valentin cernat

Performative listening session

May 2017, ICR Paris for Le Mois de la Photo

listening sample

Not long time ago I got familiarized with the term trans-spectator. Tomaž Krpič defines this term when referring to the performance 'Bi Ne Bi' of contemporary Slovenian theatre group 'Via Negativa'. According to Krpič, the trans-spectator could be any of the spectators which got actively involved into play. The trans-spectator breaks the boundaries of comfort and formal behavior by building up together with his/her interaction a continuously distorted new line of the performance.

The idea of trans-spectator was the first thing that came to my mind while listening an audio-cassette of English lessons for beginners. It happened to find in my family home an old walkman I had and some audio-cassettes from the late '90s that my parents bought me to learn faster the English language. On the audio track of the first lesson is recorded the voice of a woman, a Romanian speaker, explaining how to pronounce words correctly. In front of her, in the recording studio, I can hear a male speaking with a strong British accent. The track goes more like a game. They complete one each other: she is explaining how to pronounce letters, words and he is giving examples. It seems to be a nice melodic conversation, coming right after the short melodic intro. The first two words they present are 'shopping street'.  When listening all the words of Western world iterated in the records in Romania of the late 1990s, the images start to shift between them over the mud and provoke a hollowed desire to change the cardinal points. From time to time I can hear him taking a deep breath. This almost mesmerizing track goes for slightly more than one hour.

While listening the lessons I cannot put myself away from having a methodological reading of the entire situation. First of all I embraced the role of the trans-spectator that Krpič was talking about. Of course, the main reason of this view is represented by the changes that occurred throughout the passage of time, the recording tape in 1998 until present. If in my childhood I was listening the recording to get familiarized this English language, today the inertia of the spectator is twisted. From a formal listening to a 'participation as a politicized working progress' (Bishop, 2012).

Therefore this lingua franca (/ˌlɪŋɡwə ˈfræŋkə/) I hear on the audio tape triggers me to reflect on the influence it had on me and my surroundings. 'The world is all-seeing, but is not exhibitionistic, does not provoke our gaze. When it begins to provoke it, the feeling of strangeness begins too.' (Lacan, 1981, p. 75)

Sound Installation in Lange Zaal of Academy of Antwerp, May 2017

Exibition view from Point Bucharest and Borderline Iași

July 2016

„Vertical Case” is the research project that concluded the three years of ‘Photography and Moving Image’ Bachelor Studies. The project consisted in a  thesis and an exhibition, both of them presenting a radiography of cumulative processes, states and modes of perception generated by the interaction with a personal archive of family photos. Within this research project I started to  examine how critically an initial series of aesthetic pleasures of the moment, mixed with the safety and privacy of a family, have generated for a while, a pseudo-identity anchored in trust and imaginary self-esteem. By using the concept of individual-self while interpreting family albums, I interrogate and try to rediscover myself in relation with those photos. This goes as a process in which I am asking myself what made me reconsider me personality. Moreover, this dominant discourse uncovers my intimate and sensitive interpretations that brings out family identity as a slippery slope. At the end of the consumed desire for separation, the question remains the same: ‘What am I?’ This research project is gained by a lot of performativity. I am presenting both concepts and theories related to the memory, archive images, past and identity on one hand but also my own body, described through medical test results. The project itself was not intended as a simple mapping of the past but rather as a questioning of the present, my present. Even if I use stories and old family documents, studying the past will not be any second order target but a ground to describe where I "find" myself at this certain moment.

“Vertical Case” won the prize for the ‘Best Degree Project”, in 2016, inside of University of Arts, Bucharest. On this occasion, the exhibition traveled in some Romanian cities.

Sound installation and performance in Reduta Hall Brasov

In collaboration with Laurențiu Beldean

December 2016

In 2013 I started a photographic documentation of Romania, a country that still wears the traces of extreme political changes. Within this ongoing project I try constantly to relate myself and understand the socio-political changes occurred over the years.

Some of the works were selected for like “Ro_Archive”, “70 Years of Romanian Industrial Photography”, Exhibition "European Photography Commissions and the Landscape" at the Museo ICO (Madrid, Spain).