Adrift

It is not so rare to see projects about climate change or ecology nowadays. So I could say this work is about garbage and no one would bat an eye. Or about sustainable thinking, or about the local water management and the environment. I even imagine a visitor thinking “ah, this is about the many health benefits of clean water in urban ecosystems” and they wouldn’t be wrong at all. We could think this climate change business could still work out fine in the end. But let’s just consider that, at least for now, we are simply adrift. I propose this as a better option than having something on paper that doesn’t really match reality. There is no fixed position because we are all on the move to some random shore, out of space and out of place, heading wherever the current takes us.

On a sunny day in Timișoara, I walked along the Bega canal and picked up a couple of things that did not look like they belonged there, trash that floated on the water for some time and looked like it was there to stay – unwanted ghosts of a synthetic past. But if this is our ecosystem now, why judge them so harshly?

These random things turned into protagonists, whom I lended my voice to in order to let them tell the story of their presumed demise, of their turning from something-needed into something-thrown-away-and-forgotten. A bubble tea cup that played a small part in a teenage romance, a plastic bag whose friendship with a little fish proved fatal, a chocolate wrap that covered a schoolboy’s favourite snack… The innocence I put into the writing of these characters is an attempt at shifting the blame of their impact upon the environment towards the bigger structural lack of ecological education of the population and institutions that manage the public space and natural constructed landscape.

During the exhibition period, the audio work was accessible via headphones in the museum space, and via QR code in vaporettos sailing up and down the Bega river. You can listen to the work, both in Romanian and in English, on the separate miniwebsite of the project.

Installation & sound performance
Romanian/English
Exhibition and public space versions presented simultaneously
Work commissioned by Galeria Nouă Association as part of  Blue Sun – group exhibition hosted by the National Art Museum Timișoara
With further support possible thanks to an ENERGY! Creative Grant
Part of the European Capital of Culture 2023
2023, Timișoara

Concept, text, voice: Larisa Crunțeanu
Sound design & recordings: Laurențiu Coțac
Graphic design & website: Emanuel Ștefan
Textile design: Corina Mocanu