Coming soon

Second photo by Cornel Moșneag.

Tara Skurtu is a Boston-based poet and translator currently living in Romania, where she’s a Fulbright lecturer in creative writing at Transilvania University of Brașov. In the U.S., she’s a lecturer at Boston University, and she teaches English composition to incarcerated college students through BU’s Prison Education Program.

Tara believes poetry has a logic of memory and uses language to express something that cannot possibly be said in words. The creative process, she thinks, is much like traveling through language—we are, in a sense, landing in different countries, trying  sentence after sentence to see how much sense we might make.

In 2013 Tara received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry and spent the fall in Romania, beginning to learn the language of her paternal great-grandparents. Last year she began translating contemporary Romanian poetry into English. 

The recipient of two Academy of American Poets prizes, Tara’s recent poems appear or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Plume, Poetry Review, and Poetry Wales. Romanian translations appear in SUBCAPITOL, Zonă Noua, and two editions of Poets in Transylvania, among others. The Romanian translation of her debut book, The Amoeba Game—a collection of poems inspired by childhood and family, illness and healing, and the limitations of language and love—is forthcoming.

http://taraskurtu.com

Edmond was born in 1990 in Bucharest and is known for his projects dedicated to the salvation and conservation of the heritage and the memory of Bucharest, but also for initiating cultural programmes held under ARCEN (www.arcen.info). He graduated in theology and political science and is currently attending the Centre of Excellence in the Study of Image.

In 2008 he has initiated the ”The binding past” programme, through which he unlocked funds for the strengthening and restoration of the Central School, which he included in the White Night of the European Museums, an event that annually attracts about 10.000 participants.

From 2010 he is the president of ARCEN. In the same year he initiated ”A stroll through Bucharest with a walking stick”, a project of cultural-pedestrian routes of the capital that combines architecture, history and stories of the city and from 2013 the project „Through the remains of the old Bucharest”, a programme dedicated to the memory and the heritage of the former slums of Bucharest.

From 2015 he is collaborator of Tanănana radio and co-manager of the ”21 Nocturnes” project, dedicated to the contemporary poetry.

Paul Radu (@IDashboard) is the executive director of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (www.reportingproject.net) and a co-creator of the Investigative Dashboard concept (www.investigativedashboard.org), of the Visual investigative Scenarios visualization software (vis.occrp.org) and a co-founder of RISE Project (www.riseproject.ro) a platform for investigative reporters and hackers in Romania.

He has held a number of fellowships, including the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship in 2001, the Milena Jesenska Press Fellowship in 2002, the Rosalyn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism in 2007, the 2008 Knight International Journalism fellowship with the International Center for Journalists as well as a 2009-2010 Stanford Knight Journalism Fellowship.  

He is the recipient of numerous awards including in 2004, the Knight International Journalism Award and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, in 2007, the Global Shining Light Award, the Tom Renner Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the 2011 Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting and the 2015 European Press Prize. Paul is also a board member with the Global Investigative Journalism Network (gijn.org)

Lea Rasovszky (n. 1986) lives and works in Bucharest. In 2008 she graduated the National University of Art, Department of Photography and Video, followed by an MA at the same university and department in 2010.

Her projects highlight the stereotypes and values of society, exploring the periphery of social and psychological phenomenae  through a rough and ironic style of drawing, oftenly combined with immersive installations that call upon the viewer for the completion of the context.

Selected solo shows: Out of Love. Moral Facts 3, Ciclop Garage Building, Bucharest, RO (2015), From Stars to Steroids: Two Short Stories About an Almost Metaphoric Bestiary, Anca Poterașu Gallery, Bucharest, RO (2014); Inner Whimp, Lateral ArtSpace, Paintbrush Factory, Cluj-Napoca RO (2014); The Savages, Atelier 35, Bucharest RO (2012),Sorrow, Heartache, Recovery & Shit, ALERTStudio, Bucharest RO (2011), Wallpaper Drawings, 29 Gallery, Bucharest RO (2009). Selected group exhibitions:  Inventing the Truth. On Fiction and Reality, The New Gallery of the Romanian Institute for Culture and Research in Humanities in Venice, part of the 56th edition of the Venice Art Biennial IT (2015), PASAJ, The National Museum of Contemporary Art – Anexa, Bucharest RO (2014), The Biennial of Young Artists, 5th edition, Overlapping Biennial, Bucharest RO (2012), Preview Berlin – the Emerging Arts Fair, 11th edition, Berlin, DE (2012)

Photo credits: Amarjit Sidhu.

Leslie Hawke came to Romania as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in 2000. Under the auspices of the Fundatia de Sprijin Comunitar in Bacau, she and Maria Gheorghiu initiated the Gata, Dispus si Capabil (“Ready, Willing & Able”) programs for marginalized women and children in 2001.

Hawke and Gheorghiu founded the Romanian NGO, Asociatia OvidiuRo, in 2004 whose mission is to get every poor child in kindergarten for a better chance to a proper education and integration. In 2005, USAID awarded Hawke its “Outstanding Citizen Citation” for the development of innovative programs for impoverished Roma children and families.  

Hawke had 25 years’ experience in educational publishing and non-profit fundraising and program development before coming to Romania. Her career includes 15 years with CBS Professional Publishing Division in editorial development and marketing, five years in NGO management and five years in Internet publishing. An alumni of the University of Texas and the University of Connecticut she has done graduate work in public policy and elementary education. She is married and divides her time between Bucharest and Boston.

Skydivind has been a part of Dragoș and Bogdan Boeru’s life since they were little. At ages 7 and 8, they used to fly together with their father, a military skydiver, to watch him jump. As soon as they reached the legal age, they got their skydiving licence at Aeroclubul României, and had their first jump in 2002. After observing the way this sport is practiced in other countries, in 2010, they founded TNT Brothers. Their goal was to promote skydiving and to change the way it’s perceived in Romania.

In only five years, TNT Brothers has become the most important and modern private skydiving center in Central and South-Eastern Europe, attracting both seasoned and amateur skydivers from over 30 countries. In addition, TNT Brothers organizes Dynamite Days, now one of the best skydiving festivals in the world.  

http://www.tnt-brothers.ro

A leading Romanian high altitude climber, Alex Găvan reached six 8000 m summits in the Himalayas by fair means, meaning without supplemental oxygen and high-altitude porters. To Alex, “climbing mountains Outside is climbing mountains Inside“.  After surviving the earthquake and the Everest avalanche on April 25, he initiated “Joy for Nepal”, a humanitarian campaign for the people of the Himalayas: www.alexgavan.ro/nepal . He is also deeply involved in many environmental issues.

#joy4nepal 

Andrei Rus has graduated the National University of Drama and Film ”I.L. Caragiale”, and has published film reviews and criticism for Republik magazine, Time Out Bucharest and liternet.ro. In 2009 he started coordinating Film Menu, a magazine written and edited by film students. 

Andrei has also been a member of the jury, organizer and curator at various film festivals, both local and international –NexT, Gopo, Timishort, to name just a few –, and has collaborated with TIFF and Astra Film Festival. In 2014 he won the ”Alex Leo Șerban” schollarship. He is a lecturer at UNATC, where he teaches film theory and history.

Iashido 

Iashido (°1978, Bucharest) is an artist who works in a variety of media. With a conceptual method, Iashido tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way, likes to involve the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical and believes in the idea of function following form in a project. His artworks directly responds to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences of the artist as a starting point. His practice provides a useful set of allegorical tools for manoeuvring with a pseudo-minimalist approach in the world of media art: these meticulously planned works resound and resonate with images culled from the fantastical realm of imagination. Iashido currently lives and works in Bucharest. (awesome stuff from online bio generators smile emoticon )

TLDR version: Hello! I’m Iashido from district 1. 37 yo privileged autodidact doing mostly web since 1999. I love conceptual art, creative relaxation, kinetic sculptures, biking and so many boring things.