The Sound Archive's project "Jazz and Social Life under Communism" explores this year the rich history of Romanian jazz during the socialist period. After a documentation of the Sibiu Jazz Festival between 1974-1989 and a recent exhibition dedicated to it in the same city, we now turn our attention to jazz in Timișoara.
What was the jazz scene in Timișoara like in the period before 1990?
What impact did it have on the city's social and cultural life?
What were its international connections?
Through an experience that combines a series of public discussions, documentary materials from personal archives, artworks and installations, the exhibition aims to deepen the cultural and social significance of the jazz movement in Timișoara and the influence of the Sibiu Jazz Festival on the national jazz scene.
Documentary materials from the collections of Ioan Băcălete, Marius Giura and Johnny Bota will be presented in the exhibition built around the stories told by guests at the microphones of the Sound Archive. Jazz x TM x Life 60-70-80 is a work-in-progress event, which will be continuously fed by the interventions that will take place in the exhibition space. The Timișoara landscape will be complemented by a series of visual narratives from the life of the Sibiu Jazz Festival. A video by the musician Lucian Fabro recalling, through an illustrated DIY album, the important moments, a group of emblematic photographs taken by Fred Nuss and reinterpreted by the artist Beatrice Arzoiu, an animation created by the artist Alexandra Zidariu, inspired by an iconic photograph by Horst Buchfelner, and an audio-visual installation by the photographer Zeinab Zimmer are all portals to decipher the central event in Romanian jazz during the communist period, with its ramifications to other local scenes. The work by artist Oana Maria Pop, From East to East, traces the road Sibiu - Timișoara - Zagreb, the place from where the Croatian musician Boško Petrović's TV show started, on the airwaves, to the antennae of the people of Timișoara, through an image that coincides with the shape of a saxophone. Artist Sorina Vazelina presents an art installation dedicated to the jazzman Richard Oschanitzky from Timișoara, in dialog with the works of artist Ionuț Dulămiță, which explores the female contribution to Romanian jazz, with Aura Urziceanu, who was a stage colleague of Oschanitzky during the years of activity of his ensemble, as the central figure.
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Organizer: Centrul Dialectic
Partners: Union of Croatian Composers, Minitremu Association, Jazz Updates, Casa Artelor - Timis County Department for Culture
Media partners: Radio Romania Cultural, Scena 9
The project "Jazz and Social Life in Communism" is developed by Centrul Dialectic and is part of the national cultural program "Timisoara - European Capital of Culture in 2023", financed by the Legacy Timisoara 2023 program, implemented by the Center of Projects of the Municipality of Timisoara with funds allocated from the state budget, through the budget of the Ministry of Culture. Project co-financed by AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the funders.