Editors and copy-editors: Mihnea Mircan and Meta Haven: Design Research

Contributors: Mark Jarzombek, Markus Miessen, Doryun Chong and Sean Snyder, Office (Kersten Geers, David van Severen) and Christoph van Gerrewey, Alon Levin, Branimir Stojanovic, Laurent Liefooghe, Azra Aksamija and Khadija S. Carrol, Calin Dan, Mechtild Widrich, Daniel Kurjakovic, Anca Mihulet, Wouter Davidts, Malkit Shoshan, LUST, Zbynek Baladran, Emily Katrencik, the editors and the pavilion artists.

Design: Meta Haven: Design Research

2007. 24 pages, 29 x 41.6 cm

ISBN: 978-3-86588-415-2

A 24-page b/ w newspaper published on the occasion of the exhibition Low-Budget Monuments, The Romanian pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennial

Artists: Victor Man, Cristi Pogacean, Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, Christoph Büchel & Giovanni Carmine
Curator: Mihnea Mircan
Commissioner: Mihai Pop
Organised by Fundatia Plan B, Cluj

The publication of the pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennial groups theoretical and visual contributions as the first episode in a long-term project that aims to rethink the contemporary monument. It stems from the belief that monuments are ‘impossible necessities’, that monuments are problematic knots entangling decisive questions about the modes of history and ideology that constitute or condition communities. The artistic, critical repossession of the monument could bring enlightening arguments in the discussion about the subversive capabilities of political art, perhaps actualizing Thomas Hirschhorn’s enigmatic dictum about ‘making art politically’, in a practice that does not evacuate the possibility of failure and does not dissimulate it in lesser ambitions and diminishing scale.