"We're running, brother, in all directions!"
6 November 2025tranzit.ro/ Iași
Cultural institutions usually operate locally, regionally and at most, at the national level, while wider, transnational configurations have been historically difficult to sustain both conceptually and infrastructurally. Attempting to answer how we connect remotely to places and people situated hundreds or thousands of kilometers away—across differences in infrastructure, resources, and political borders, this nomadic school brings together curators, historians, and artists to explore transnational cultural practices.
View of Kokkorou Bridge, Municipality of Zagori, Epirus (Greece), built in 1750 (renovated 1910). Currently part of UNESCO Zagori Cultural Landscape. Photo by Livia Pancu
The public programme includes a new art commission by artist Theo Prodromidis, a presentation on statehood and nation-building by historian Marius Alexandru Dan, and a discussion on transnational curating with representatives of tranzit.org network (Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Iași) moderated by Mick Wilson.
With contributions by Tereza Stejskalová (tranzit.cz, Prague), Georg Schöllhammer (tranzit.at, Vienna), Dóra Hegyi (tranzit.hu, Budapest), Livia Pancu & Florin Bobu (tranzit.ro/ Iași), Marius Alexandru Dan (independent researcher, Iași), Theo Prodromidis (independent artist, Athens), Mick Wilson (HDK-Valand/CAPIm, Gothenburg)
PROGRAMME
The Rose that Grew from Concrete, a round table with tranzit.org network (Tereza Stejskalová - tranzit.cz, Georg Schöllhammer -tranzit.at, Dóra Hegyi- tranzit.hu and Livia Pancu - tranzit.ro) in conversation with Mick Wilson
6 November 2025: 16:00 - 16:50
In Central Eastern Europe, critical cultural initiatives face urgent threats from right-wing political forces that weaponize culture, slash public funding, orchestrate media hunts, and impose other forms of censorship upon gaining power. We would like to debate how to not only survive but to thrive under these circumstances. European, Norwegian and other such funds will not save us, unfortunately - not only because the resources are too scarce for the many who need them. We argue that small and mid-scale organizations should and must pursue structural changes. We need to build stronger transnational alliances, and develop deeper links within local communities and, last but not least, come up with new revenue streams, to make possible our survival. In the fractures of the old world, perhaps more vibrant, democratic, and interconnected forms of thinking and being can be born.
Marius Alexandru Dan, Gateway to the East
6 November 2025: 17:00 - 17:50
The goal of this presentation is to offer a basic understanding of some key aspects of Romanian modern history. It is primarily aimed at a nonRomanian audience in order to facilitate a better comprehension of the historical context of the city of Iasi, the region of Moldova and of the Romanian state.
Theo Prodromidis, “Alăgam frate, tu tuti părțâli“ (We run, brother, in all directions!)
6 November 2025: 18:00 - 18:50
The presentation will narrate the relationships and landscapes that shaped the work along with how discussions and workshops held around tables in small rooms and gardens, around rivers and mountains, that have framed the desires of belonging that the work alludes to.
Bios
Tereza Stejskalová is a curator and researcher based in Prague, Czech Republic. She is the director of tranzit.cz and a co-founder of the Biennale Matter of Art. During 2018-2022 she worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In 2017, she initiated Feminist Art Institution, a coalition of cultural institutions in the Czech Republic and Slovakia around a code of praxis. She collaborated on many exhibitions and projects all around Europe. She publishes texts in academic and non-academic journals and is an editor of several publications.
Georg Schöllhammer is an editor, author, curator and editor-in-chief of the magazine springerin - Hefte für Gegenwartskunst, Vienna, which he cofounded in 1995. From 2005 to 2007, he was editor-in-chief of documenta 12 magazines, an international cooperation project of more than hundred magazines worldwide that is continuing to work since 2009. From 1988 to 1994 he was visual arts editor for the newspaper Der Standard. In addition Schöllhammer is head of tranzit.at, he leads the research group Parallel Modernities - Architecture at the Margins of the Soviet Empire (Frankfurt/Berlin), is project director of Sweet Sixties (a joint research initiative on Late Modernism and Neo-Avant Guardes in Central and West Asia, the Caucasus, the Middle East and North Africa based in Istanbul and Vienna), has co-founded the international research group Postwar Avant Gardes (Ljubljana, Barcelona, Vienna). Besides these initiatives he currently is preparing a Catalogue raisonnée and a retrospective of the Polish Artists KwieKulik (for the BWA Wroclaw and the Museum of Modern Art Warsawa) and a monographic exhibition on the oeuvre of Július Koller (Bratislava, Eindhoven). He collaborates with the research, publishing and exhibition project Former West (Utrecht, Eindhoven, Madrid and Warszawa) as a researcher. Schöllhammer is a member of the board of Kontakt. The Art Collection of Erste Bank and of the Erste Foundation in Vienna, works in the artistic board of the festival steirischer herbst in Graz and as a corresponding member of the Vienna Secession. He has published widely on contemporary art, architecture, and theory - mainly around topics and on issues of urban and cultural transformation focusing on Central and Eastern Europe, Western and Central Asia and the Caucasus - he has given talks and lectures in major and minor arts institutions, academies, universities and self organized-spaces in the centres and peripheries in various art worlds. Schöllhammer lives and works in Vienna.
Dóra Hegyi is the project leader of tranzit.hu. She is an art historian and curator based in Budapest and has been curator at the Ludwig Museum Budapest since 1996, where she initiated the Project Room in 1999. Exhibitions (selection): Project Room, Ludwig Museum Budapest (1999), Budapest Box, The hidden scene of the 1990s (2002), Moszkva tér (Gravitation, 2003) und Tell a Line What a Ball Is (2004–2005). She was a founding member of the group KMKK (Two Artist, Two Curators) and founding member of the Curators' Association Budapest.
Marius Alexandru Dan (born 1990) is a historian. His areas of interest are modern and contemporary history, theories of nationalism, interdisciplinary perspectives on the concept of power, and approaches to the evolution of concepts, ideas, and political movements.
Theo Prodromidis (b. 1979, Thessaloniki, Greece) is a visual artist based in Athens. He studied Contemporary Media Practice at the University of Westminster and graduated with an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths in 2007, London, UK. Theo's artistic research and practice on performativity, participation and citizenship has been activated in both institutional and nonformal spaces of knowledge, action and exhibition. He has participated in international exhibitions in galleries, museums and festivals, including Victoria Square Project, GMK Zagreb, 3rd Biennale of Industrial Art, Furtherfield Gallery, Galerija Nova, State of Concept Athens, 1st and 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, 4th Athens Biennale, etc. In 2020-21 he presented "An Album for Our Square", supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) at Columbia University and was also an AFIELD fellow. His artistic research has been supported by the Ministry of Culture and Sport, and he also participated, through the production of new artwork, in the project "Communities of Learning, Bridging the Gap of Isolation", an initiative of WHW with the support of the Culture of Solidarity Fund of the European Cultural Foundation. In 2023 he was a guest artist at the Department of Public Activities of the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. For 2024-2025, he was resident artist at the ArtExplora festival in the Mediterranean and he is currently developing a new body of work for tranzit.ro/Iași in the framework of Institution(ing)s.
Tereza Stejskalová is a curator and researcher based in Prague, Czech Republic. She is the director of tranzit.cz and a co-founder of the Biennale Matter of Art. During 2018-2022 she worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In 2017, she initiated Feminist Art Institution, a coalition of cultural institutions in the Czech Republic and Slovakia around a code of praxis. She collaborated on many exhibitions and projects all around Europe. She publishes texts in academic and non-academic journals and is an editor of several publications.
Georg Schöllhammer is an editor, author, curator and editor-in-chief of the magazine springerin - Hefte für Gegenwartskunst, Vienna, which he cofounded in 1995. From 2005 to 2007, he was editor-in-chief of documenta 12 magazines, an international cooperation project of more than hundred magazines worldwide that is continuing to work since 2009. From 1988 to 1994 he was visual arts editor for the newspaper Der Standard. In addition Schöllhammer is head of tranzit.at, he leads the research group Parallel Modernities - Architecture at the Margins of the Soviet Empire (Frankfurt/Berlin), is project director of Sweet Sixties (a joint research initiative on Late Modernism and Neo-Avant Guardes in Central and West Asia, the Caucasus, the Middle East and North Africa based in Istanbul and Vienna), has co-founded the international research group Postwar Avant Gardes (Ljubljana, Barcelona, Vienna). Besides these initiatives he currently is preparing a Catalogue raisonnée and a retrospective of the Polish Artists KwieKulik (for the BWA Wroclaw and the Museum of Modern Art Warsawa) and a monographic exhibition on the oeuvre of Július Koller (Bratislava, Eindhoven). He collaborates with the research, publishing and exhibition project Former West (Utrecht, Eindhoven, Madrid and Warszawa) as a researcher. Schöllhammer is a member of the board of Kontakt. The Art Collection of Erste Bank and of the Erste Foundation in Vienna, works in the artistic board of the festival steirischer herbst in Graz and as a corresponding member of the Vienna Secession. He has published widely on contemporary art, architecture, and theory - mainly around topics and on issues of urban and cultural transformation focusing on Central and Eastern Europe, Western and Central Asia and the Caucasus - he has given talks and lectures in major and minor arts institutions, academies, universities and self organized-spaces in the centres and peripheries in various art worlds. Schöllhammer lives and works in Vienna.
Dóra Hegyi is the project leader of tranzit.hu. She is an art historian and curator based in Budapest and has been curator at the Ludwig Museum Budapest since 1996, where she initiated the Project Room in 1999. Exhibitions (selection): Project Room, Ludwig Museum Budapest (1999), Budapest Box, The hidden scene of the 1990s (2002), Moszkva tér (Gravitation, 2003) und Tell a Line What a Ball Is (2004–2005). She was a founding member of the group KMKK (Two Artist, Two Curators) and founding member of the Curators' Association Budapest.
Marius Alexandru Dan (born 1990) is a historian. His areas of interest are modern and contemporary history, theories of nationalism, interdisciplinary perspectives on the concept of power, and approaches to the evolution of concepts, ideas, and political movements.
Theo Prodromidis (b. 1979, Thessaloniki, Greece) is a visual artist based in Athens. He studied Contemporary Media Practice at the University of Westminster and graduated with an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths in 2007, London, UK. Theo's artistic research and practice on performativity, participation and citizenship has been activated in both institutional and nonformal spaces of knowledge, action and exhibition. He has participated in international exhibitions in galleries, museums and festivals, including Victoria Square Project, GMK Zagreb, 3rd Biennale of Industrial Art, Furtherfield Gallery, Galerija Nova, State of Concept Athens, 1st and 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, 4th Athens Biennale, etc. In 2020-21 he presented "An Album for Our Square", supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) at Columbia University and was also an AFIELD fellow. His artistic research has been supported by the Ministry of Culture and Sport, and he also participated, through the production of new artwork, in the project "Communities of Learning, Bridging the Gap of Isolation", an initiative of WHW with the support of the Culture of Solidarity Fund of the European Cultural Foundation. In 2023 he was a guest artist at the Department of Public Activities of the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. For 2024-2025, he was resident artist at the ArtExplora festival in the Mediterranean and he is currently developing a new body of work for tranzit.ro/Iași in the framework of Institution(ing)s.
Institution(ing)s is a medium-scale collaboration project co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.