In 2022, the Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art (ICMA) at the George Enescu National University of Arts, Iași (UNAGE Iași), in partnership with the Goethe-Institut and Borderline Art Space, published the trilingual volume Iași, Mega Images by artist Juliane Eirich, the first publication in the TRANSFOCAL Collection, edited by Cristian Nae and curated by Cristina Moraru. The volume brings together a selection of photographs of the urban environment produced during an artistic residency in Iași earlier that year, accompanied by critical texts and literary excerpts.

“The TRANSFOCAL collection is dedicated to publications of contemporary photography created as a result of artistic research projects that analyze a cultural, social, political and ecological context from multiple perspectives. It responds to an acute need in the current artistic context in Romania, where publications dedicated to artistic research projects in the medium of photography are still rare. At the same time, being developed in the academic space opened by the Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art within the George Enescu National University of Arts in Iași, it resists the pressure exerted by the art and book markets.

Evoking the methodology of translocal connectivity, the artistic projects selected for this collection aim to deconstruct the false homogenous understanding of globality through bodily, socially, culturally, and geopolitically situated reflections on the place from which we look and construct otherness. They highlight the effects of circulations, intersections and cultural transfer produced through artistic mobility on practices and policies of (self-)representation. They also aim to develop sharp analyzes of the gaze, the photographic representation, image, language, and the photographic medium, to investigate practices and politics of documentation, archiving, memory and remembrance and to articulate discursive, documentary or (auto-)ethnographic photographic practices.

The artistic project Iași, Mega Images, selected for the first publication in this collection, was created by the German artist Juliane Eirich following a three-week artistic residency that took place in Iași at the invitation of the Borderline Art Space gallery and the German Cultural Center Iași. During this residency, Juliane developed a simultaneously subjective and realistic perspective on the city as both a monument and a practiced place, focusing on public space, architecture, and habitation. The construction of the photographic space cuts out and magnifies architectural details that become identity emblems of the urban space and cultural environment, capturing the disjunction of temporalities and forms of pre-industrial, socialist, and post-socialist modernity that coexist in Iași. The resulting images are presented in the form of a serial montage complemented by the literary creation of Lavinia Braniște commissioned for this project.

Montajul textual și imagistic este încadrat de textul curatorial al Cristinei Moraru și de interviul realizat de managerul cultural George Pleșu. Iași, Mega Images dezvoltă astfel o intersecție de priviri, experiențe și subiectivități care evită exotizarea locului din și spre care se privește.

Mega Images thus develops an intersection of looks, experiences and subjectivities that avoids exoticising the place from and at which we look. The resulting textual and image montage is framed by the curatorial text of Cristina Moraru and the interview conducted by the cultural manager George Pleșu.”

(Cristian Nae)

Editorial Series: TRANSFOCAL Collection

Edition: Trilingual (Romanian / English / German)

Editor: Cristian Nae

Curator: Cristina Moraru

Authors: Juliane Eirich, Lavinia Braniște, Cristina Moraru, Cristian Nae, George Pleșu

English Translation: Cristian Nae and Cristina Moraru

German Language Revision: Pauline Haak (Goethe-Institut Bucharest)

Photography: Juliane Eirich

Graphic Design: Radu Neacșu (based on a layout by Studio Workshop, Berlin)

Partners: Goethe-Institut and Borderline Art Space

Published by: Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art (ICMA), George Enescu National University of Arts, Iași (UNAGE Iași)

Publishing House: Artes

ISBN: 978-606-547-519-9