Entangled by the multitude of desires and differences that rip apart our physical and psychical wellbeing, we surrender to an emotional mixture of hopelessness, despair, depression and anxiety. To formulate an answer to the roots of the entire social and natural catastrophe has become futile, since the issues at core have been acknowledged in the professional network of art and culture for decades. Not only institutional critique has become normalized. As artists, it seems even more irresponsible to continue producing artefacts and images to which one can attach a minimal intention of hope for a reasonable outcome out of the crisis that suffocate and pollute us, our being here. Small sensible steps have become powerless in the face of “the end’s” acceleration.

Procrastinating joy and togetherness for a future that will never materialize, we seem destitute to lose our time, therefore youth, to a continuous struggle for economic subsistence while having our mental health weakened by the continuous flow of material desires. Where to find refuge other than in ourselves and in the small community of ours, of being in common, together? Only if we wouldn’t be constrained by money.

SABA – Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu (b. 1991, Iași and Timișoara) is an artist couple working together since 2012. They are the residency artists of Protozone 7 and have produced their latest work “Wish we were free” in coproduction with Shedhalle and with the kind support of DOGO Residenz für Neue Kunst (Lichtensteig).

Their artistic practice takes place at the border between social studies and visual art, researching for methods and examples where art and artistic means can be instrumentalized in order to overexcite the ability to look beyond capitalism and create a (common) future. Among their recent solo shows are “s.a.b.a 1979-####” (2020, Ljubljana, SI), “It was always in plain sight” (2020, Bucharest, RO), “If Then What After” (2019, Baden, AT), “What Past? What Future?” (2017, Linz, AT), while their works have been present in many group exhibitions among which “Gangwon Triennale” (2021, Gangwon, KR), “Rewriting Our Imaginations” (2020, Basel, CH), “STRIKE GENTLY AWAY ____” (2019, Salzburg, AT), “Displacement and Togetherness” (2019, Brussels, BE), “Capital’s Time Machine” (2018, Bucharest, RO), “Baywatch” (2018, Berlin, DE), “Alternative Facts” (2018, Stuttgart, DE), “Odessa Biennial” (2017, Odessa, Ukraine).