Between artifacts and lateral pedagogies

The experience of designing, realizing, organizing and maintaining the entire Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2023, through the two exhibitions, was a difficult one and involved the collaboration and coordination of over 40 people, on different areas of activity and under extremely high time pressure, with a very low budget compared to other pavilions. There were some extremely difficult moments, followed by calmer moments, but in the end the implementation turned out very well and the public appreciated the effort.
To the best of our knowledge, it was the first Romanian Pavilion in the field of architecture that brought together, together with the organizing institutions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Cultural Institute and the Union of Romanian Architects, several prestigious Romanian institutions, even in the core team of the Pavilion: the National Technical Museum "Prof. Eng. eng. Dimitrie Leonida" and Electrica Serv, Romanian Academy, "Mihai Cristea" Plant Genetic Resources Bank Suceava, the National Museum of Contemporary Art and the University of Architecture and Urbanism "Ion Mincu", the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations. Also, the collaboration with a team of cultural associations meant a lot for the content of the exhibition: 4Culture Association, WASP, Hubs, Aiurart Contemporary Art Space, DALA Association. The private partners brought an extra energy to the whole project: Dolo Trans Olimp, Iulius Company, UniCredit Bank, Romcim, Theta, Luther Real Estate, Alumil, ALLBIM, Greentek Lighting.
A very particular moment in the organization of the Pavilion was the realization of the whole process of exhibiting the artifacts of the "Leonida" Museum in the framework of the Venetian Biennale, the whole process being difficult, involving the collaboration of other entities and institutions. For the technological artifacts, the close collaboration with the National Technical Museum "Leonidas" was essential throughout the whole process, and the approach was carried out together.
Identifying technological exhibits based on the curatorial concept was among the first actions. We thus identified innovations and inventions that represented possible solutions to problems of the past, old, unsolved problems that today have turned into real global crises - resource crisis, pollution crisis, lack of drinking water, etc. In the museum, we looked for those inventions and innovations that responded to these difficult moments in the past. We were delighted to identify such objects that supported the curatorial approach, conceptually standing alongside examples of contemporary architecture. During this time, the Leonida Museum restored the Persu automobile, a masterpiece of world automobile invention, with Florian Marin being the most prominent member of the restoration team.
In parallel with these endeavors, we initiated the realization of lateral pedagogies models - implemented architectural projects based on the concept and practice of research, collaboration, participation and education, seen as essential for re-thinking the future.
All that meant the collection of original technological artifacts had to go through several successive stages of preparation, assurance and endorsement. Here, the Directorate for Culture of the Municipality of Bucharest assured us a great collaboration and understood the difficult context, in terms of time, in which the exhibition was organized. Another difficult moment was ensuring the safe transportation of the museum objects. The artifacts included two types of transportation: one by road and one by ship, both of which were difficult to realize. For road transportation, the entire exhibition with both pavilions (not just the technological artifacts) required the presence of three trucks: while two trucks carried all the exhibits' components, the third carried the three exhibited automobiles. The entire road transportation was provided by one of the largest transportation companies in Romania, a national, Romanian company, DOLO TRANS OLIMP. The third truck, the one transporting the cars, was a very special one specially equipped for luxury cars, with encapsulated transportation, inside having a series of ramps with hydraulic activation and sensors to keep the cars balanced inside, as well as monitoring their condition at all times. The second type of transport, by ship, was carried out with a Venetian company specializing in transporting works of art and vintage cars in the aquatic environment. Basically, we unloaded the two exhibits at Troncheto and from there, using larger tonnage boats, we took everything to the two Romanian pavilions. It was also difficult here with the three cars, because they were all lifted into the air on cranes, each having an auxiliary metal structure, so that the socket was not on the original, old structure of the cars. So we made a secondary metal structure that supported each car separately, and the cranes used this structure to move the cars. Absolutely all the components of the exhibits, including these three cars, were loaded onto barges and unloaded at the Giardini, from where, with forklifts and a specialized team, we moved all the material into both the Giardini Pavilion and the ICR Pavilion. It was an extremely big effort, but in about a day we moved the metal structures, the models, the museum artifacts, and absolutely everything, with a team of about 12 people, plus mechanization.
Another interesting moment was the management of the entire assembly site, as all the interior metal structure had to be assembled at the same time as the positioning and placement of the artifacts, so that we could achieve full safety of the museum pieces, plus the extremely short time until the opening.
As far as the ICR Gallery is concerned, the collaboration with the Gene Bank in Suceava, provided us with original traditional Romanian traditional seeds of different varieties from different regions of Romania. All seeds are scientifically explained in detail and are part of the direct content of the ICR exhibition.
For all these endeavors, the good collaboration both with the director Mrs. Laura Maria Albani, the National Technical Museum "Prof. eng. eng. Dimitrie Leonida", as well as Mrs. Silvia Străjeru, director of the Suceava Gene Bank, were of great importance for the implementation of the projects.
The second stage of the exhibitions will be the dismantling and bringing to the country all the components as well as the artifacts. What will be even more exciting is that we have already received invitations from four cities in Romania where we will set up the exhibition when we return in 2024: Timisoara, Cluj, Resita, Iasi and Bucharest.
We will keep you informed about the progress of the project and we invite you to all the venues and throughout this national tour of the Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.