Tag: video

• Dispelling Illusions

  video, b&w, sound, 6:24 min, 2022/2025

  Illusion has two sides. That visual phenomenon where perception is tricked by form, light, and perspective: what we see is not always what is there. The illusions of our own thinking: assumptions, expectations, and narratives shaping how we interpret reality. While optical illusions reveal the limits of our eyes, illusory thinking exposes the possible scenarios of our mind.
  
  This duality emerged from a very ordinary context. As construction and home renovations have expanded widely in Romania since the 2000s, many homeowners have experienced a similar disappointment: work done quickly, superficially, or carelessly by craftsmen. What initially looks finished and convincing often hides fragile execution underneath. The illusion of quality collapses once the surface is questioned.

  This one-shot video documents a simple act: removing ceramic tiles that had been installed hastily by workers. As the tiles come off, the hidden structure becomes visible. What first appeared solid reveals gaps, shortcuts, and inconsistencies. The gesture becomes both literal and symbolic, an attempt to peel away the surface and expose the distance between appearance and reality.
  
  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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• Fata Morgana

  HD video, 11:00 min, 2012

  For those who have not undergone compulsory military service, this landscape may seem as if taken from a video game; for those who have, it was a lived reality.
  
  The suspended camera becomes a foreign body within the landscape, oscillating between control and loss. Its nearly uncontrollable movement suggests an uncertain gaze, as if the space itself resists any attempt to be fixed or understood. Certain angles evoke a state between reality and illusion, where the memory of the place has eroded into ambiguity.
  Within this setting, a phantom-like entity appears intermittently, its mirror in place of a head reflecting the surroundings and, implicitly, the viewer. Its presence, both relic and projection of the site’s memory, functions as an opaque witness.

  The title refers to the optical phenomenon of a mirage, an illusion that distorts reality and makes it appear as something other than what it is.
  In this sense, the work explores the idea that an inaccessible past inevitably becomes a speculative construct, a sequence of reflections and distortions.
  
  The video does not tell the story of the base; instead, it constructs an atmosphere in which absence becomes the protagonist. Between fragments of space, unstable movements, and fleeting appearances, Fata Morgana invites the viewer to navigate their own perception, confronting the boundary between what is seen and what is imagined.
  
  co-authors Huba Antal & Levente Kozma
  sound Szilárd Szőke

  part of the Waiting Spaces project

  

  

  making of, photo Anca Gyemant

  

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• Fragments of The Day / Fragmentele zilei

  HD video, b&w, 9:20 min, 2020

  Our daily activities and mobility are constrained, limited, and fragmented. The readjustment of our ever-changing daily routine is disrupted by a heightened sense of unpredictability. The multitude of information and news accelerates our thoughts —between the present, past, and future. It distorts reality. Conspiracy becomes reality.
  The video camera and sound recorder become witnesses and observers of the present, capturing fragments of my daily activity during the state of emergency—events at home, captured from the window and outside, on the way to the shops or during walks around the neighborhood.
  These short fixed-camera shoots and sound recordings, captured over the course of a week at different times of day, cover the cycle of a day and form the basis of the work. The footage shot on different days is organized sequentially by recording time, thus compressing a week into a single day.
  This series of sequential micro-narratives, with a docu-fictional character, offers a personal reflection during the pandemic.
  The sound of the video sequences is dissociated and inverted, the interior with the exterior and vice versa, dislocating the image from its original context, implicitly our perception of reality…
  
  Made in the frame of the Artists Rooms program, initiated by Fundația 9

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  Virus Diary, 2020
  photos taken during the pandemic lockdown, after 10pm, when going outside was forbidden

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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• Time Within Time

  HD video, stereo sound, 24h, 2010 – ongoing
  (actual duration 2:30 min, 2025)

  Using sound as guide, since 2010 I have explored various parts of Timișoara, from the city center to the outskirts – neighborhoods and streets, both iconic and abandonedplaces – to carefully observe and document the urban landscapes.
  
  It began as an exercise in exploration and conscious observation of the urban space – of this complex and dynamic ecosystem we call a city.   
  There were, of course, long breaks – sometimes months, even years, would pass without any recordings, but it developed a reflex for listening, an attentiveness to sound. An element, we tend to label as noise. A constant hum, to which we no longer pay attention; in an urban landscape dominated by images, sound remains somewhere in the background, just as an instinctive sense of orientation.
  
  There are places I revisit periodically. Changes inevitably occur, on a small or large scale, and are easy to spot visually. Sound, however, has a different dynamic – it’s much more versatile, fleeting, and never the same.
  
  The film’s main protagonist is the sound. The accompanying images are observational, chosen from the sound recording’s vantage point. A fixed frame, like a photograph, a viewpoint from the very spot where something is happening or where only a detail specific to that place is captured. The image does not follow, but rather avoids capturing the source of the sound, leaving the viewer free to imagine, recognize, or identify its origin.
  
  The clips are arranged in the order of the hour and minute they were recorded, regardless of the year. In this way, the clips collected over the years merge into a single 24-hour day.The project can be seen as a documentary of the present moment – comprehensive yet fragmented that challenges us to actively observe and listen to the urban environment and our surroundings.
  An audio-visual diary of the situation, the moment, and the presence or absence.

  Made possible through funding from the Energie! Creative Grants, by the City of Timișoara through Center for Projects.

  Presented at !t – a space for it, Timișoara, 2025

  
  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  some excerpts from 2011, entitled previously City of Noise

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