Catalogue > At random

In this film, the simple and poetic gesture of Roma children starting small fires in which to burn mounds of white poplar fluff implies a promise?the promise of renewal. Some are street kids, some have a family and some do not, some have a home, some are nomadic, and some just squat a derelict house without a roof. Occasionally the mesmerising play of the children leads the fire to consume a tree, and then fire fighters rush to extinguish it, leaving the burned trunk as a black drawing on the sky. This yearly ritual performed by kids is a metaphor for the spark that sets the existing order on ?fire,? and leads to a change. The sparks and small fires in the film symbolically suggest associations with many things?they could be the fires in the French banlieues in recent years, the perpetually deported and repatriated Roma people through out Europe, anti-war protesters against the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan around the globe, or this year?s uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East?all of which point to the hope of a more equal world. (Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor)

Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, born 1968/1974, work together since 2000. Based in Bucharest, currently living in Berlin (DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm) Selected Solo Exhibitions: 2009 - 
Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, All Power to the Imagination!, Secession, Grafischess Kabinett, Vienna; Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, Surplus Value, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht; 2003 - 
Living Units, Project Room, Ludwig Museum, Budapest. Selected Group Exhibitions
 : 2011 - Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennale), Istanbul; Call the Witness, Roma Pavilion Collateral Event, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice; Image projected until it vanishes, Museion, Bolzano; 2010
 - Flying Down to Earth, FRAC Lorraine, Metz;
Modern Dialect, M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp;
Shockworkers of the Mobile Image, 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Ekaterinburg;
Over the Counter, Mucsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest; 2008 - 5th Berlin Biennial, When Things Cast No Shadow, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin;
6. Gyumri Biennial, Transformation of History or Parallel Histories, Gyumri;
Art as Gift, Periferic Biennial 8, Iasi;
Like an Attali Report, but different, On fiction and political imagination, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; 2007 - 52nd Venice Biennial, Romanian Pavilion, Low-Budget Monuments, Venice.