Mineriada 13-15 iunie 1990

24 de ani de la Mineriada din 13-15 iunie 1990 

Sase morti, peste 1.000 de raniti, sute de persoane arestate si o interventie in forta a minerilor impotriva protestatarilor din Piata Universitatii, acesta a fost bilantul mineriadei desfasurata in perioada 13-15 iunie 1990 in Bucuresti. Anul acesta se implinesc 24 de ani de la mineriada din iunie 1990, considerata cea mai brutala si mai violenta dintre toate cele sase mineriade care au avut loc in Romania dupa 1989. Desi, potrivit datelor oficiale, sase persoane si-au pierdut viata in urma violentelor, patru dintre ele fiind impuscate, asociatiile victimelor mineriadelor sustin ca numarul lor s-ar ridica la peste 100 de persoane. Dupa 24 de ani, bilantul real al evenimentelor din vara lui 1990 ramane neclar.

www.hotnews.ro 

In June 1990, the Romanian authorities violently suppressed the peaceful demonstration of University Square in Bucharest. For many, that gesture showed that the ruling National Salvation Front, the self-proclaimed vanguard of the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, was just the old Communist Party under a new label and that President Ion Iliescu had remained true to the Stalinist convictions he shared while serving as a communist high-ranking decision maker during the 1950s and the 1960s. Iliescu called on the miners of the Valea Jiului to come to Bucharest to defend the nascent democracy against the protesters. Various national and local government members helped organize the transportation of the miners to Bucharest. Once in the capital, the miners beat up defenseless students, young girls with short skirts and men with beard (conforming to the bourgeois stereotype), destroyed property, and ransacked the headquarters of opposition political parties. Iliescu publicly thanked them for their bravery. During the 1990s, the miners came or tried to come to Bucharest five other times.

During the following twenty years, the civil society unsuccessfully tried to find out the truth about those events. In 1998, it asked for access to file 75/P/1998, prepared by a small team of prosecutors and gathering evidence of state brutality against peaceful protesters. Curiously, At the time when that request was made, the country was ruled by the anticommunist opposition, the Democratic Convention. From 2000 to 2004, when the Social Democrats (the conservative wing of the Salvation Front) formed the government and Iliescu again served as President, all efforts to prosecute the case were stalled, for obvious reasons. But the situation continued even after their political rivals, the Democrats (later renamed the Democrat-Liberals) and the Liberals, won the general elections of 2004. After the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Romanian state to surrender the file to the victims of the June 1990 mineriada. But for over a year the Romanian prosecutors refused to comply with that court order. It was only after the leader of the Association 21 December 1989, Teodor Mihaes, went of hunger strike for a staggering 78 days that the entire copy of the file was released to the civil society.

laviniastan.wordpress.com 

The Mask Theatre - Living Statues International Festival

Teatrul Masca

LIVING STATUES FESTIVAL

Among those arts that can be performed out in the street, that of the living statue holds a special place. Mysterious, surprising, often funny, sometimes profound,one can not go by a living statue without noticing it. And that is because it’s power to catch the eye like a magnet, to incite one to react and to meditate on the subject of human condition. One can not easily forget the image of a well composed living statue, that is for sure.  Any turist who was in Barcelona would have undoubtedly seen the human statues of La Rambla, for example. Strange is the power of the living statues if it can easily hold its place among against the works of Gaudi.

The project came to life in 2005. The idea behind it was, at the time and still is that we are not alone. We were very much aware that this form of theatre that we propose to the cultural world of Romania – a non-verbal theatre, focusing on gesture and body expression – is part of an European network of institutions or people with the same artistic creed. As a valid example of this affiliation, Mask Theatre is part of Lecoq Network, which includes all European theaters established by students of the former great teacher. From this sense of belonging to an European community emerged naturally the initiative of a festival that we named EUROPEAN MASKS VISIT… THE MASK.

The purpose of this festival was to familiarize the Romanian audience with a unique theatrical style, very little practiced in Romania, one of the theater of movement, gesture, mime, clowning and body expression

Living Statues International Festival 

Mihai Malaimare 

Teatrul Masca 

He's a man of the past and one of the present,
a man who hides behind a mask behind a mask;
a clown, a fool, believing it cool to be down
or that the game is all about who laughs the last.

So he tells all his problems to his friends and relations,
exposes his neuroses to their view.
They accept as fact every masochistic mumble of his act –
But how could they know what was false and what was true?

Sometimes when he wakes
he feels he's walked into a dream
but all it takes
to remind him things are what they seem
is the belief that the man behind the mask can really dance

Pirouetting smile
he feels himself cavorting,
Pierrot for a while
before aborting
to find relief in the shelter of the dark, most telling mask.

After all the pantomimes are ended
he peels all the make-up off his face
to reveal, beneath, the tears running all down his cheeks:
alone, he opens to the world… but it's much too late.
He's been left, in the end, without a face.  

http://lyrics.wikia.com/Van_Der_Graaf_Generator:Masks

OPIUM & SILYMARIN

Sometimes
I feel like I want to live
Far from the metropolis
Just walk through that door
Sometimes
I feel like I want to fly
Reach out to the painted sky
A prisoner to the wind
A bird on the wing

Sometimes
I feel the ocean in my blood
See rain from the sky above
Her salt brined tears
And now
Those tears leave taste on my tongue
Like the warm rush you get from
Black opium
Black opium

Sometimes
I feel like I want to leave
Behind all these memories
And walk through that door
Outside
The black night calls my name
But all roads look the same
They lead nowhere
They lead nowhere 

http://lyrics.wikia.com/Dead_Can_Dance:Opium 

ART SAFARI

Art Safari is the first professional and public art pavilion in Romania, designed for both heritage and contemporary art. Art Safari will bring together more than 100 galleries and art dealers, museums and cultural institutions, both from Romania and abroad, that will exhibit high quality artworks, from paintings and sculptures to design and collectibles, in a refined curatorial manner.

Bucharest is a unique place where the past and the future collide. Also known as “Little Paris” at the beginning of the twentieth century, amputated by several demolitions carried out during the communist era and changed by the new architecture of the past twenty-five years, Bucharest is trying to define its identity. An identity that can only be achieved through cultural recovery. Art Safari, by the public cultural event it organizes, wants to place Bucharest again on the European cultural map.

Why Art Safari? Because Romania’s cultural history has been marked by repeated interruptions and adverse circumstances imposed on its artistic activity to the point of a complete breakage in its communication with the international art scene. Art Safari Bucharest aims to build a strong connection between heritage and contemporary art, artist-gallery-collector, cultural institution and the art market, so as to bring the entire cultural system closer to the public.

Art Safari Bucharest represents the passion to jointly build a local artistic system at European standards by involving all art market players.