ODD THEORY 2018

ODD THEORY has been since the beginning an attempt to understand as well as to reconfigure, with the delicate means afforded by a small-scale initiative, the Romanian imaginary. It functioned as a learning and sharing tool, and in the current configuration succeeded in its initial bet of bringing together a community of curious and courageous people. The small following overlapped ODD’s general following, but also managed to stand out as a work group of hybrid practitioners, one that is slowly developing common tools and initiatives.

In working with a collective imaginary, regardless of the scale of that collective, one has to face the challenge of the poor political imagination characterizing the contemporary world. Romania is, in that respect, eternally blocked in binaries which do not serve its citizens. The misery of catching up conflates with extremely narrow local politics, producing a public sphere in which important issues marking the world are never properly discussed. In that respect, ODD THEORY made a point in choosing speakers who could deliver presentations and workshops on subjects that remain poorly known and understood on the local scene, topics which overlap and create a series of mind-opening mirrorings.

This year’s sessions centered on the outcomes of a constantly accelerated techno-culture, debunking computational and algorithmic immersions, as well as the necessity of manufacturing common and open-access platforms and actions in destabilizing the monopolist imperialistic centralization of information. Ovidiu Gherasim-Proca, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Georgia Haddad Nicolau and Binna Choi, Luciana Parisi, Aymeric Mansoux, Caleb Waldorf and Ovidiu Țichindeleanu tried to answer these questions and to provide concepts for further problematizations, discussions, and actions to take place.

The texts collected in this book represent immediate and stringent forms of reading and engaging with the series of lectures and workshops labeled under the solidarity umbrella of ODD THEORY. They are responses produced by the participants in the sessions, reviewed by the speakers themselves. Our aim was to extract as much knowledge from our guests as we could in the given conditions, whilst giving them back our energy and enthusiasm. We hope that fruitful and long-term dialogues were thus born.

Texts: Cristina Bogdan, Cătălina Bolozan, Anca Bucur, Ioan Cernei, Georgiana Cojocaru, Elena Marcu, Emilian Mărgărit, Cosmina Moroșan, Sergiu Nisioi

Photos: Anticorp Solar

Drawings: Florin Bobu & Ionuț Tudor, Cristina Bogdan & Mihai Pecingine, Roberta Curcă & Jakub Charowsek, Stefany Iova, Gabriela Mateescu, Florin Platon, Ovid Pop, as well as several participants who wished to remain anonymous

Edited by Cristina Bogdan

Designed by Mihai Șovăială

Published by frACTalia