STPT Multiplexity

Artiști: Carlos Amorales, Anetta Mona Chișa, Sebastian Moldovan in collaboration with Lucia Ghegu and Albert Kaan, Farah Mulla, Janiv Oron, Cristian Răduță, Saša Tkačenko

Curatorial Team: Cristina Bută, Monica Dănilă, Edith Lázár, Ann Mbuti, Adrian Notz, Cristina Stoenescu, Georgia Țidorescu

In 1515, Albrecht Dürer created his renowned Rhinocerus in response to a strange encounter: the first rhino since antiquity to travel to the European continent. But Dürer had never seen the depicted animal. Ganda, by its Gujarati name, drowned before reaching its destination. Its voyage around the world mapped a geopolitical trajectory and reminds us that less-known stories of exploitation and violence overshadowed the histories of exploration and discovery. Engaging with other works of fiction, such as Eugène Ionesco’s Theatre of the Absurd entitled Rhinocéros, the biennial follows the stories inspired by Ganda, reclaiming the imaginative play of science and art in an entangled world marked by environmental and societal transformations.

The Society of Public Transport Timișoara is a space of contradictions. It echoes Timișoara’s history as the first electrified city in Europe, but also its stories of uprisings and conflicts. Meanwhile, nature takes over the relics of its past, old tram cars and iron-clad rails, and the industrial sites become possible hosts for alternative visions of dark science fiction and new mythologies. They emphasise the fascinating side of collapsing worlds by looking beyond narrative boundaries and unveiling other ways of coexistence, be it at the edge of an event-horizon after an atomic dispersion or at a point of no return, in a shelter at the end of history.