OANA HODADE & VLAICU GOLCEA – Janus Stuck, my father

Part of the ongoing project The Stucks that is based on a found photography archive, the installation reflects on the image of Janus Stuck – an imaginary ideal father. The dozens of images leave room for endless personal projections related to notions of family. There is no real clue about the identity of the people in the photographs – they are images captured randomly over the years, which mark banal moments, places, and events. Anything is possible – a biography is made up by imagining the unseen life hidden between photographs and navigating through the myriad of interpretations that emerge when visiting the archive – a kaleidoscope of conflicting feelings.

Was Janus Stuck a good father? Would he be a good father today?

Conceived as a wild ride through black & white photos that depict holiday trips and intimate family moments, intertwined with short poetic texts and close observations, the installation proposes a contemporary approach to working with a visual archive, employing sound, music and AI technologies to create an emotional and philosophical exploration of memory, identity and self-reparenting.

Oana Hodade (1985, Romania) lives and works in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She is a performer, author, and composer, primarily working in the performing arts. In her work, she explores fragility, intimacy, rituals, and the routines of daily life. She is interested in memory, subjectivity, and language. She works with archives, as well as visual and sound collections. Her practice operates at the intersection of literature, poetry, and dramaturgy, with a cinematic approach that blends reality and fiction. As a performer, she works with the body and voice, investigating new forms of artistic expression. She also works with sound, creating music, soundscapes for theatre, and soundwalks. Her piece Scenes From the Life of the Family Stuck won the UNITER Award for Best Romanian Play of the Year in 2021.

Vlaicu Golcea (1974, Romania) is an audio-visual multimedia artist and performer with a career in the performing arts spanning three decades, boasting a discography of over 30 titles released both in Romania and abroad. His musical activity spans various fields of syncretic and interdisciplinary arts, including theatre music, documentary films, feature films, short films, animation, multimedia installations, public space interventions, and performances. In contemporary dance, Vlaicu Golcea has composed the soundtrack and sound design for over 35 national and international productions.
In 2021, he launched and curated Teatrul Postnațional Interfonic, a hybrid online / offline platform and community dedicated to types of artistic expressions different from those promoted by publicly funded institutions or independent cultural entities.