a specific story. Through its manifesto, this edition resembles the slight nostalgia over a time that has passed and changed since the 1996 edition the difference being, of course, the way in which the past is reminisced. While ‘Forgotten Balance’ acknowledges and promotes the vision and potential of the cultural movement from Timisoara as a way of expressing the country’s own hopes and will to challenge its reality, ‘Mnemonics’ introduces the notion of collective memory and identity formation while recalling images from the past few decades. It reflects on different moments of a space that is representative of the universe of the Romanian urban environment but one that is in dire need of change and resurrection.

During the second part of the 20th century most cities in Romania have gone through an accelerated process of urbanization. This generated an interstitial space of the urban fabric which was soon reclaimed by the people who lived in its proximity, partly because it was not a priority of urban integration processes. In the collective memory of generations of the past few decades, this paints a common imaginarium, generated by the evolution of free urbanism, which provided the inhabitants of a city with a free space, unclaimed by anyone, yet in fact belonging to everyone. In Romania, the universal icon of the space between apartment buildings is the image of kids playing outside, under the eyes of their parents and grandparents, creating invisible worlds in an empty space. The installation thus alludes to a certain interdependence and reciprocal influence of the formative years of a person and the built environment.

It proposes viewing the space between the apartment buildings of Romanian cities both as a source of knowledge and an ambition. These spaces have been receiving contemporary reactions at an architectural level, community level and educational level, as a promise for a future of the public space and the way it can be used.

The scenographic approach to the depiction of the free space between socialist apartment buildings across the country evokes the fundamental elements that used to make up a playground, and that still do, in some cases. The installation in Giardini della Biennale uses props specific to the environment described above in order to invite everyone to exchange roles on the playground, to interact and reflect over the effects of the appropriation of a common space by communities. Most importantly, this should spark dialogues on the immediate need of action before the dormant character is reinstilled

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Figure 10: Entrance into the ‘Mnemonics’ exhibition of the Romanian Pavilion, Mnemonics

Figure 11: the playground found between socialist apartment buildings is recreated through interactive props, Mnemonics

Figure 12: stacked paper models of the socialist apartment buildings, Mnemonics

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Figure 13: the famous Dacia 1300 parked outside an apartment building; the common outside space is being used for household chores and playing, Mnemonics

Figure 14: steel structure outside of an apartment building used for beating rugs and carpets, Mnemonics

Ștefan Ghenciulescu, editor in chief of the ‘Zeppelin’ architecture magazine and curator of the 2006 ‘Remix’ biennale project, acknowledges that ‘in 12 years, the situation has changed so little.

In the former East, ‘transition’ now seems to have become eternal, if not, as we have seen over the past few years, to even go into reverse.’50 Going back to Cioran, it seems that almost 100 years have passed and the Romanian attitude has remained unchanged since he claimed: ‘I am not proud of my ancestors’ lack of vanity, for they were able to slumber for such a long time awaiting liberty. Romania has purpose because we start it. We must build it from the inside, so that we can be re-born in it. The making of this country should be our one and only obsession’51.

The case study of the Romanian Pavilion thus shows the far reaching implications of social, economic and political circumstances of a nation. While the pavilion itself might represent the ​‘MNEMONICS’ <https://mnemonics.ro/> [accessed 29 April 2020]. ​Diana Mishkova, ​Anti-Modernism: Radical Revisions of Collective Identity,​ ed. by Marius Turda and Balázs Trencsényi, Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014), ​IV​, p. 335.

50 51

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condensed and synthesised efforts in one representative work, the individual exhibitions are reflective of their respective points in time. While ‘Forgotten Balance’ acknowledges and promotes the vision and potential of the cultural movement from Timisoara as a way of expressing the country’s own hopes and will to challenge its reality, ‘Mnemonics’ introduces the notion of collective memory and identity formation and opens up a new identitarian discourse. As well as that, it also implies the challenges of this particular type of heritage, one has been avoided in silence by the entire profession.52 Apart from the contrasting professional and political contexts that have shaped the two case studies, further differences lie in the way in which the content of each exhibition has been presented and communicated. ​While a static factual communication in the form of images, drawings and text make up the design of ‘Forgotten Balance: ​Timișoara 1991-1996’, ‘Mnemonics’ approached the topic of collective memory that ‘defines our territory’ through immersive experiences and scenographic techniques. ​Exhibited through representation, the works of the first case study implies the ‘mantle of single authorships’53 whereas in the case of ‘Mnemonics’ authorship is hidden behind the design of the one to one interventions. Each representation tries to attract the audience in its own way exhibiting the subjectivity of its curators. Thus, the question of whether the pavilion is still a national matter remains open to reinterpretation with every new edition.

Set over two decades apart, the two exhibitions are reflective of the numerous institutional changes and of the way in which the country’s vision has evolved since 1990. The last three decades have been the most diverse, yet the most agitated both in Romania’s national discourse and presence on the international stage. While sometimes restless and at other times confident, maybe at times paranoid or, quite on the contrary, reserved and balanced or sometimes weighed down by complexes, ‘a quasi-being that has exceeded the limits of time and has this one and only aim’: it seeks to define itself and its universal image according to its own high standards.54

​Zahariade, p. 90. ​Alison Hugill and Carson Chan, ‘Estranging Architecture’, ​ONCURATING ​31, 2016, 64 (pp. 47–51) <<https://on-curating.org/issue-31-reader/curating-architecture-the-architecture-of-estrangement.html > [accessed 4 July 2020].

54 ​Daria Ghiu, p. 305.

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An investigation of Romania’s endeavor at each architectural edition has proved useful in the attempt to identify the image they project but also to understand what and how they contribute to the concrete fabrication of a supposedly ‘international’ space for art and architecture.

5th edition, 1991 untitled (the only edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale without a theme, title, manifesto or agenda) - the preoccupation with a new theme of the ecclesiastic orthodox space that would lead to very different opportunities: from proposals that resume traditional models to ones that call for a timid reinterpretation/innovation of the tradition 6th edition, 1996 - ​‘Forgotten Balance: Timișoara 1991-1996’​ and ​‘Emerging Voices from the Past’​ An exhibition on renowned famous Romanian architects in the Palazzo Correr, Romanian Institute for Culture and Research in the Humanities.

7th edition, 2000 -​ ‘Rebuilding the City’​ - focus on the international competition “Bucharest 2000”, that never got realized, ending up among one of Romania’s many missed opportunities 8th edition, 2002 - ​‘Romania, mon amour’ 9th edition, 2004 - ​‘Superomania’​ concerned with methods of stimulating the emergence of good architecture. The architectural object has to be promoted as a product.

10th edition, 2006 - ​‘Remix. Fragments of a country’​ - The first multidisciplinary analysis of architectural, urban, sociological, anthropological and ecological developments on the Romanian territory after 1989 11th edition, 2008 - ‘​BOLT’ 12th edition, 2010 - ‘​1:1’​ - Experiencing the 94m2/person population density of Bucharest. 1 person entering the space at a time.

13th edition, 2012 - ​‘Play Mincu’​ - self-made stamps of famous buildings by Ion Mincu and quotes from famous architects and artists 14th edition, 2014 - ​‘Site Under Construction’​ - Industrial architecture as a generator of modernity. Past and present, glory and void, industrial urban ruins.

15th edition, 2016 - ​‘Selfie Automaton’​ - a series of puppet caricatures of characters, fantastic animals, music boxes propose a generic portrait of social relations and stereotypes, wishes and dreams to be enacted by the visitors.

16th edition, 2018 - ​‘Mnemonics: Collective memories define our territory’​ Reconstruction of basic playgrounds found between socialist blocks of flats.

17th edition, 2021 - ​‘Fading Borders’ - d ​ iscusses the ‘shrinking city’ concept and the mobility of large masses of people and the way in which architects and urban designer can imagine new forms of living based on this phenomenon

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Conclusion

The aim of my dissertation was to explore the connection between national circumstances and the presence of the nation state on the international stage. This immediately implies a complex interplay. between national identity and international image. As illustrated by Romania’s example, whether a country is focused on curating and displaying a particular image of itself, as was the case in the interwar period Romania, or it instead appears with an honest portfolio of achievements, as it did in 1996 in Venice, national affairs and global tendencies are intertwined.

My research has demonstrated once again that architecture is inherently political. The Venice Architecture Biennale is only one example of how contemporary governing systems, those in power, global situations, national disputes, international collaborations and conflicts, social, environmental, political movements will be reflected in the specific focuses of each edition. Political statements, like the United Kingdom uncertainty post Brexit that rendered the British pavilion empty in 2018 highlighting its role as a space for debate and exchange of ideas about the future, can thus also be communicated by these exhibitions.

The question of whether a country needs or can have only one specific identity is a phenomenon brought about to some extent by globalization. Romania’s transition to a capitalist democracy in 1989, the freedom of movement and its integration into the European Union in 2007, have contributed to the complexity of this answer. As a young and impressionable member of the international stage, Romania’s identity-related investigations take on a supranational dimension.

Ultimately, as history has proven time and time again, the process of formation is a never-ending one and thus, the nation state and its identity are in a constant state of flux and can only be defined according to its time.

As the case study of the Romanian pavilion has revealed, the question of the national representation through a pavilion remains relevant. While the 1996 edition was very clearly exhibiting its most successful architects and their works, Mnemonics makes a social comment touching on a typology recognised not only by Romania but certainly by fellow former members of the Eastern Bloc. ​The nostalgia for the past will always be intertwined with hopes about the future and so both regeneration and the perspective of heritage as an asset coexist with creative thinking and the confrontation of new contemporary challenges.

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Another question raised throughout my research was that of the role of the architect in curation, particularly in a country where the profession has been as fragmented as it has been in Romania. It is perhaps the architect himself who, by curating his work appropriately, can challenge the society’s obliviousness towards architecture. ‘Through analogy, something complex, immense, and unwieldy is able to enter more easily into discourse.’55 Therefore, architectural curators have the responsibility to cultivate an audience with the spatial sensitivity necessary to engage with the built environment in a conscious and perhaps more responsible way.56 The debate around national representation at the Venice Biennale remains timely. The Romanian curator and writer ​Mihnea Mircan argues that a country cannot be represented by a pavilion: ‘I don’t think a pavilion can represent more than the subjectivity and integrity of those who curated it.’57 Thus, while some argue that a pavilion shouldn’t be charged with a heavy, local component and that it should instead function as a dialogue generator, this debate leaves us with some vital questions: Who gets to define national identity? Whose representational aspirations have to be met by a pavilion? Will the works exhibited at the Venice Biennial ever be able to detach themselves from the national context?

For Romania, its participation at international exhibitions has been an opportunity for self-reflection through which it could tap into a certain objectivity that it would not have been able to experience otherwise. It is perhaps this objectivity and the learnings drawn from its presence alongside the rest of the world that, when fed back into its national politics, have a tremendous constructive potential in shaping its culture. Allowing exhibitions and their expansion into the media to generate discourse can foster a greater public awareness and participation to the discipline. Thus, the Romanian ​pavilion is simultaneously a representation and an observation tool both outside and inside the country. It is a research space that is actively producing history.

​Alison Hugill and Carson Chan, ‘Estranging Architecture’, ​ONCURATING ​31, 2016, 64 (pp. 47–51) <<https://on-curating.org/issue-31-reader/curating-architecture-the-architecture-of-estrangement.html > [accessed 4 July 2020].

56 ​Carson Chan, ‘Exhibiting Architecture: Show, Don’t Tell’, 2010 <https://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2010/09/17/exhibiting-architecture-show-don-t-tell.html> [accessed 4 July 2020].

57 ​Daria Ghiu, p. 267.

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Exhibitions Enchanting views - Europalia Romania, CIVA, Brussels, 17 January - 8 March 2020.

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