OM Talks
Perspectives on Memory and Temporality in Contemporary Creation
free entry
OM Talks brings five artists into direct conversation with the audience, offering an opportunity to discover the creative processes, ideas and experiences that shape their practices, as well as the different roles artists take on beyond their “original” field of work.
Moderated by lecturer Ana Tecar, the event brings together nationally and internationally recognized artists: Szilard Gaspar, Ioana Marchidan, Oana Mureșan, Tony Tran and Lavinia Urcan. At the center of the discussion is this year’s festival theme: Memory and Temporality. How do the five artists approach this theme through the lens of their own creative work?
The artist talk opens up a space for exploring temporality and the traces that micro-histories, whether personal or collective, leave on our consciousness.
How does contemporary dance, alongside other hybrid practices, position itself at the border between the artist’s subjective memory and the narratives of historical time? How can the potential of personal, somatic and institutional archives be explored through the intersection of different artistic media? What forms of memory do we leave behind for the future of contemporary dance?
More than a simple presentation of the creators’ individual works, OM Talks opens a dialogue around these questions and other themes related to the multiple temporalities of contemporary art.
The artists will speak about their recent projects, their sources of inspiration, and the ways research, context and experimentation influence how they think about their work.
The audience is invited to take an active part in the conversation.
The event concludes with a Q&A session.
Ana Tecar - moderator
Ana Tecar is an associate lecturer in the Department of Theatre, Faculty of Theatre and Film, Babeș-Bolyai University, and a researcher specializing in performance art. She holds a PhD from the Faculty of Theatre and Film, with a dissertation on representations of intimacy in performance art, titled Representing the “Intimate” in Performance Art. Spaces of Interior Life, Limits of the Encounter with Otherness (2023).
Her teaching and research focus on theatricality and performativity in the 20th and 21st centuries. More specifically, her work explores the structure of temporal regimes in theatre and performance, dramaturgies of intimacy and digital environments in performance art.
Lavinia Ioana Urcan
Choreographer | Cultural Manager | Associate Lecturer Timișoara, Romania
Lavinia Ioana Urcan is a choreographer, cultural manager and associate lecturer based in Timișoara. She is the president of Unfold Motion Association, an independent organization she founded and through which she develops projects dedicated to contemporary dance, through artistic production, education, professional development and audience development.
Her artistic practice combines choreography, performance and interdisciplinary collaboration. Over the past decade, she has created and co-created contemporary dance performances presented in theatres, festivals and cultural spaces in Romania and abroad. Her choreographic works include The Story of Lost Stories, Je suis Giselle and Connecting Pleasures. She also created the choreography for Tender, directed by Beatrice Benedek and produced by Schauspielhaus Graz, Austria.
Alongside her artistic work, she has developed extensive experience in cultural management and project coordination. Through Unfold Motion, she has initiated and coordinated programs dedicated to the development of contemporary dance, including the DINAM contemporary dance season, Cadre și Forme and ChoreoCraft. Her work focuses on creating opportunities for artists, facilitating international collaborations and exchanges, and expanding public access to contemporary dance.
Since 2019, she has been an associate lecturer at the Faculty of Music and Theatre at the West University of Timișoara, where she teaches stage movement. She also leads movement workshops for the artistic ensemble of the German State Theatre Timișoara and coordinates workshops for children, young people, adults and professional artists in various educational and cultural contexts.
She holds a degree in Dance Studies (Choreography) from Middlesex University in London, a Master’s degree in Project Management from the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest, and a degree in International Relations and European Cultural Studies from the University of Bucharest.
Her professional path includes artistic residencies, international collaborations and training programs developed with artists and organizations from Europe and beyond. In 2020, she received the Award for Contribution to the Development of Contemporary Dance in Romania from the National Center for Dance Bucharest (CNDB), and in 2022 and 2025 she received the ENERGIE! Creation Grant awarded by the Timișoara Project Center.
Tony Tran
Tony Tran is a choreographer and curator based between Oslo and Geneva. His artistic work explores transgenerational trauma, as well as queer and decolonial perspectives from within and outside the Southeast Asian diaspora. Tran’s work has toured across Europe, East and Southeast Asia, and South America.
He served as a member of the performing arts committee of one of Norway’s main funding bodies, the Audio and Visual Fund, from 2020 to 2024. He has also served on the board of Scenekunstbruket - The Norwegian Network for Performing Arts for Children and Young People - as well as Performance Arts Hub Norway, and has been a member of the Artistic Council of Dansens Hus Oslo.
He currently serves as a jury member for the national Hedda Award and as a board member of the Norwegian Dance Union - Norske Dansekunstnere - as well as Davvi - Centre for Performing Arts in North Norway. Tran has also curated the performing arts program for the cross-aesthetic music festival Lyse Netter.
He is the founder of Program Grands Crus, a foundation supporting the creation and mobility of performing artists based in Vietnam.
Oana Mureșan
Choreographer, Artistic Director, Founder of OM Choreographic Center
Since the age of five, Oana Mureșan has been working with the body and its intelligence. Her first passion and professional field of study was gymnastics, after which she moved toward the performing arts.
She graduated from the Gheorghe Dima Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca with a Bachelor’s degree in Choreography, followed by a Master’s degree in Choreographic Directing.
Since 2016, she has created choreography for various contemporary dance performances and projects, both solo and group works, presented in conventional venues, museums and art galleries. She collaborates as a dancer and choreographer with different associations and institutions dedicated to dance and visual art, both in Romania and internationally.
In 2018, at the FITIC Theatre Festival in Constanța, she received the Best Choreographer Award for Heterocromia, a performance that marked her debut as a choreographer.
In 2020, the National Center for Dance Bucharest awarded her for her contribution to strengthening contemporary dance in Romania.
In 2022, she founded OM Choreographic Center, an independent choreographic center in Cluj-Napoca dedicated to contemporary dance and choreographic research.
In 2024, she initiated OM Transilvania International Dance Festival, whose first edition brought contemporary dance and its connections with different art forms and cultures into focus.
Alongside her artistic projects, she regularly leads contemporary dance classes and workshops for adults and children.
Szilard Gaspar
Szilard Gaspar is a visual artist, sculptor and university lecturer originally from Satu Mare and active in Cluj-Napoca. His artistic practice develops from the relationship between body, energy, force and movement, deeply influenced by his experience as a former professional boxer.
In his work, the energy generated through movement and physical gesture is transferred and discharged into material or space, transforming action into a visible trace, tension or form. Sculpture, installation and performance thus become tools through which he explores the relationship between control and impulse, discipline and instinct, resistance and vulnerability.
For Gaspar, material is not merely a support, but a participant in the process - the place where the energy of the action remains and continues to exist. His artistic and pedagogical activity develops in parallel through exhibitions, projects and academic contexts in Romania and internationally.
His works have been presented in international exhibitions and projects, and his practice has been supported through grants and distinctions, including the Constantin Brâncuși Scholarship and the Derkovits Gyula Scholarship. In 2025, he was shortlisted for the Esterházy Art Award.
Ioana Marchidan
Ioana Marchidan is a performer and choreographer.
Since 2016, she has been President of Dance Spot Association and Artistic Director of LINOTIP Independent Choreographic Center. She studied at the Floria Capsali High School of Choreography. Her professional dance career began at the Romanian National Opera, and she later became one of the performers of Gigi Căciuleanu Romanian Dance Company. She has also collaborated with subsTANZ / Massimo Gerardi and Tangaj Collective.
She later began creating her own choreographic works, including 2 Contemporary Women, Reverse Discourse - developed as part of the E-MOTIONAL Residency at Forum Dança Lisbon and selected for Tanzmesse NRW 2022 and ACT Festival Bilbao 2022 - Stabat Mater, awarded Best Performance at the Undercloud Festival in Romania, Humans/Bodies/Images, Are We Humans or Are We Dancers at StudioM, Sfântu Gheorghe, We Are All OK, Bodies on the Line at CNDB, Original Spaces / Legalized Gestures at /SAC @ MALMAISON, created by Ioana Marchidan and Simona Dabija, Waste, and the performative conference TELEMACHUS.
She is also the initiator of the “CanCan cu MarchiDan” meetings.
As a performer, she has participated in performative installations including An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale at the Venice Biennale, by Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmuș; Bucharest. Human Installation by Radu Alexandru Nica and Florin Fieroiu; Retro Walk Decades to the Sun at MNAC by Simona Deaconescu and Ciprian Ciuclea; and Isolation in a Series of Liminal States at /SAC @ MALMAISON by Simona Deaconescu.
The project was carried out with the support of Cluj-Napoca City Hall and the Local Council. Partnered with Meron Gallery.
