Arts Lab 6.0: Luca Horváth - Month 1

On the day I’m writing this, I have been in Romania for a month. The past 4 weeks felt like they passed so quickly yet so slow at the same time. Being exposed to so many new things was difficult at first, but I feel like I’m managing to adapt to the change of lifestyle. I’ve never lived independently but together with so many people at the same time, never had cook only for myself, never had to do grocery shopping alone.  I’m in the process of learning all of this, and I’m glad I’m having fun with it.

Although Hungary and Romania are neighbours, the atmosphere, the language, the landscape are all very different. Travelling through the Carpathian Mountains by train was honestly one of the most amazing experience I’ve ever had. Stepping into the house for the first time nerve-racking, but that feeling disappeared quickly thanks to the warm welcome I received. Since only a few of us have arrived at the time, the house felt quiet and empty. That completely changed in just a few weeks, and the house gradually became an always-moving, warm and creative space filled with amazing people.

On the first week, some of us had the On-Arrival training in the morning and then had the chance to explore the town and to get to know each other more, I especially loved the games we played with the help of Dixit cards. We had the chance to facilitate a workshop at the crafters event in Târgu Frumos and visit Todirești.

Our first project is Jemom, we started preparing for it on the following week by visiting the Jewish Cemetery in Târgu Frumos, completing the Mission Impossible challenge set by Mihaela and visiting the Jewish Museum in Iași. Standing there in the museum and the cemetery, reading, listening to and seeing history was a really emotional experience which I find hard to describe, it left me speechless. 

As for the Jemom Residency, I teamed up with Salma and our plan was to make lanterns by combining ceramics and drawing. However, we quickly realized that our plan will not go as smoothly as we had hoped, but we learnt how to adapt and made the workshops a great experience for the kids at Moldova High School. This workshop had me worried a lot because I haven’t worked with kids before, let alone visually impaired and mentally challenged kids. I didn’t know how I could make our workshop well suited for their needs, but now that I look back, maybe that was why we were successful. We let them explore themselves and experience freedom with the help of art.

We also had the chance to go to the event “Noaptea Albă a Galeriilor din Iași” and visited 7 galleries filled with wide range of contemporary art. It was a long and tiring day with a lot of walking, but it was totally worth it. 

And finally, on the last week of this month, we had the Folcloristica Festival, organized by Tătăruși. There, we had the chance to visit some of the most beautiful places of the village, eat traditional Romanian dishes and talk with locals. On the second day, together with Soukaina, we facilitated a workshop and on the third day, we were the jury deciding the next most beautiful village. I feel like this festival was a huge step for me towards overcoming my stage fright and to just enjoy myself, be really in the moment.

Since we got introduced to Romanian folklore and the Jewish history at the same time, the quick change of topics was a bit hard for me to follow emotionally. I don’t feel like I had the chance to get as deep into Jemom as I wanted to, but I know that through the personal artwork that we have to create next month, I will solve this problem.

In this month I got to try myself in fields I normally would’ve never tried, for example writing articles, and I already learnt a lot from my fellow volunteers about both art and life in general. I’m really excited about the upcoming months and can’t wait to see what will happen!

Report written by Luca Horváth, she's from Hungary and she's one of the 14 volunteers participating in Arts Lab 6.0, a project co-funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps program.