PILOT EDITION, Oct – Dec 2020, Timișoara
The former workshops of the Timișoara Public Transport Company, which will house the future Center for Art, Technology, and Experimentation – MX.
Project developed by SIMULTAN.org in the context of Timișoara 2023 – European Capital of Culture.
http://paradigmshifts.simultan.org/
Participants and projects:
Alex Halka – Timeline
Colectivul Lapsus – Heavy light-photonic sculptures
Ioana Țurcan – “(cori)dor ne/sigur”
Lucian Matei (noiseloop studio) – Racord temporal/r
Psihodrom – Wind(ow) of opportunity
Sillyconductor și Cote (Cătălin Matei și Ion Cotenescu) – Metalogarnum
Obiect (Anghel Mailat / Lavinia Veres) feat. Gabriel Almasi – sound performance
Motivation:
The project aims to provide an artistic reflection on the history and industrial heritage of Timișoara, on how the memory of certain places and communities has been transformed or even disappeared. Fragments of collective and personal history, narratives that question this process of transformation will be reshaped from a socio-political and technological perspective.
Starting from the premise given by the dynamic and progressive nature of science, that the new paradigm is always better, not just different, new realities and needs entail the abandonment of systems and situations that once seemed stable and elaborate. Paradigm shift is a transformation in concepts and practices or in the way a system works, and often occurs when a new technology is introduced that radically changes the production process of a good or service. These changes are key factors in many of the processes that a society undergoes, generating problems but also proposing model solutions for communities, as physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn concludes.
Paradigms are important because they define how we perceive reality. They arise when the dominant paradigm, under which science currently operates, becomes incompatible or insufficient, facilitating the adoption of a revised or completely new theory or paradigm. As such, everyone is subject to the limitations and distortions produced by their socially conditioned nature. These changes have become much more frequent and accelerated in our day, as the industrial revolution has transformed many social and industrial processes. It is possible that these processes will become even more commonplace in the future as our rate of technological advancement increases.
One such subject is the former workshops of the Timișoara Public Transport Company, established in 1867 as a first for Eastern Europe, being the first animal-drawn tram line designed to facilitate the transport of people and goods between the main districts of Fabric, Cetate, and Iosefin, and which today presents an industrial landscape with a historical, heritage, and personal significance for a community whose past was fragmented with the gradual dismantling of industrial structures after 1989.
Alternating between possibilities for exploitation, the stock of functional tools whose usefulness and profitability are now questionable, scenarios for conversion into cultural spaces,
documentar video de Cristian Onciu
Producers: Timișoara 2023 Association and Simultan Association
Funder: Timișoara City Hall
Main media partner: TVR
Partners: Enel, Automobile Bavaria