Shelter for collective dreaming
August – November 2025
Spring Entrance Community in Siliștea Snagovului :
The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life
ASK (Amaranth Seed Kollective)
The Three Ashes
In August, tranzit.ro/Bucharest is launching a new project which coincides with the official inauguration of two distinct entities on the land parcels around the Experimental Station: ASK (Amaranth Seed Kollective), a group formed by sound artist Mihai Mitran, artists Dan Vezentan, Mihaela Moldovan, Eduard Constantin, cultural manager and performer Maria Mora, curators Raluca Voinea, Adelina Luft, and architects George Marinescu and Daria Oancea; and the Three Ashes Association established by curator Charles Esche.
Shelter for collective dreaming proposes the co-production of a modular and mobile shelter on the land parcels of the ASK members through collective conceptualization, participation, and activation. The shelter will be enabled throughout autumn as a space for dreaming and imagining, together with local and international guests invited to contribute, in dialogue and exchange, at formulating a timely, contextually relevant direction for the artistic community at Siliștea Snagovului. The events held on site and in the surroundings, will approach the wide spectrum of dreams, through walks, workshops, presentations, performances and discussions, understood as gestures of resistance and hope-projecting in the face of ongoing multiple crises – political, cultural, and ecological.
Shelters:
Atelier Adhoc (George Marinescu & Daria Oancea)
ATMOS 1: Specular Field Unit
ATMOS 1 is a point of contact between people, soil, and atmosphere.
The device functions as a mobile unit, temporarily positioned in an open field, creating space for multiple scenarios of learning and exchange. The telescopic structure supports a specular textile membrane — a material used in both agriculture and space research — capable of reflecting sunlight and creating shade.
A wind sock placed at the top of the structure measures and reveals the movement and intensity of air currents, acting as a visible signal of atmospheric force. The prototype functions as a collective resource for field-based research and learning activities, becoming a shared tool for exploring and understanding the site.
Dan Vezentan
The Rain Collector is a wooden architectural installation inspired by the shape of the whirlpool (Vâltoare)– a traditional mechanism used to wash fabrics in the rapid mountain waters. It is conceived as a space open to the public, where the whirlpool becomes a catalyst for meetings, ideas and artistic experiences. The semi-buried structure transforms into an amphitheater that can host performances, discussion sessions, sound auditions or community meetings. At the same time, the installation also has a concrete ecological dimension – its shape channels rainwater, collecting it in a central catchment basin mounted below stage level. The swirling movement of the water in the whirlpool is thus transferred into a flow of ideas, sensations and experiences.
Eduard Constantin
Shelter 4.0
This shelter is the fourth in a series of utilitarian objects/interventions, realised through practical workshops in collaboration with locals, colleagues or children. The first was built together with a group of teenagers, in a forest close to the local Forest Range, using branches from the site and left to be used by the foresters. The second was in Bechet, an area on the desertification map in southern Romania, where sheltering from the sun gave its main purpose. I realised the third in Indonesia, together with a local artist and farmer, from bamboo, a replenishing material there. The idea of a shelter for rest during the hours when heat was too pressing, as well as the mobility allowed by the use of light materials made it possible for the local who contributed to the construction of the structure, and to whom it was donated at the end of the exhibition, to still use it to this day. All these previous experiences added motivations and structural elements to Shelter 4.0, which in Siliștea Snagovului was thought through after intense experiences of work in the field in the summer, where shade is one of the most desired elements. The construction here is multifunctional, offering a place for one person to take a nap, shade for 5-6 people, a possible mobile office space or other uses depending on the necessities of the community at the Station and around.
Mihaela Moldovan
Suspended Dreams
In the context of the project „Shelter for collective dreaming”, near Bucharest, I created an installation made of a few uncoventional hammocks made from textile fibers. Each piece is unique, intensely coloured and scattered with „thorns”, suggesting organic shapes inspired by resilient plants such as the thistle or the cactus – plants that know how to survive where shade is missing. The anatomic and vegetal fragments, together with the „thorns” made of plastic bands, inspired from this arid landscape, tell the tale of exposed bodies and need for protection, of a temporary yet necessary refuge. The hammocks, as in other of my previous works, are symbols of pause and recovery: suspended lace from industrial ropes, fragile but resistent spaces, places in which the body and the mind reconquer their time. Within this „shelter”, they transform into structures for meditation and survival, an oasis of friendship and community, where colours become a common language and the air is filled with silence.
Mihai Mitran
Audiotelescope (The Whirlpool of Sounds) is an installation for collective listening, taking place in the replica of a water whirlpool. The space, imagined* as a means for collecting rain water as well as a place for socialising, becomes in this project a place of sound immersion. The audio flux recorded during different days in the area around Siliștea Snagovului preserves the memory of the places, collected in time, in forests, on the lake, on the fields, in the village, on and around the Research Station. This is mixed during the audition with the sounds of the present, the living flux: the wind murmur, the birds song, the noises of the village, the steps and voices of the passers-by, the breath of those present. Thus, the space becomes an analogue mixer through the overlap between the sound memory and the immediate reality. Chance – an essential element in the artistic thinking of John Cage – is the invisible composer of experience. Through attention and perceptiveness, each listener decides, aware or not, which sound/thought/perception is in the foreground and what is lost to the background. Listening is transformed into an act of inner curating, a form of collective dreaming, in which time and space twist.
The moment itself becomes an instrument.
*by artist Dan Vezentan
Events:
Saturday, 8 November 2025
Saturday, 25 October 2025
Saturday, 11 October 2025
Saturday, 27 September 2025
Saturday, 13 September 2025
Shelter for Collective Dreaming leaflet
Production: Atelier Ad Hoc Community (George Marinescu and Daria Oancea), Dan Vezentan, Eduard Constantin, Mihaela Moldovan
Curation and management: Adelina Luft, Maria Mora, Raluca Voinea
Invited guests: Aldo Ramos, Amelie Aranguren, Andreea David, Charles Esche, Dan Perjovschi, Daniel Godínez Nivón, Eugenia Morpurgo, Fabiola Fiocco, Mihai Mihalcea, Mădălina Brașoveanu, Ovidiu Țichindeleanu, Ștefan Rusu, Szilárd Miklós, V. Leac
Documentation: Nicoleta Moise and Andrei Becheru
Partners: The Faculty of Interior Architecture (Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism), The Italian Institute in Bucharest, OAR (The Romanian Order of Architects)
Cultural programme co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund
The program does not necessarily represent the official position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN shall not be held liable for the program’s content or any use to which the program outcome might be put. These are the sole responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.
