Original Spaces / Legalized Gestures

Produced by /SAC@Malmaison, Bucharest

• Choreography: Simona Dabija and Ioana Marchidan
• Performers: Simona Dabija and Ioana Marchidan
• Dramaturge: Rucsandra Pop
• Visual Artist: Dimitrie Gora
• Architects: Maria Ghement and Justin Baroncea
• Sound Design: Alexandru Suciu
• Set Design Producer: Andrei Angelescu
• Curator: Alex Radu

Original Spaces / Legalized Gestures is a performative installation on inheritance and identity, the fifth production of the curatorial program Open Context, initiated in 2021 at /SAC @ Malmaison. This collaborative exploration blends performance and visual art, representing how we relate to inheritances - both personal and intergenerational, as well as societal, shaped by anthropological and socio-cultural dynamics that involve collective inheritances.

Inheritances manifest in countless objects, emotions, small gestures, and traits that remind us of those who are no longer here, in tastes and scents that project us into the past or dictate our present choices. Original Spaces / Legalized Gestures is a performative installation that brings together the physical and emotional objects inherited by performers Ioana Marchidan and Simona Dabija with the artistic objects created by Dimitrie Gora, within a physical, exhibition space designed by Maria Ghement and Justin Baroncea, and a soundscape by Alexandru Suciu. Developed in the symbolic space of the Malmaison building, this creative process around the idea of inheritance and the reconstruction of personal and collective identity takes on the value of a ritual of reflection and community regeneration. The chosen title invokes another cultural legacy, the novel Original Acts / Legalized Copies by 1980s writer Gheorghe Crăciun.

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