Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor

Procesul / The Trial
2004-2005
video, 37′24’’; single-channel video installation with 300 pots of red roses

Vatamanu and Tudor’s artistic practice involves bringing history into the present tense, whether in the form of performative reenactment or symbolic recuperation. A deep interest in architecture as a repository of both personal and collective memory and as a mark of political power underlies many of their projects.
Procesul is a film about a text that seems to be a theatrical performance rather than the transcript of the trial Ceauşescu couple trial. Its form derives from TV broadcasts from the eighties that presented each evening the new, gray blocks of flats constructed by the socialist regime. In Procesul, the building blocks are filmed from the same Dacia car used by TV crews in the eighties, revealing how nothing has changed with them in the last 15 years.
The room in which the video is installed is filled with red roses as the artists’ reflection on a particular story: “A driver told us that on the occasion of official exhibition openings in the communist regime, he would be sent to buy 300 pots of red roses to be installed in all exhibition rooms for Ceauşescu and other communist officials. In reality they never came to see the shows. Our piece is a continuation of this absurd ready-made, only in our case we invite the audience to take the pots of red roses home”.

Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor (1968 Constanta, RO / 1974 Geneva, CH) have worked together since 2000. Recent exhibitions include: Periferic 8, Iasi, Romania; Berlin Biennale 5, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Appointment with History, Lombard-Freid Projects, New York, Another City, Another Life, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Like an Attali Report, but different, On fiction and political imagination, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; Living Units, Mercer Union, Toronto / solo; 52nd Venice Biennial, Romanian Pavilion; Low-Budget Monuments; The Building Show, Exit Art Gallery, New York; Prague Biennale 3: Der Prozess. Collective memory and social history; How to Do Things? – In the Middle of (No)where, Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien, Berlin; Re-animating the city, Cooper Gallery, Dundee / solo; Living Units, Project Room, Ludwig Museum, Budapest. www.monavatamanuflorintudor.ro