The documentation of the installation is derived from Roxana Lăpădat's PHD research on the impact that foreign cultural policy has as a form of soft power in times of crisis, starting from the example of the German-Romanian cultural transfer (1968 - 2007). Carried out at Aix-Marseille University and the University of Tübingen, within the Horizon Europe NARDIV project, it includes extensive archival research (CNSAS, Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, Federal Archives in Koblenz and Berlin-Lichterfelde, ifa Stuttgart archive, National Archive of Romania, newspaper archives, etc.), but also interviews and statements (including an open call launched on the Goethe-Institut Bucharest channels).

Reflections on East-West Perspectives brings together diverse artistic practices - from analog equipment to digital technologies and AI machine-learning, from archival research to interviews, interactive narratives and performances - articulated in seven distinct installations, each exploring a different aspect of the central themes: 

1. A tennis net and paper cornets suspended in it or scattered in space, bearing real testimonies of communication beyond the Iron Curtain. Starting from the example of Romanian-German cultural transfer, the materials used come from documents selected from archives in Romania and Germany, interviews, statements and articles from the press of the time. The installation evokes on one hand the game of childhood, with paper "bullets", and on the other hand the danger of physical and symbolic borders during the communist regime. 

2. Starting from materials from the Kinema Ikon archive, such as Nicolae Ceaușescu's visit to Arad in 1979 (a video document that has not been exhibited before), the installation reflects the way in which facts can be transformed into "alternative realities" through the aesthetics and mechanisms of social media. The original materials play on a retro television; a series of slides present the material visually reinterpreted with analog and digital collage techniques; video materials, created with the help of artificial intelligence, configure a possible future, derived from the realities of the communist past and the extremist narratives of the present. The installation is also an artistic homage to the Kinema Ikon multimedia studio, a pioneer of experimental film, mixed media and video installations since the 1970s. In the context of the communist regime, Kinema Ikon's works were almost exclusively forms of "samizdat".

3. An installation with an overhead projector allows visitors to reconfigure, as in a puzzle, fragments of text and image to create their own stories –....

4. A rotary telephone and external microphones recreate the atmosphere of constant surveillance by the Security Service, evoking the fear specific to authoritarian regimes, in which every word spoken (or written) could have disastrous consequences.

5. The documentary video installation by Oscar Loeser (Germany) mirrors the German perspective on internal borders and memory divided between East and West, completing the reflection on the manipulation and relativization of facts.

6. Jars of “preserved” barbed wire question the impact generated on the present by the social traumas of an Eastern Europe marked by control, isolation and repressive policies.

7. Three autobiographical testimonies about how Generation Z relates to their own realities - Calița Nantu and Vlad Hodrea (Romania), Anke Parusel (Germany) - are played on retro TVs, reflected in mirrors, confronting the audience with themes such as identity, authenticity and current social pressures. Fragments of these documents will be available through paper cones, with which visitors can interact in the installation space, as well as online, on the Interfonic.de page.

Concept: Roxana Lăpădat, Alex Halka, Vlaicu Golcea

Video performance: Calița Nantu, Anke Parusel, Vlad Hodrea

Video documentary installation: Oscar Loeser

Technical coordinator: Alexandru Andrei

Communication: Vlad Hodrea

Producer: Laura Trocan

Graphics: Mihai Păcurar