Going through photos and videos of me from the late 90s and early 00s made me realise once again the enormous impact which McDonald's chain restaurants had on the Bulgarian post-communist society. The process of the (literary) McDonaldization was a common feature of the decade and a symbol of the "re-westernisation" of Eastern Europe. Visiting and eating at McDonald's used to be a special mini-event that happens on weekends or on particular occasions. For us, kids, it meant that you get to play at the playground with the cool slides, and most importantly, that you're gonna get a hip toy from the Happy Meal. Every single kid wanted to celebrate their birthday at McDonald's. The collage also shows a beloved McDo toy and one birthday gift which transformed tremendously our leisure time.

Untitled (Palace of Culture I) is a collection of shots that depict a virtual reconstruction of the building with the same name, which is considered the main symbol and visual identity of my natal city of Iași, Romania; all of it in the virtual space of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Starting with the 2000s, as gaming became more and more popular, people wanted their entertainment to reflect the surroundings they lived in. As the Balkans and Eastern Europe had no gaming industry at the time, gamers resorted to practices like hacking or modding to alter the visuals of their games to reflect their national identity. GTA: San Andreas was the most popular modding example of its time.

In framing the universe and stylistics of GTA:SA as part of the West and therefore western culture, having interventions and/or markers of the Second World space constitutes for me at the very least an exercise in creating so-called diaspora aesthetics. 

Migration stories is a short animation series exploring the feeling of belonging (or not belonging) through 3 different stories of 3 different people that have migrated. Part 1: Migrating from a neighbourhood to another one. Part 2: Migrating from a village to a big city. Part 3: Migrating from a country to another one. An interesting aspect of this project is discovering that the distance factor doesn’t really make a substantial difference to what people experience and the overwhelming feelings that come with migrating are shared more or less. Working with liminal space and simple looped animation help me create a feeling of detachment while having colored objects as missplaced strange seats which have a significant role in showing the human presence. The stories are narrated by the characters which are talking on the phone to a friend talking about the struggles they encountered.

Sancta Ziana is a dance short film that questions the fading of the aesthetics, beliefs and biases of the current young generation about Noaptea de Sânziene, a Romanian folkloric custom corresponding to the Summer Solstice, where ritualistic practices and a deep connection with nature used to occur in the past. This project derives from a feeling of missing out the collective memory of my Romanian folklore; a memory that I actually excluded myself from. Reconnecting with my forgotten folkloric heritage after losing touch with it was the main personal goal of this project. The short film is a one year collaborative process structured in two parts, both having a contemporary twist. The first part is more mystical, minimalist, cinematic, white and clean, specific with how the Summer Solstice is originally represented in the visual popular culture in Romania. The second part of the short film is highlighting how the folkloric custom is perceived by people from other countries and how religion, among other factors, stimulated the fading of this annual celebration. This part is more critical, brutalist, raw, colorful and messy.

raw, intense, shit quality, dirty, high energy and inconsistent with sean paul and mr saxobeat drifting in and out of consciousness. 

my Y2K summers were spent in Ukraine watching scandalous music videos of half naked sweaty girls luring men into submission. i loved it. i built a fantasy world in our small village. with barely any internet, my sister, my cousin and i were either playing outside or on the computer playing games. if the usb internet worked, we’d just use it to connect to msn. 

this mix switches moods, languages and BPMs like it’s nobody’s business. zero focus, only the joy of discovering every single drop of what we were offered. having lived my life in Lebanon, going to Ukraine every summer filled a void i now yearn to fill again as i feel it growing bigger and deeper. 

my mind was expanding, and now i look back and still feel the stretch and compression in my brain as i listen. the sound of an era forever engraved in my heart. 

dance. sweat. & be sexy. but most importantly, enjoy ^_^

In my work, I examine a current issue using research methods and analysis of domestic work in the silent context of Eastern oppression, which I link to Spanish culture due to my five-month stay through a scholarship obtained. The video performance images unfold seemingly ordinary frames. Just as the inequality between the sexes is imperceptible at first glance, a closer look reveals a complete imbalance. On the one hand, the gesture of cooking has an inappropriate dynamic, and the close-ups become more violent as they progress. The audio segment does not require speech but offers specific questions, such as: If we agree that women with adaptive preferences do perpetuate their own oppression, does this deny those women autonomy?

The Slavic Tale is a collaborative project, which is a natural continuation of our personal practices and interests as artists. We find it extremely suitable for the “Balkan Y2K” since It explores Bulgarian and Balkan identity on a national, regional and global level through academic reviews and artistic projects. With our artworks - the miniatures “Block No. 1989” and “Apartment No. 2007” we are focusing on that state or transition, which most Eastern European countries went through in the 2000s after the fall of the totalitarian regime. We have chosen to show an external and internal view of a typical middle-class residence in that period as an unfiltered reflection of the highly polar cultural influences, which a lot of Balkan people have lived with in their most formative years. ‘Block No. 1989’ contains ten families with iconic Bulgarian archetypes and their typical social dynamics that can also find their equivalent in most Balkan and Eastern European countries. Through the interior of ‘Apartment No. 2007’ we delve deeper into one of these classic families and their inner world. In the apartment, every detail symbolizes something significant in the background of the characters and the time they live in, as we enter the most intimate space for every person - their home. The timeline of the block is set at the beginning of the transition period (1989), and the apartment in its epicenter (2007) when Bulgaria enters the European Union. This is a period awkwardly hanging in-between two polar opposites - the socialist past and democratic future and in other words in that gray zone that is neither Eastern, nor Western Europe as we have previously known it. Thus, in this time people find their cultural identity between the hammer and the anvil in many respects, so everyone has to choose which side to be on - whether to miss yesterday or dream for tomorrow.