Presentación del Proyecto

Este blog pretende ser un cuaderno de bitácora del Proyecto Cultural "From Bucuresti to Madrid through Culture", creado por Ana Astorga y Ángel de Frutos. Para ello, hemos contado con el apoyo de la European Cultural Foudation, fundación holandesa que subvenciona viajes de intercambio cultural entre la Europa del Este y la otra orilla del continente.En este primer post, queremos presentaros en qué consiste el proyecto y cómo va a desarrollarse en los futuros meses, y a través de este blog esperamos ir relatando los avances que llevemos a cabo.

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This blog is meant to be an “on-board diary” for the Cultural Project “From Bucuresti to Madrid through Culture”, by Ana Astorga and Ángel de Frutos.We count on the help of the European Cultural Foudation, which supports cultural exchanges from one side of the continent to the other. In this first post, we’d like to introduce the aims of the Project and how we will develope it within the next months. Through this blog we also expect to tell you about all the “steps beyond” we’ll be taking!

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_FROM BUCURESTI TO MADRID THROUGH CULTURE
a project about today’s Romanian art

_Romanian is one of the biggest communities of immigrants in Spain (more than 600.000 in 2007, according to the Spanish National Statistics Institute, INE), and especially in the city where we both live, Madrid. Romanian is also a latin-rooted culture, with a Latin language even though many other influences came after Romans. Romania is now part of the European Union... Considering all this data, one could think that Spaniards and Romanians are quite next to each other, but that is not the real situation in the daily life of a Spanish city.

Through this project we would like to draw a bridge between both countries, not only between Romanian and Spanish citizens, but also by approaching Romanian artists working in their own country to the reality of some of their colleagues who tried to look for a better future in a different place.

We try to analyse the new Romanian culture in two different ways: first by understanding the current situation in Romania and finally setting a comparison up between the Romanian artists working in their own country and the ones who emigrated to Spain. We consider culture as the best way of approaching to each other, and the goal of this project is to set a base in the understanding of our two different cultures by both sides.

In order to do that, we have been studying about Romanian culture and we are now ready to explore it in different ways, first in Bucharest, where we will meet our partners (artists and cultural operators), not only for asking them about their work and the topic we suggest, but also to know their cultural institutions and foundations. We will also immerse ourselves in the main cultural spots of the city to complete our background; and then in Madrid, where we will meet some other partners to know their work and projects far away from their country, under the Spanish influence. The dates for our visit to Bucharest, according to our partners are: from December 8th to the 12th, 2008.

We plan to create a bi-lateral forum in which artists and cultural operators from both sides could share opinions, thoughts, ideas and projects through a blog that we will start running before our trip to Romania, so that we can also use it as an “on-board diary”.

We basically expect, on the one hand to learn about Romanian contemporary culture, a very ethnical and traditional culture in which young artists are specially active nowadays; and on the other hand to be able to cooperate with the Institure for Romanian Culture in Madrid to make their activities more popular among the Spanish public.