Ana S. In 2010, Ana stayed in Oslo, Norway, for 5 months. The discrimination she was subjected to prevented her from finding a job, despite her bachelor’s degree in Design. She had to live with 11 other migrants from all over the world in a tiny apartment. She made a living out of selling her handmade jewelry. In 2015 she left for England, where she is currently living. I’d found this recruiting company called M. S. Wranghel online. Actually, a friend found them, we were searching together, we wanted to leave for England. Eventually I left and he stayed in…
Interview with Ms. Lenuța (Venus) The interview was recorded in Turnu Măgurele town, in August 2015, in the frame of the project Maskar. It was recorded in front of Lenuţa and her husband’s house, at the time they were expecting their children and grandchildren to visit them from abroad. What’s your name and age? I’m 48 years old and my name is Lenuța. My nickname is Venus – the goddess of beauty. Where did you work abroad? I went to work in Spain and it was not easy at all – but what am I saying, it was actually really…
Call for Papers 26-27 August 2016 Telciu-Bistrița, Bistrița-Năsăud County, Romania The 5th Annual Telciu Summer Conference focuses on the intertwined topics of rurality, modernity, and (de)coloniality. The concepts of modernity and rurality remain theoretically and analytically contested. Nevertheless, our premise is that that they are mutually constitutive on both the conceptual and on the concrete socio-economic levels. Rather than opposite ends of a continuum ranging from tradition (associated with rurality, the periphery, and the past) to globalization (associated with modernity, the present, and core power), both the rural and the modern are inherent to and heirs of imperial, colonial and post…
Interview with Ion Marcel (fragments) A debt incurred years ago makes you uncomfortable and clouds your judgment. And as a bitter statement: any wrong steps where money is concerned snowballs into something as disastrous as losing your home. I was born on November 22nd, 1971, in Bucharest. My father was a local, my mother was from Sibiu, I’m half-Transylvanian. Since 2001 I’ve been working as a teacher, because the factories where I used to work… the factories are closed or demolished and abandoned or turned into new blocks or flats. SC Danubiana was the first factory I ever worked in,…
Interview with FLORIAN VODĂ In 2001, at Creangă Theatre in Bucharest, I saw Vodă perform in the play Acasă [Home] (text by Ludmila Razumovskaia, directed by Radu Apostol), which revolutionized the Romanian theatre through its social and community-oriented approach and its solid poetic construction. Acasă marked the path for new theatrical practices, for profound aesthetic and political reflections upon extremely vulnerable realities, upon the world of fragile “undesirables” whose self-representation is usually shunned by the art with capital A. Acasă was created by director Radu Apostol together with a group of homeless children and two professional actresses, after six months…
In the spring of 2013, political scientist Vladimir Bortun conducted several interviews with clients of banks which gave out mortgage loans. The clients talk about their relationship with the banks, about the banks’ unilateral decisions and abusive clauses. How did your relationship with BCR begin? Well, I decided to stop paying rent and move with the family, we couldn’t fit in a one-bedroom flat anymore. And we thought we’d take out a loan. What year was this? Late 2007, early 2008. I went to several banks, I asked for several offers, and in the end I thought BCR gave me…