La Cave

The murmur of an uneventful day | Exhibition by Mimi CIORA and Dinu BODICIU 🗓️ September 12 - October 18, 2024 | La Cave | French Institute (str. IIC Brătianu 22, Cluj-Napoca) ⚙️ Directed by: Edith Lázár Chapter 1 of Disappearances in Landscapes "Not a real sound, but a sort of internal buzzing, like how you can imagine hearing nails and hair growing or buds opening." - Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot* It's already late afternoon and something tells you you should be productive, but the body seems to gradually disappear into the folds of the sheets, absorbed in the softness of the mattress, leaving behind the pressure to perform. Beyond the bed, however, a barely perceptible hum and the sense of subtle movements seem to animate the space even in your absence. The retreat into this state of sluggishness is increasingly coming to be known as bed-rotting, a viral term for sitting and doing nothing, defying the capitalist culture of perpetual productivity and the pressure to always give purpose to leisure. Bed-rotting, however, could just as well be a form of merging with the intimate space of the home. The philosopher Emanuel Coccia observes that the way we inhabit and experience the planet is primarily through the intimacy of a home, as this is where we spend most of our time. Unlike the home as a utilitarian living space, designed and compartmentalised to shape human behaviours, "being at home" is instead more an alchemical process of relationships between space and objects, beings, memories and stories that come to life.** Yet the world has always infiltrated the home despite the illusion of isolation and the promise of personal refuge. What transformative processes reveal themselves in these moments of human languor? What relationships blossom around us and what escapes our gaze? And what possible forms of cohabitation may lurk in seemingly silent domestic landscapes? In the art and design practices of Mimi Ciora and Dinu Bodiciu the boundaries between materialities blur and reflect the porosity and fluidity of exchanges between bodies and the myriad of more-than-human entities and organisms with which we share our existence. Dinu Bodiciu proposes a perspective on fashion that addresses the different nuances of the encounters between the body, fabrics and more-than-human entities. The skin itself, as a surface that breathes, becomes the substrate for the growth of inflorescences that tell about the possibility of symbiotic experiences and a different kind of sensoriality. Clothing, like a second skin, functions as a living ecosystem. Traces and stains left by bodies, the degradation of fabrics, bacteria, the animal resources involved in the production of the material, the technologies and labor involved in producing textiles, and the manual interventions become all forms of dialog and coexistence that not only constitute what we wear, but also reintegrate the world into the intimate space we inhabit. For Mimi Ciora, the entire domestic space takes the form of a personal, affective diary, in which household objects and houseplants - nowadays ubiquitous companions - take on a subjectivity of their own. Barely perceptible traces of interactions, subtle forms of adaptability, but also of coexistence, gradually link this supposedly interior setting to nature. They form the permeable film of a cocoon, as the site of transformations that are rarely visible or explicable but which take place on an organic level and which the body happens to register, breathe in and out. A continuous transformation, over time, as a way of being in the world. Sometimes everyday routines seem to be accompanied by the intuition of a hard-to-translate sense of belonging to a vast ecosystem beyond the boundaries that people have often imposed on themselves. * 'Not a real sound, but a sort of internal buzzing, like how you can imagine hearing nails and hair growing or buds opening.' - Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot, transl. by Marjam Idriss, Verso Books, 2018, p. 222. ** Emanuele Coccia, La filosofia della casa. Lo spazio domestico e la felicità, Einaudi, 2021. * Mimi Ciora holds a master's degree in visual arts, Department of Graphics - Matter and Concept, Faculty of Art and Design, West University, Timisoara. In 2016, together with Sergiu Sas and Florin Fara, she founds the cultural association Foc și Pară, with the aim of establishing and supporting an organizational and communicational structure specific to events in the area of contemporary art and alternative education. In 2020 he becomes co-founder, curator and cultural manager of Indecis artis run space, an independent non-profit, non-hierarchical space, whose aim is to promote and cultivate dynamic relationships between contemporary art and artists/artists/artsitx from all fields. The space is dedicated to organizing exhibitions, stimulating artistic production and hosts non-formal educational programs in the cultural field. Indecis is a space open to the community, it is a place for DIY experimentation, presentations and debates of contemporary theories and/or non-formal gatherings. Her artistic practice often revolves around the relationship between flora, fauna, fungi and bacteria in their connection to the human (human, female body); and addresses how human intervention leaves its mark on the environment. * Dinu Bodiciu is a designer from Timișoara who studied fashion design at the London College of Fashion where he is currently a PhD student. Dinu is an associate professor at the fashion department of the Faculty of Arts and Design of the West University of Timisoara and has taught at university level in various contexts, from the UK to Singapore where he directed the fashion program for Lasalle College of the Arts. Through these experiences Dinu gained a solid understanding of materials, the intangible values of textiles in different cultures and the importance of sustainability in fashion. In his practice, Dinu is interested in creating a process of symbiosis between the garment, the body and other entities that populate this planet, from bacteria and fungi to plants. This research is broadly aimed at changing cultural perceptions of entities that intervene in the dynamics of clothes through their own aesthetic activity that is currently misunderstood as destructive. In the clothing line made with time, Dinu integrates the traces left by time and through wear on textiles that are recycled and reconfigured into new products: the conventional pattern of the Japanese sukajan jacket, the Hawaiian aloha shirt or the western corset. About the exhibition series Disappearances in Landscapes What does it mean to get lost in a landscape? What stories are revealed when human presence gradually dissolves? Inspired by Elvia Wilk's "Death by Landscape" - a collection of essays about transformative experiences and ways of narrating the complexity of our world and beyond the centrality of the human figure, essays that the curator and the invited artists read together, the exhibition series will propose different manifestations of vanishing into landscapes as ways of reflecting on the ecosystems we are already part of. Through speculative narratives about the strangeness of the environments we inhabit, different understandings of nature and fascination with worlds accessible only through technological means, such landscapes seek to make room for perspectives in which the human and the non-human world intertwine. 🤝 Partners: Domeniile Franco-Române - Île de France Cheese 🖼️Grafic design: Mihaela Vasiliu