You Are Another Me – A Cathedral of the Body is the title of the
\nproject that will represent Romania at the 59th edition of the Venice
\nArt Biennale. The work of the director and script writer Adina Pintilie, who
\nwon the Golden Bear Trophy at the Berlin Film Festival in 2018 with her debut film
\nTouch Me Not, the project was selected following a national competition organised
\nby the ministry of culture, the foreign ministry and the Romanian Cultural
\nInstitute. Attila Kim, Romania’s Commissioner for the Venice Art Biennale,
\ntells us more:<\/p>\n
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The winner
\nwas chosen after a competition that began last year and ended this year. The winner
\nwas Adina Pintilie’s project because it is a project that distances itself from
\nthe medium we associated Adina Pintilie with, namely film, and that makes a
\nstep closer to viewers, bringing the film much closer, deconstructing it and
\ninviting viewers to engage in a dialogue about intimacy and the relationship with
\nthe body. This experience is accompanied by a VR installation inviting viewers
\nto in effect get into the skin of the people in the documentary, both in the
\nnew gallery of the Romanian Culture Institute in Venice and online.<\/p>\n
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Attila Kim,
\nRomania’s Commissioner for the Venice Art Biennale tells us more about where
\nvisitors can see the artistic events stage by Romania at the Biennale:<\/p>\n
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Romania has
\nits own pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which has been located at the heart of
\nthe Biennale in the Giardini della Biennale, since 1938. A few other countries
\nalso have pavilions in Venice, but Romania is the only one to also host events,
\napart from its pavilion in the Giardini, at its New Gallery of the Romanian
\nCultural Institute. Like with every edition, the main exhibition, apart from
\nthe contribution of each country, consists of an international art exhibition,
\nwhich this year is curated by Cecilia Alemani and brings together 213 artists, including two from Romania:
\nAlexandra Pirici, who created the project that represented Romania at the
\nVenice Biennale in 2013, who has a performance this year, and Andra Ursu\u021b\u0103, who
\nlives now in New York. Romania is also taking part in a very important project,
\nthe ERIAC Pavilion, which is seeking to promote Roma arts and culture from
\naround Europe, and which contains an exhibition from the Romanian artist Eugen
\nRaportoru.<\/p>\n
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We talked to Adina Pintilie about her team’s project, its concept and artistic
\nresearch, the work behind the project and its visual and emotional impact:<\/p>\n
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We are happy to be able to put this project together and it will be a
\ndifficult, but interesting period. The artistic research on which the project
\nis based began many years ago out of a sort of curiosity and need to re-educate
\nourselves about intimacy and the body. We grow up, in family and society, with
\ncertain ideas about the body, beauty, love and relations and these ideas are
\noften in contradiction to the real experience of our life so, together with a
\ngroup of performers and crew I started this laboratory, this emotional nursery,
\nin which we tried to forget everything we know and look with fresh eyes at how
\npeople experience in fact intimacy, regardless of the ideas and myths we all
\ngrow up with. We want to bring this project of introspection and experimentation
\nof the relationship with the other closer to the public. An important aspect is
\nthe audio-visual language, the way in which this type of artistic research can
\nbe transmitted to the public and the way in which the public can become part of
\nthis research project. I first explored these ideas in cinema, in the film
\nTouch Me Not, which came out in 2018 and now it will be interesting for us to
\nwork with video installation. We’re working with several formats at the same
\ntime: installation, video, film, interactive performance, books and online. We’re
\nnow focusing on the multimedia video installation at the Romanian Pavilion and
\nthe VR extension at the venue of the Romanian Cultural Institute because it is a
\nlanguage totally different from film and which provides you with a different type
\nof relationship between the body of the visitor and the body of the performers.
\nSo, unlike in cinema, where viewers are at a distance from what goes on the
\nscreen, the exhibition is an immersive experience, physically, emotionally and introspectively.<\/p>\n
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Where did it all start? What is the psychological and creative mechanism
\nthat generates such a project? Adina Pintilie again:<\/p>\n
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It wasn’t something I thought about in terms of society, the external
\nworld. My interest in the body and intimacy was something that came from inside.
\nEach of us taking part in the project has our own way of relating to our bodies,
\nthe experience of identity and together we’re exploring an area which hopefully
\nwill engender a similar type of introspection on the part of the viewer. I’m convinced
\nit will start a conversation about the body, intimacy, identity, things that
\nare important to us but which are sensitive areas about which we find it
\ndifficult to communicate.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adina Pintilie to represent Romania at the Venice Art Biennale with a project about intimacy and our relationship with our bodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":163697,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44685],"tags":[45114],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-163696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-of-culture","tag-venice-biennale"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n