Urban Traces

Urban Traces is a signal-project, a social one, meaning to draw the citizen’s attention on his identity. This concept was developed in a form of work-in-progress activities each activity in it making each time the project even more complex and complete. Therefore it is under a continuous change and modification gathering “traces” with each presentation. The main idea of the project is “Identity” – the artist’s identity, the individual’s identity, the nation’s identity! Identity – not national, not ethnical, not sexual or religious, not communitary or zonal or any other kind but an urban identity, an identity created by the urban society which defines us, given by the coloured monochrome of every day and every night of the cities where we are born, grow live and work, a borrowed identity, non-personal impersonal. An identity, unidentified, imprinted with every detail of the urban life starting with block district, shop, super-market mall and ending with the politics and culture of the city, its specific means of behavior and communication. Urban Traces is a project mainly in black-and-white decomposing the dirty grey of the city and painting the traces we do not perceive as they are proper to us for the very simple reason that they penetrate us and mould us. The exhibition spaces for the project were both from conventional and non-conventional field trying to cover as many representative elements of the city as possible. Each exhibition had its subject subordinate to the main idea of the project with a view to gather more and more information about what a city means, art in the city, or perception of the urban space. The development of this project was similar to the rolling snow ball which gathers and groves while rolling. We had also in view the diversity offered by the geographical zone, Urban Traces traveled through different cities of Romania, or World. This traveling meant also many important findings for the project as zonal differences of the city from the conceptual point of view and the issues it raised.