Workshop • October 23 – 24, 2025
The Artist’s Book as a Tool for Potential History
The Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art (ICMA) together with the Mural Art Specialization of the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design of the “George Enescu” National University of Arts from Iași are announcing the production workshop The Artist’s Book as a Tool for Potential History conducted by visual artist Andrei Nacu.
Thursday & Friday
October 23 & 24, 2025
Hours 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Building A, FAVD UNAGE Iași
Mural Art Department
The production workshop conducted by Andrei Nacu within the research project Imperatives of Social Change investigates the artist’s book as a critical space for articulating memory and history. Inspired by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s concept of “potential history”, the workshop proposes a reflection on how images and archives can be reinterpreted and reclaimed as tools for knowledge and social action.
In a context where visual history is fragmented by media flows, algorithms, and official narratives, the workshop explores the possibilities of the artist’s book as a form of reconfiguring collective memory. Participants will work collaboratively with photographic materials, personal documents, and public archives, seeking to rethink the image as a meeting ground between memory, affect, and politics.
The working process will emphasize adopting a critical perspective on the image, focusing on the editing, design, and materiality of the book. Through discussions and hands-on exercises, the workshop encourages a learning-through-experimentation approach, in which concepts are clarified through process rather than outcome. The book thus becomes an instrument for thinking and negotiating history, an intermediate space between document and fiction, between archive and narrative, between past and present. The workshop functions both as a laboratory of ideas and as a collective framework for visual exploration, where temporal and material limitations serve as starting points for conceptual innovation.
The workshop takes place over two days and is intended for the students of the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design interested in visual research, the relationship between art and the archive, and the potential of the image to generate new forms of critical and social thought.
Andrei Nacu (b. 1984, Iași) is a visual artist based between London, UK, and Iași, Romania. His artistic practice delves into the intersection of personal memory and social history, often exploring the tensions between the intimate and the collective through documentary photography, family albums, and photographic archives. In his recent work, Nacu expands his practice to include video, installation, and performance, with a keen focus on the political dimensions of art, ethics, and the limitations of representation. His work critically engages with how personal narratives intertwine with larger historical and social contexts. Nacu studied photography at the University of Wales, Newport, UK, and the “George Enescu” National University of Arts from Iași, Romania. He previously served as Archivist & Photo Curator at the Royal Anthropological Institute in London and is currently pursuing a PhD in Arts & Humanities Research at the Royal College of Art.
The workshop is open to all students of the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, subject to the availability of places, with priority given to students from the Mural Art department. To declare your interest, please send an email to: arta.murala@gmail.com.
The research project Imperatives of Social Change is managed by teaching lecturer Andrei Timofte, and funded by The Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art within the “George Enescu” National University of Arts from Iași through the internal research grants for the year 2025.