Monday Lectures

_31.05. Alexandru Buescu, a graduating student from DASPA Copenhagen, UNSEEN.

Please register here as usual and I will send you the entrance link shortly before the lecture starts.

UNSEEN deals with the abstract and complex process of what and how maturity is perceived in today’s society through a collection of selected text based materials. A society that is full of rules, articles, advice, statements and procedures. A society that is not yet ready to understand individuals because individuals do not have time to get to know themselves. How does it look and what should compose an archive on this topic? What and how is this delivered to someone that would be interested in having a deeper understanding of this unpredictable phenomenon of our lives?

When referring to the concept of the archive, what is paradoxical is the fact that an archive seems to have "the ability to encapsulate” transcendental notions such as: time, space, and causality. “The matter’s” avatar is represented by the physical or the digital documents stored in its departments. Everything that an archive contains is religiously selected, stored, saved, manipulated and it can be destroyed in a second. Archives represent our mémoire collective and, perhaps, beyond that, are a cut in the reality of the present, a masterful delusion, similar to a hologram.

What happens when the hologram disappears?
Does it really matter?
Matter for whom?
For those in power?
For society?
Does it really matter?
Who is the archivist?
What and how an archive is for maturity?
Keywords: archive, autobiography, artistic research, identity, collective memory.

Operating as performance artist, actor, writer and director, Alexandrus artistic praxis combines autobiographical elements with techniques of research and documentary mainly staged as live performance art pieces.

Alexandru Buescu was born 1985 in Bucharest, The Socialist Republic of Romania, under the communist regime of Ceaușescu. His work questions social issues related to: freedom of speech, fake news, internet, individual or collective memory, distribution of the sensible, human alienation due to technology, consumption, rituals, family, adulthood, isolation, fear, love, anger, sadness, waiting, loss of individuality or the duality and problem of the ego. At the same time, it challenges assumptions, perceptions and expectations related to his own art practice and research. By creating unexpected situations or inventing ambiguous “characters”, directly or indirectly related to his own nature, in his performances Buescu investigates the roles of the performer and the audience, the exposure of body, the question of the representation from conventional schemes to real situations. The use of videos, voice or sound recordings, objects made out of paper, toys, photos, poems, official documents, interviews, sand or even animal meat acquire symbolic meaning in his work while the traces left on stage became evidence of the everyday absurd human behavior.

Every Monday 5 to 7 pm CET the Alexandria Nova Network offers a lecture, seminar or discussion about methods of (Teaching) directing. The lectures are not public and aim primarily at students of the participating schools. It is however possible to attend the events as a guest. Please write an email to the Alexandria Nova Projectmanager Suzanne Muller-Jaeschke s.muller@hfs-berlin.de to register and receive an entrance link.

You can find the first part of the lecture (and much more!!) on the AN-website if you missed it or want to recall.