Arts Lab 7.0: Eva Below | Month II

Dear Journal, I do not even know what day it is today anymore. Time is going so fast!

When trying to write this report, I wondered, “What did we do this past month?” Our schedule is so full that some events feel like they occurred months ago although just a couple of days have passed.

Indeed, it feels like ages since we had the on-arrival training; this week in which every morning started with a video conference about the beginning of our experience in Romania. It is national and common to all the volunteers who arrived around the same time as us. Thanks to these online meetings, we are now all in contact. That week we celebrated my birthday. Ever since I was a baby, I have always had it Halloween-themed. I wanted to continue the tradition here. Everyone played along and dressed up. 

On Saturday the 25th, we went to a town called Ruginoasa and took pictures of ourselves in traditional costumes. The goal was to have portraits and group pictures for the catalogue of the MAF, the Alternative Museum of Folklore. Then we had one working week to come up with our personal artwork for the museum. My work is a reflection on three emotions that we may experience when thinking about folklore: curiosity, concern, and hope.

Curiosity: At the centre is an embroidery featuring traditional Romanian motifs. It evokes the beauty of heritage through the ancestral craftsmanship of textile arts. Their splendour is a source of joy and pride for those who keep them alive and a source of wonder for those who discover them. Folklore helps create a positive image of popular heritage, in the sense that it belongs to all economic classes, maintaining strong cultural ties and an idea of collective belonging.

Concern: The embroidery is trapped in a block of ice. For fear of seeing it disappear, folklore is frozen in time. The word ‘folklore’ was coined by British scholar William John Thoms (1803-1885) in 1846 in a letter published in The Athenaeum magazine to refer to ‘the science of popular traditions’, i.e., tales, songs, beliefs, customs, and practices transmitted orally or by practice within a community. Interest in folklore dates back several centuries, but the link between folklore and nationalism developed in the 18th and 19th centuries through Romanticism. By promoting traditions, folklore is a tool of conservatism, whether regional or national. Conservatives attempt to freeze a myth, an idealised version of a popular culture that is nevertheless in constant evolution.

Hope: The ice is melting. Despite conservative agendas, folklore is full of life and belongs to everyone. It evolves with the community. It is not so much a question of wanting to protect the idealised version of a myth at all costs as it is of accompanying its transformation. The embroidery is mounted on a sheet of recycled paper containing seeds. When the ice disappears completely, the embroidery is planted in the soil. It takes root and gives birth to new plants. Folklore does not disappear; it evolves. UNESCO emphasises its importance as intangible heritage, ensuring the continuity of cultural expressions in the face of the pressures of globalisation. Freed from its traditionalist chains, it allows the construction of new identities that are strong in their roots and ready to mobilise in our contemporary world.

The installation is temporary and the melting process takes only a couple of hours. For each exhibition, I made a new embroidery and a new block of ice. My installation did not only allow the seeds of the embroidery to get planted, but there was also an interactive part. Each visitor was invited to answer in one word the question: “What will your folklore look like in 50 years?” The answers varied from “diverse” to “dying” by way of “colourful.” They wrote on the recycled paper I made and then planted it in the soil. I reused the same soil for every exhibition in order to collect the words and the embroideries in the same ground because they will grow into the same pot, into a collective future.

Now it is already time to think of the next project: the Jewish Memorial Museum of Târgu Frumos (JEMOM). For this one, we are joining forces and creating a collective performance. We already had two meetings. The first one was more organisational. The second one was a writing seminar. We came up with the structure of the play and were quite productive. We will be focusing on historical cycles, human nature, and fascism. We have many talents in the project and I really hope it will go well.

This past month I felt strongly overwhelmed. I started off trying to be 100% invested in everything I was doing: 100% organising the life of the house, 100% executing this organisation, 100% working, 100% socialising. It made me so upset I believe I was not treating others kindly anymore. I had to take a step back to make compromises because there is no way I am capable of functioning like this long-term. I found out planning fun activities for myself was the key to feeling better. I started looking at programs for the opera, theatres, concerts, and cinemas in Iasi. Instead of running after time, I am starting to gain power over it. My birthday was a very special moment for me. We had a lot of fun and I feel really grateful for the connections I am starting to form here. I also feel very lucky to be able to experiment with my art.

In the past weeks, I learned that I am resourceful and can come up with creative solutions to the emotional struggles I can encounter.

In the future, I want to sustain this momentum. I feel like I am making this experience mine little by little and I want to continue on. Concretely, that means recognizing better what is important and what is not and dividing my time and energy accordingly. I am positively surprised that my personal artwork process went so well. It motivates me to develop more concepts around societal and historical subjects I believe are important.

This monthly report was written by Eva Below, our French volunteer taking part in a seven-month Arts Lab 7.0 mobility, co-funded by the European Union under the European Solidarity Corps.