Buildings as seen by an American photographer

Multi-media and multi-art events are no longer breaking news. The boundaries between arts have become thinner and thinner and on some continents they were even erased, while interference between arts and science became apparent in all cultural sections. Electronic media took over paper and nothing is like “man’s best friend” – the computer. There are already talks of a digital renaissance and the occidental world had as much as it could stand of interdisciplinary sciences. We are only beginning to grasp the fact that experimentation may be a good thing. Up until now, the performance and multi-media events entered mainly the plastic arts areas, as painters and sculptors feel at ease with various means of expressing their ideas. These tendencies are less felt in the world of theatre; the local dominant is rather conservative. There are though a few oases like the Romanian Literature Museum where a breeze can be felt. Such a refreshing occurrence can be witnessed between July 12 – 20: a photo display by Paul Burk, a young American artist. He came to Romania on a Fulbright grant and took pictures of buildings, either condemned or abandoned before they were finished. Bucharest has plenty of those. In Burk’s pictures we see no humans, as if life has forsaken those places and light seems to be the only thing moving among the debris and in and out of cracks. The display is called “Beyond the Surface.” Paul Burk’s pictures will certainly give a new dimension to the halls of the Romanian Literature Museum. For ten days, it will be a museum of the post-industrial world, each picture a display in itself. At the end of the display, the “closing” will gather multi-media events: text, music, dance and image. Director Calvin McClinton will organise it all in a performance show in the museum’s upper halls; the dancers will attract the audience, while the still pictures will be part of a moving display that pleads for alternative means of expression. Unfortunate spaces have been put to good use through art for many years in the West. We can speak of very few post-industrial Romanian locations that were “resuscitated” to serve cultural ends. We can only look at Paul’s pictures and imagine a colorful show in the gray world he depicts. For now.