As part of a mapping of sustainable practices in rural Romania, we have invited a number of artistic initiatives to send us around five-minute videos that capture the atmosphere of the places where they are, in villages, in the middle of nature, outside the big cities. These represent only a few from a series of such initiatives, which are part of a relatively recent and growing tendency. We started from only a few examples of artists who grow gardens, installed their studios in their grandparents’ village or built residency places for other artists in places outside of the centres where they normally live. We organised a seminar in January 2022 and discussed their motivations and common grounds. Then we started to look around, in Romania and the region and invited more artists and cultural workers to contribute to this collection, with short, poetic or descriptive comments on their own experience. To each iteration of the montage, we added more. There are now 23 examples and it is still work in progress. Meanwhile some of the initiatives are on pause: personal lives that make it hard to commit to the presence in these places; difficulties in maintaining them without additional support; disenchantments with local authorities and communities; while others have grown, opened up, connected to each other. We see these practices not as an idyllic return to nature, but as a foregrounding of a certain type of living in nature without colonising it, and an invitation to rethink artistic work on more ecological principles, as well as an acceptance of fragility as a reason to plant life around. With: Carambach/ Adriana Chiruță, Sibiu county, Romania Cecălaca/Csekelaka Cultural Studio/ Oana Fărcaș, Cecălaca village, Mureș county, Romania Crețești Studio-Garden/ Delia Popa, Ilfov county, Romania Cucuieți Permaculture/ Otilia & Radu Boeru, Cucuieți Village, Călărași County, Romania Dom Jan Hálá cultural center/ Zuzana Janečková, Važec village, Tatra mountains, Slovakia Drenart/ Stoyan Dechev, Olivia Mihălțianu, Dren village, Pernik region, Bulgaria The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life/ Dana Andrei, Eduard Constantin, Florian Niculae, Siliștea Snagovului village, Ilfov county, Romania The House of Light and Information/ Matei Bejenaru, Bârnova commune, Iași county, Romania Intersecția Residency/ Emanuela Ascari, Brădet village, Întorsura Buzăului commune, Covasna county, Romania Khata-Maysternya/House-Workshop/ Bogdan Velgan, Taras Grytsiuk, Olga Dyatel, Ekaterina and Olga Zarko, Alyona Karavai, Yulia Kniupa, Taras Kovalchuk, Magda Lapshyn, Anna Mygal, Sasha Moskovchuk, Svyat Popov, Tanya Sklyar, Natalia Trambovetska, Vilya and Ivanka Chupak, Babyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region, Ukraine LATERAL AIR/ Cristina Curcan, Lucian Indrei, at the crossroards between Mureșenii Bârgăului and Colibița, Bistrița-Năsăud county, Romania Muze. Gemüse Initiative/ Maria Balabaș & Vlad Mihăescu, Șomartin village, Sibiu county, Romania Rajka Orchard/ Martin Piacek, Győr-Moson-Sopron region, Hungary Rădești House/ Irina Botea Bucan & Jon Dean, Rădești village, Argeș county, Romania Reforesting Project/ Aris Papadopoulos, Candy Karra, Dora Zoumpa, Elena Novakovitc, Sotiris Tsiganos, Jonian Bisai, Vasilis Ntouros, Christina Reinhart, Klio Apostolaki, Lia Chamilothori, Kalentzi village, municipality of North Tzoumerka, Epirus, Greece Romanii de Jos Dendrological Park/ V. Leac, Vâlcea county, Romania Siliștea Future Studios/ Adelina Ivan, Ioana Gheorghiu, Virginia Toma, Ramon Sadîc, Robert Blaj, Vlad Brăteanu, Siliștea Snagovului village, Ilfov county, Romania Slon residencies/ META Cultural Foundation/ Raluca Doroftei, Slon Village, Cerasu Commune, Prahova County, Romania SOLAR Gallery/ Ariana Hodorcă & Albert Kaan, Gulia village, Dâmbovița county, Romania symbiopoiesis/ Andrei Nacu, Pădureni village, Iași county, Romania Watermelon Residency/ Daniela Pălimariu, Alexandru Niculescu, Bechet, Dolj county, Romania What Could Should Curating Do/ Biljana Ćirić, Gornja Gorevnica VILLAGE, Serbia Na záhradke [At the Garden] Gallery/ Oto Hudec, Košice, Slovakia Artistic initiatives in nature and in villages is part of a mapping of sustainable practices in rural Romania, developed in the frame of the project C4R – Cultures for Resilience in 2022-2023. Iterations: Halfway to Paradise. Hybrid seminar, Bucharest, January 2022 (5 initiatives) It´s risky to let they see you alive and almost frangible. Screening at One World Romania film festival, May 2022 (14 initiatives) Now the Impulse is to Live! Exhibition at the Order of Architects, Bucharest, July 2022 (17 initiatives) Now the Impulse is to Live! Edition Sofia. Exhibition at Toplocentrala, Sofia, September 2022 (20 initiatives) Now the Impulse is to Live! Timisoara Edition. Exhibition at Riverside Pavilion / Children’s Park, Timisoara, co-organised with Minitremu Association, July 2023 (22 initiatives) Publication editing: Raluca Voinea, Adelina Luft, Dana Andrei Video montage and publication design: Eduard Constantin

November 2023 At the end of the mapping of artistic initiatives in the countryside, realised by tranzit.ro in the frame of C4R project, we invited London-based artist Andrei Nacu to spend a short residency in Bucharest and at the Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life in Silistea Snagovului, as a wrap up of this stage of the mapping and to open up future collaboration with Andrei. Andrei has initiated symbiopoiesis, which we included in our survey. Situated in Pădureni village, Iași county, Romania, symbiopoiesis is a site for experimentation, learning on one hand and unlearning on the other. Situated in a transition zone, at the edge of the forest, in a small village called Pădureni, 20 km South from Iași, a city on the Eastern edge of the European Union, this project came into being with no initial great plan or well-defined strategy, but more as an urge and a need to hide, to root, to grow, to sense, to react, to adapt, to regenerate, to survive... Finding ways of changing today’s mythology to align with the symbiotic reality of our planet involves reshaping societal beliefs, narratives, and values to reflect a more interconnected relationship with the environment. symbiopoiesis aims to explore interspecies relations through cohabitation and interaction, with the hope of discovering new ways (or re-discovering old ones) of practising care and mutual modulation. As Lynn Margulis describes it, symbiosis is “simply the living together in physical contact of organisms of different species. Partners in symbiosis, fellow symbionts abide in the same place at the same time, literally touching each other or even inside each other.” At the end of the residency we asked Andrei to share with us a few thoughts on resilience in relation to art and the land. How would you define resilience in relation to artistic practice? I have an ambivalent relation with the idea of resilience in general. On one hand it’s fascinating how beings and ecosystems are capable to adapt to change and absorb disturbance. Nonetheless, as any organism has some material limitations, the limits of resilience are also real and sometimes it’s very hard, or even impossible to maintain the fragile equilibrium necessary for achieving it. One should not praise resilience, without questioning the source of adversity. Also, I think it’s very important to avoid the emphasis on individual adaptability as it has the potential to normalize structurally induced suffering. There is always this risk to obscure injustices or structural violence with an individual strengths based approach. We first need a form of collective subjectivity to achieve and inform each-other’s resilience as a group, as a complete ecosystem rather than as individuals on their own. Everything is interconnected and we must understand that, as self-preservation over class struggle means fascism, in the same way, self-preservation over group survival means death. Furthermore, there might be situations when a revolution is preferable rather than the mirage of never-ending resilience that inevitable leads to exhaustion. Art is always political, so any artistic practice would have to define its resilience in relation to politics. The resilience in one’s artistic practice I think it means finding ways to justify the necessity or the usefulness of one’s practice in a political struggle that would then help the resilience of our entire ecosystem. Could you list some of the motivations that determined you to start symbiopoesis? I've long been captivated by plants and devoted five years to studying Horticulture and Landscape Design for my first BA. Although I haven't actively practiced in these fields since graduating 15 years ago, the dream of having access to a plot of land that I could share with friends and loved ones, where we could explore, experiment, and share companionship with plants and other beings has always lingered in my thoughts. The project emerged without a grand plan or a clearly defined strategy, but rather as an innate urge - an essential need to find solace but in the same time community, establish roots, grow, sense, react, adapt, regenerate, and ultimately survive... For a while, I was just exploring various locations trying to discover places that could inspire me, in order to better understand what I’m looking for exactly and also what are my limitations, and to find the right compromise with the available resources I had. Growing older, but also the experience of the pandemic only intensified these needs, making them more urgent and propelling me into action. At this point, my motivation stems from the aspiration for this space to serve as a platform where we can delve into interspecies relations through cohabitation and interaction. It's about coming together and discovering innovative methods (or rediscovering old ones) to practice care and foster a more sustainable way of life. What can artists bring as a specific difference in the broader discussion about the (re)turn to a closer attention to land, nature, sustainable living? Challenging today's mythology and finding ways to align with the symbiotic reality of our planet involves reshaping societal beliefs, narratives, and values to reflect a more interconnected relationship with the environment. In this process, artists could disrupt the hegemonic discourse, to (re)create dialog, conversations, and narratives, and to develop or rediscover the conceptual tools to work against the notion of nature as defined by modernity, which used it for creating categories like natural resources and human resources, just for the sole purpose of exploitation. I think that one of the most powerful things that artists can do is to imagine and render utopias. I strongly believe this is of most importance because once imagined, things are inevitably influencing reality, shaping it towards those possibilities. But envisioning radical, alternative ways to the current suicidal growth model would also need redefining the idea of sustainability from a holistic, ecological, anti-capitalist perspective. Imagining better worlds is the precondition for making them happen and this is where artists can play a vital role. Andrei Nacu (b. 1984) lives and works in London, U.K. and Iasi, Romania. In his creative practice he is using documentary photography, the family album and the photographic archive to create stories which analyze the junction between personal memory and social history. His most recent work includes video, installation and performance and focuses on the politics of representation and media archaeology. Currently he is working as a Photo Curator at the Royal Anthropological Institute, London. In 2013 he graduated with an MA in Documentary Photography from the University of Wales, Newport and previously studied Photography and Video at the George Enescu National University of Arts, Iasi, Romania.

And all roads lead to the abodes of men Iuliana Dumitru, 2023 I know that the ideal world is only a phantasm and nothing would convince me otherwise but sometimes I arrive in places that give me a spark of hope. The short period of time that I am spending there makes me rethink my position. There actually is an ideal world to be discovered in a lavender garden, a field in which delicious vegetables grow or a parcel of land invaded by sunroots. In order for these worlds to exist, someone had to imagine them and work for them, work really hard. A rebellion against a fast-paced and unjust society that consumes us gives birth to these worlds. An imperfect world brings to the foreground the need of (almost) perfect places, maybe even utopian places. A sheltered environment, which unfortunately has to obey the big world, could change the mainstream views. Such places are in need of one or two visionary people, some leader(s) that can make things move around and a team that helps with the building process. Alone by ones’ self, such project is unattainable — it is always a matter of community, it is either your given family or the chosen one. Building such a world is a continuous work, one that becomes your identity, one that can add a nickname to your name like for Felicia and Marius from Green Mogo or Ionuț and Alex from Sol și Suflet . I will start to narrate my experience with both of these spaces from an auto-anthropological point of view, relating to them as being part of the Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life collective. According to the presentation on its site, Green Mogo is a “centre for education and counselling on energy, a space dedicated to dialogues on eco-friendly housing and easy to follow solutions for an eco-conscious life ”. Practically, Green Mogo is a meeting place where caring for the environment is the core subject and caring for the others is a lifestyle. Felicia and Marius founded Green Initiative association in 2006. In 2008 they bought a parcel of land in Mogoșoaia where they built a green house that has an earth roof, a garden, as well as a communal space dedicated to meetings, workshops and learning. What surprises me about the Green Mogo story is that, even though the space in question is a private one, — a family lives in there — it is still opened for the local community and others. Felicia and Marius are always receiving guests that they treat with lessons, knowledge and good food. Our visit there was a hybrid type of visit in which we received information about the place and the ways in which it developed along the years. We were also treated with delicious food cooked by their son, Daniel. After a guided tour through the garden in which we gathered tomatoes and bitter apples, we went up the green roof of the training hall. There, up high, Felicia and Marius proceeded to narrate the story of the building that we had below our feet. It was made with recycled materials, including car tires. The building itself became a didactic material. They video-documented the entire process so it could serve others interested by this type of building and they also collaborated with students from Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism. They prefer to engage the young in their projects in order to give them a chance to gain that experience that society already expects of them even in the first years of university. Of all their projects, the one that impresses me the most is the Summer school dedicated to children from the village. Green Mogo is not only a place near Bucharest that uses a resourceful and renowned area, it actually improves the place by giving and holding space for the residents of Mogoșoaia, thus Green Mogo becomes itself an important resource. Felicia is also involved in local politics where she advocates for green areas protection and banning investors’ real estate projects that would erase a big portion of the nearby forest. She advocates for education even outside Green Mogo. She managed to bring “A doua șansă” programme in Mogoșoaia, thus aiding 60 people. Felicia and Marius succeeded to create a meeting space through Green Mogo, a space where local needs and resources can meet with outside ideas and resources. I first heard about Sol și Suflet when it was still merely a sketch. Back then, it did not even have an official name and the vision seemed impossible to attain. I cannot even imagine the amount of work needed up until this point. I met Ionuț Bănică at tranzit. ro/București and knew him as this godfather of the permaculture that took place in the communal garden from street Gazelei 44. After tranzit. ro/București vacated the place in December 2019, Ionuț and an ensemble of colleagues and collaborators took over the space and kept its legacy. It even took upon itself the name of “The Legacy Bucharest”, a co-working space interested in developing ethical entrepreneurship and honouring the natural eco-system. During the weekend, you can find here fresh vegetables, either sourced by them or other local farmers, honey, teas and herbs. I find more than fascinating the way in which these initiatives and their initiators cross paths upon different occasions and timelines, and how each of these meetings generate new ideas, collaborations and projects. In July 2021, we were eagerly heading towards Sol și Suflet to discover the first regenerative farm in Romania, which is situated in Dâmbovița county. We saw the food baskets online and I was impatient to bargain the colourful vegetables. The vastness and openness of the farm amazed me, everything seemed so large, almost limitless. I immediately realised the amount of time it takes to get from a solar to another. To this adding the amount of physical work that the farmers go through everyday; from Monday to Sunday and then, on repeat. Even though the effort seems overwhelming, Ionuț and Alex greeted us with joy, ready to tell us about their adventure. We received a special guided tour and tasted the freshly ripen tomatoes. The nearly commercial moment was the presentation of all of the equipment used to work the land. The role of these tools is to make the farmer’s life easier without polluting engines. I liked the perfectly straight lines made by the manual hoeing and covered with mulch netting that stops the grass from taking over the crops. We entered the market house, still in the building process. This was to become the primary line for basket preparations, shipping and selling. At this point there was only a table inside but as we were being told the story and the vision for this place, I began to imagine everything. There are plans for the future of crop-less land: a mixed orchard for biodiversity, a pond for collecting irrigation water and also for attracting biodiversity. 10% of the land will remain wild in order to honour the spirit of regenerative agriculture and spontaneous flora. Sol și Suflet is a space to be experimented, and the simplest way to do so is to consume its foods. For Alex and Ionuț the general goal is to produce vegetables without the use of pesticides, and the final goal is for their practice to be adopted by other local vegetable growers. They do not wish to be exceptional on the market, they wish for this system to become the norm so we could all benefit of access to clean food. Of the Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life is both easy and hard to write about. I am way too involved in its process not to be passioned about it and maybe even have some biases. The experience gained at the Station helps me see the other initiatives from a similar point of view, facilitating my understanding to their processes and stories and also to the roads took by people in order to arrive at this point. For us, the Station is “a bet and a promise, an experiment and an investment in a future that we can still shape.” For me it is another home. It is the first time my name appears on a property document and not consider it my own. I consider it to be a common good for many. By this I do not only mean the co-owners, but also the society at large. The station is going to be a place for contemporary arts, an open-space to any curious visitor. I tried to encompass the ethos of these universes that I managed to assist and I hope that I have succeeded to write about these places and people with the subjectivity and objectivity of a committed anthropologist. These worlds are being built in an eco-system that we have the duty to preserve and grow. There is a single eco-system that embraces the world and each of us has to continuously nurture connection and the practice of building roads. For this purpose many resources are needed: economical, emotional, resources of resistance and resilience. Connection matters because these worlds grow one upon each other and nurture one another. It is essential that the information spreads, thereby reaching everyone, not only those interested in sustainable living and harmonising with the environment. These initiative show how society, damaged as it is, is still capable of producing ideal worlds through people, firstly through their dreams and then through their actions. People that have access to resources grow and build roads towards the others. “But it happened that after walking for a long time through sand, and rocks, and snow, the little prince at last came upon a road. And all roads lead to the abodes of men. ” Research realised in 2021, part of the mapping of eco-farms and other resilient practices in Romania, commissioned by tranzit in the frame of C4R project. Text: Iuliana Dumitru Photographs: Raluca Voinea Translation by Octavia Anghel

Crișan Neighbourhood Resilience, Timisoara Ana Kun, 2023 These descriptions of forms of resilience resulted from many conversations with my mother-in-law and her neighbours, from the Crișan neighbourhood in Timișoara, and for which I am grateful. These forms of resilience have been practiced in the Crișan neighbourhood from the time of its establishment up until the present day. Against the backdrop of world wars, fiscal crisis, regime changes and living consistently within a patriarchal system, practices such as gardening on public and private land, animal husbandry, community crafts (for housing construction), domestic and everyday labor, with the occasional addition of working in one of the city's factories, show the ability of people to form a viable community, against the backdrop of world wars, bank debts, regime changes, and a continuous patriarchal system, in an ever changing place. In illustrating these stories, I will refer to three periods: keeping in mind that the transitions between them were gradual and that more general practices were not always found at the level of the neighborhood: colonisation (starting in 1918, in 2 waves), the Dej and Ceaușescu regimes (around 1947-1989) and present-day (post 1989 revolution). For the colony these transitions between these periods and the impact of the changes in political periods was felt very gradually. Geographical and Historical Positioning The Crișan colony, as it was originally called, was attached to Timișoara together and the Plopi neighbourhood, were incorporated into Timișoara after the Second World War (post 1945). Plopi was named in 1940, by the local sculptor Romulus Ladea. Back in 1930 the colony was called I.G. Duca (after the liberal prime minister assassinated by right wing extremists in 1933). Before that it was called the Kardos colony, and before that, in 1918, the land of these two colonies belonged to a count who sold it off as housing lots for settlers. Going back even further, the area was known as the town's rice field plantations. This was a failed agricultural experiment initiated by count Florimund de Mercy, a military and civil governor of the Banat of Timiș, after the Austrian occupation of the city in 1716. The Crișan neighbourhood is also known as New Ghiroda (not to be mixed with the nearby old commune of Ghiroda), and Plopi is attached to the Kuncz neighbourhood, know as Plopi-Kuncz. Crișan and Plopi-Kuncz are situated in the eastern part of Timișoara, each one on one side of the Bega river, with the water plant between them. Since the establishment of the colony it has been important for the residents to be self-managed, and for local community cooperation to play a central role, having the effect that the colony sometimes ignores and reversely is ignored by the city administration. In recent years people from other neighbourhoods have started to launch their leisure boats on the weekends, overcrowding the river nearby, and ruining the fishing and swimming for everybody. Before this, many people learnt to swim in the river at their own leisure. My mother-in-law remembers how in the early 1960s older women would swim in their dresses, with tin drums strapped on their backs to stay afloat. On the Levee The Bega river’s water level is the same level as the neighbourhood is, so after several floods of the cob houses, the banks were raised with two steps of sand; the small levee and the large levee (dâlmă). The large levee soon became and still is a kind of promenade. The two levees are looked after by the levee master (dâlmaș) who checks the condition of the land and vegetation, and intervenes when needed. To prevent flooding in the neighbourhood, each street also has a partially open sewer system, with one person in charge on each street. On the small levee next to the river, local inhabitants who live on or close to the levee, have set up gardens, fishing spots, pontoons and bathing spots. Some areas are fenced off, others not, such as the bathing areas, but all are maintained by neighbours (the land belongs to the state, however, there are no contracts and no rents are charged). On one of these gardens I found a sign on which was printed that we should use, maintain and preserve the Crișan biosphere. These refuges, some cultivated some not, appeared after 1989. Before the revolution it was part of the levee master’s duties of the levee master, to eradicate any use of these areas, and ensure they were not used. In almost every neighbourhood before 1989, community gardens on public land were a common practice before 1989 in almost every neighborhood, the most famous being in the Antenna Area (where my grandparents used to have a garden), which is now occupied by a shopping mall. However, in Crișan and Plopi, there were no community gardens, only private ones near housing or on specifically purchased plots, and hence the practice of gardening was extended informally onto factories premises, terraces and flat roofs, where vegetables were mainly grown; tomatoes and peppers in raised beds for example. In many of the green spaces in the factories' yards, the employees planted and harvested fruit trees. Today various crops are grown on the levee, from tomatoes to corn, in combination with fruit trees and raspberry bushes, either for immediate consumption or conservation, but also for exchange between neighbours. Whilst talking to my mother-in-law’s former neighbours who moved out of the area 25 years ago, we were invited to adopt a piece of the land for gardening. Apparently the best tomatoes grow on the levee, thanks to fish waste. Not all the land is cultivated and fenced off and there are also many spaces on the banks that are open to everyone, furnished with chairs, benches, sofas and shade, where birds, dogs, frogs, snakes, insects and people take refuge. Annexes or new houses are now being built on the sites of the old gardens between the houses, and the cultivated space in the neighbourhood is getting smaller by the day. Being able to walk on the river banks during the pandemic was a great consolation for all who were fortunate to have local access to them. Income, Food and Work Before 1989, most of the inhabitants of Crișan and Plopi worked in one of the many factories in the surrounding area. The reason for the two colonies creation was to house the labor force for the factories, ensuring a stable local and available labour force. In their private gardens, before 1989, the women of Crișan, especially those who did not have a formal job in the factory, who raised children, cared for the elderly and did the domestic work, used to grow everything for their households, trying to be as autonomous and self-sufficient as possible. The surplus was exchanged or sold informally in the neighbourhood. Families were not completely self-sufficient and had several sources of supply (garden, neighbours, market). The gardens were partially cultivated with fruit trees bought from the surplus of the Republican Station of Young Miciurinists established in 1956 (Miciurin for short, after the name of the Russian biologist who created several hybrid species), and which is now known as the Station of Young Naturalists. My mother-in-law remembers the pineapple-apricot and greengage plum very fondly. Every year families who had vineyards contributed grapes towards the Grape Ball at the Cultural House. Each family donated sandwiches and cakes, which were sold to raise money to pay the musicians. Crișan does not have a patron saint’s day (rugă), so the Grape Ball was a version of an annual neighbourhood fair, held for many decades until a few years ago when it degenerated into drunkenness and violence, and now has been cancelled. Up until the 1980s some women raised pigs and poultry for consumption for their families, and would sell livestock products to the neighbourhood too. Erszi tanti, my mother-in-law's mother, also raised geese for feathers and down. Another woman sold cow's milk to her neighbours, on a type of pre-order subscription basis. Rozsi tanti crocheted miles of wool and knitted flannels, other women cut patterns and sewed clothes, and many other items for their neighbours. Rudi baci had a private taxi service with a feacher, a kind of carriage with one horse. On the side he raised what was called “meat rabbits”, for his own consumption. My mother-in-law's father was a photographer for the surrounding villages, before he was employed by the County Hospital, so part of the family garden was occupied by his photo laboratory. Gosza baci fished on the Bega river for his own consumption and to sell to the neighbourhood. Other people worked as day labourers, doing field work, digging, carrying sand for the levees, washing bottles at the brewery, or occasionally as musicians. Nobody relied on just one source of income, or one source of food, and everybody tried as hard as possible (especially the women) to use their skills to ensure some sort of stability. During the 1980s, exchanges between employees of different factories proliferated, the most popular being Comtim, which specialised in the sale of pork. New recipes with fewer fresh ingredients and more substitutes became popular, and as the gardens grew smaller, fewer people raised animals for meat consumption. Since its invention in 1959, the Croatian Vegeta, a flavour enhancer consisting of dehydrated vegetables, spices, and salt, was used primarily as a substitute for poultry, and has become one of the staple ingredients in the regional diet. A very popular Sunday soup with poultry and fine pasta, now has a vegan spinoff using Croatian Vegeta. One kilo packets of Vegeta were recently found together with turbo chewing-gum and bluejeans in metal boxes, in various markets in Timișoara, sold by Serbian citizens. These days the majority of people are employed in the new factories on the Buziaș platform, with a few of them employed by the private ecological gardens of a rich family in Timișoara, which is built on the site of fish ponds of a former cannery. House and Garden Plots (plațuri) In the interwar period, the entire Crișan-Plopi area was parcelled off and sold off for the construction of houses for the inhabitants of the nearby villages. Land was purchased with bank loans, and they built cob houses, with the help of neighbours. After the Second World War, the first brick houses appeared, which were also built by the collective efforts of neighbours. None of these properties in Crișan were nationalised after 1948, unlike other neighbourhoods in Timișoara. The bricks used to build the first houses were not only from the factory in Kuncz (which closed in 1945), but also from a group of Romani brick makers, who formed and fired them in a kiln on the large levee, built at the entrance to the neighbourhood. They used the clay removed from the Bega after it was dredged. Neither the kiln nor this practice exists in the neighbourhood today. The Old Cemetery With the formation of the area, a lot of land was donated to the community for a cemetery. The old cemetery does not belong to any church or sect, and is maintained by the locals who have family members buried there, free of any charges. After 1989, an Orthodox church was built with an adjacent cemetery; this cemetery is taxed by the church. The old cemetery is also a place to socialise; during the period of preparation for the Day of the Dead, on November the second, families come to do maintenance work and socialise together. The walnut and mulberry trees at the entrance are leftovers from the time of the rice plantations, and are harvested by the neighbours. I still pick purslane for salad from the old graves, and I hope that my partner and I can be buried here, when the time comes. The Bridges between Neighbourhoods Before 1989, there was a dispensary and a school in Plopi, along with a coal depot. Residents crossed the Bega river every day, but there wasn’t always a bridge. Until the 1950s, upstream from the exclusion zone of the water plant, there was a braided wire-rope and a floating raft/platform, called a komp (similar to a small ferry), which was pulled by a crank by Dinu baci; after his death his wife, Dinu neni, would work the ferry. It would cost 15 ban for a trip. It was a private initiative, which was taxed by the state, and which was discontinued after the death of Mrs. Dinu. When the Bega froze during the winter, the komp was pulled out and people could cross over with sleds, holding onto the braided wire-rope. There was also a komp operating similarly to this, in the south of Timisoara, in the Iosefin neighbourhood. During the 1960s, the first wooden bridge was built, which after rotting away was replaced by a metal bridge made by UMT (Mechanical Plants Timișoara), and which was altered in the 1980s, to raise up in the middle. This is the same bridge that connects the two neighbourhoods today, maintained by Aquatim, the regional water and sewage operator, although there is less need to use it to cross over these days. In recent years, the gardens have expanded significantly on the river banks, probably in part because of the new houses constructed on the former gardens, but also because of the revival of grow-your-own food initiatives. In another neighbourhood in the west of Timișoara (Ronaț), a private plot of land (which was historically used for gardening) was transformed by the owners into a community garden with free open access to neighbours. Pandemic gardening has also led to a proliferation of gardens in and around apartments, balconies, on the tops of blocks of flats, parking lots, or in my case in the bedroom, where I've secured a pretty nice crop of basil and mint to eat, share and write about. Research, text and illustrations by artist Ana Kun A text commissioned by tranzit.ro, as part of a mapping of resilient practices in Romania and Eastern Europe, in the frame of C4R project.

SUMMARY TEXT SOME MORE TEXT HERE Nettle Garden, a connection between consumers, producers, nourishment and land Brândușa and Anselm moved to the countryside in 2013, to the village of Stanciova, Timiș county, drawn towards the idea of a lifestyle more deeply connected to the land and the nourishment it produces. At the same time, the two saw moving to the countryside also as a break from the academic medium, whose essentially theoretical products they didn’t consider too useful. The two met in Germany during their studies, Anselm being a Belgian citizen. Brândușa graduated with a Master’s degree in Rural Development and, prior to moving to Stanciova, she spent a study internship in India. The choice to settle their household in Stanciova was grounded on the existence of a community of young people relocated from Timișoara at the beginning of the 2000s; the group decided to move to the countryside with the purpose of creating a community and of implementing rural development programs. Drawn by the promotion the community made online, through a blog, Brândușa and Anselm came into contact with the members and moved to the village, with the possibility of living in a house renovated by the members of the community; “we only brought our backpacks with us”, Brândușa highlights. Shortly after coming to the village, Brândușa and Anselm bought a piece of land they could afford, with the purpose of building a house to live in and planting a garden. The construction of the house took two years, from 2014 to 2016, during which time the two lived in the community house. For the construction they analysed various alternative construction techniques. They mainly had to choose between a house made from cob and one made from bales, in the end opting for a house made from wheat bales built on a wooden structure, which they considered it offered better thermal isolation. Nettle Garden came into being from the desire of Brândușa and Anselm to produce ecological nourishment for themselves, but for other people, too, which they would sell in a community-supported agriculture (CSA) system. Brândușa manifested interest towards this form of agriculture during her Master’s degree, when she wrote her dissertation about this type of food production and distribution and which she wanted to try first-hand: “and this is why the dream slowly developed, we settle close to Timișoara, all good, so we can start growing vegetables at some point”. Beginning with the spring of 2021, the two managed to gather enough surplus in their production to start selling vegetables, in a CSA system, to around 10-12 consumers in Timișoara who subscribed to their baskets. Nettle Garden is basically the name Brândușa and Anselm gave to their household. It is about 2000 sq.m. and comprises the little bale house, with an annex housing the compost dry toilet and the shower, the vegetable garden, a few fruit trees which were already planted when they bought the land, two solariums, enclosed spaces for geese. In the farmyard, there were tools and farm equipment: electric-hoe, pitchfork to loosen the soil, a “wire boat” whipped up by Anselm to carry hay, but also spaces for stable waste and for compost. Two dogs and a few cats had their homes in the garden. Aside from the garden, they use two adjacent lands to raise hens and geese. One of the lands is rented from a local, and they use another one, abandoned and with uncertain ownership, to raise geese, reclaiming the priority, at least a moral one, in favour of the one who uses the land. Recently, they leased two ha of farmland, but they haven’t undertaken any farm work there yet. The dwelling space has a relatively small area, being built on the footprint of an older mudbrick house. It is composed from a room that serves as a living room, a kitchen, a studio, and an attic accessed through an abrupt wooden stairway, which is used as a bedroom and storage space. The house is heated with a stove built by Anselm using the system of a “rocket-stove”, which he adapted: instead of thick logs, it uses sticks and wooden shards which burn intensely to maximize the efficiency of the burn; the addition he brought to the system is a space made from refractory brick meant to store and radiate heat. Around the house, Brândușa and Anselm were in the process of painting a cement terrace, which they built in order to avoid spreading mud around. When I arrived at Nettle Garden, Anselm was experimenting with a new seeding method, using an instrument he DIY-ed from a leaf blower, to which he attached a plastic bottle used as a seed recipient. He explained that this instrument will help him in the no-till farming they are practicing, where the land is not ploughed or dug, but the superior humus layer is permanently enriched with the purpose of keeping life inside the soil as much as possible: “all the earthworms and the insects in the soil remain there and live their life”, says Anselm. The two insist upon the ideal of keeping life in the soil by using no-till farming, saying they do not agree with ploughing the land every year, as is the usual in classic agriculture, because, on the one hand, it destroys the living things in the soil, and on the other hand, it creates a hardpan layer, below the limit where the plough works, which becomes waterproof. Their technique is sowing the crop directly onto the soil, which they, eventually, lay to the ground or chop, to sow into this one the next crop which will be harvested, or the seedlings. Anselm explains it this way: “I’ve seeded it and the triticale grew all winter. It just sits there, growing, covering the soil and it turns into straws, and when the time came to transplant, we chopped everything with the brush cutter and we were left with a layer of minced straws. (…) And then you haven’t ploughed the soil, you don’t lose water, during winter something grew, I mean, if it was a little bit warmer and the sun would shine, something would grow and would become organic matter, which means it wasn’t dead. The more it grows and you have organic matter, the more you enrich the soil and it becomes looser, water seeps easier, there’s more life and it’s more fertile”. While Anselm was experimenting with the blower, together with Brândușa we made seedlings, with the help of a small manual press, by making little cubes of soil where we planted turnip seeds. She also presented to me a device made by Anselm, which made 200 seedlings at once, which they didn’t use though, as they preferred to plant different varieties. In fact, the garden was abundant in vegetable varieties. I helped Brândușa with harvesting them for the second day distribution. The tomatoes were, by far, the most prevalent; the 200 tomato stalks were very diverse, totalling 10 different varieties. Similarly, the eggplants were purple and white and in various shapes, the courgettes were too, of different varieties. Furthermore, Brândușa confesses she is passionate about experimenting with various uncommon vegetables: tomatillos, cucamelon, Palestinian white cucumbers, as well as mizuna, arugula, mangold. She even admits that this year’s diversity can also be a disadvantage and that she would prefer in the future to settle on less varieties, with the intention to do research among the consumers to determine the varieties she should settle on. The vegetables are planted in alternation with flowers; for example, between tomato rows one finds rows of marigolds, Brândușa saying she would want even more, with the purpose of helping both the pollinators, as well as pest control. She says associating marigolds with tomatoes is a classic combination, as they remove the tomato pests. The ecological agriculture Brândușa and Anselm practice implies the plants are to be exposed as rarely as possible to pest control treatments. The products they use are, most often, nettle soaks made by Brândușa herself, and on the rare occasions where they were forced to buy mass market products, they only used products which are certified for ecological crops and waited a longer time than recommended until the harvest. Although they are not certified as bio producers, Brândușa and Anselm claim they fulfil all the organic farming conditions, the cost of obtaining the certificate being the sole reason they don’t have one yet. The two use exclusively compost and stable waste, the latter which they have to buy for prices they find steep, considering they don’t own animals and, according to them, less and less people in the village do. The compost that results from matter coming from the composting toilet (humanure) isn’t used, because they aren’t fully confident in its safety, being rather a way to ecologically eliminate physiological waste, but sometimes they use it when planting trees. What they do use in the garden from the composting toilet is the liquid part: “diluted pee, because it doesn’t have pathogens and so it’s a good source of nitrogen and phosphorus. We dilute it 1/10”. For the seedlings they either use the seeds they kept, or bought online from other gardeners, from Romania and the Republic of Moldova. It is very important for Brândușa to avoid hybrid seeds, both because they cannot be saved in order to reproduce a similar variety, and because, for ideological reasons, she doesn’t accept buying seeds which are conceived so that the plant cannot be reproduced, and this happens even in the case of plants whose seeds she usually doesn’t save, such as carrots. Aside from the vegetable garden, Brândușa and Anselm are raising hens and geese; they bred the geese from a few goslings they bought and they sacrifice the birds themselves. From the woods, the two gather wild garlic, nettles and mushrooms, rosehip and cornelian cherry; the forest is also a source of dry wood for the fire and even logs which they used to make pillars for the terrace. Brândușa’s and Anselm’s lifestyle doesn’t exclude also using modern techniques and instruments in the garden. The vegetables are watered using a drip irrigation system, the birds are cooped up with an electric fence – the two agree it has been very effective in preventing fox attacks, which at some point they had to fight away. They also wish for a tractor, as a distant goal, to which they could attach no-till farming devices, because ”a tractor isn’t necessarily just a plough”, she explains. And so, the production techniques and the domestic routines of the two are in accordance with an ecological lifestyle, which highlights the respect shown to the land and nourishment. Besides, the domestic routines can hardly be separated from the food production, given that the two aim to live, as much as possible, with and from the land. As part of this lifestyle, the two adapt the classical practices, techniques and means of production, and experiment with alternative practices, routines and tools, which differ from those of the locals. The differences in practice have been noticed by the locals, which were curious and asked for information about how to build a house of bales, while suggesting other techniques: “kind of like, you won’t make it, you know. Or when we were building, neighbours would pass by and tell us, wouldn’t it be cheaper?, something something, if you’d use cinder blocks… I’m not using cinder blocks, that’s that”, Brândușa points out. But she describes the relationship with the villagers as a good one, being bothered however by the neighbours which are used to burning trash as a way of cleaning, or the ones which throw away trash next to their fence, despite the fact that there’s a sanitation and waste sorting service in the village. Brândușa also earned a reputation by being an educator in the village. At the same time, she helps the neighbours with repairing bicycles; she had a repair shop in Timișoara and also organized a repair camp in the village, “where people from other workshops in Europe came over, this kind of anarchist, independent shops”. But she gave up her repair shop so she would dedicate herself to the garden. However, at the present moment, Brândușa and Anselm cannot completely sustain themselves from farming. Anselm is a part-time (60%) employee as an inspector for ecological agriculture, while Brândușa gave up her jobs, including a part-time she had with EcoRuralis, to work in food production. The products of the Nettle Garden are distributed weekly, on a Wednesday, in the Faber space in Timișoara. The two haul the vegetables with their own car and they arrange them in the space where people come to pick it up. The distribution is made using a community-supported agriculture system, in collaboration with the Association for Sustaining Peasant Agriculture, towards around 10 to 12 subscribers. Brândușa shows that this system is not market-oriented, given that the consumers are willing to pay a higher price to sustain ecological peasant initiatives, maybe without expecting an equivalent return: “from what I heard, for some of them it’s important that we have a connection, they’re people who can afford to invest a certain sum of money into a household close to Timișoara, maybe even without getting so much in return, but with the thought of helping some people”. At the same time, her main objective is “being able to feed more people”. The vegetables are picked by Brândușa and Anselm on the distribution days, so that they are as fresh as possible. Alongside vegetables, their baskets include, as a bonus, eggs or plants picked form the forest: nettles, wild garlic. The harvest is weighed prior to the distribution and Brândușa counts the vegetables for each consumer, without portioning the quantities. The subscribers are encouraged to bring paper bags to get their products, after each portion is weighed with a scale. A WhatsApp group is used to organize the distribution and keep in touch. Distribution doesn’t mean just delivering the vegetables, but also, as Brândușa points out, knowledge about how they should be cooked, especially the lesser known ones, like tomatillos: “I’ll feel sorry if they don’t use something because they don’t know how and it ends up in the compost. I’d feel so bad, because I worried about that fruit. So it’s in my interest if they eat each gram of the vegetables they receive. (…) we talk on the spot, we look for recipes, they give advice to each other, we have a WhatsApp group and we post recipes there”. The distribution takes place in a generally sociable atmosphere, the relatively small group that comes constantly for the delivery showing a certain cohesion; they often stay for a chat and to socialize after the vegetables are handed out. The distribution space, specifically chosen by Anselm in a popular enough place for youngsters in Timișoara, is featuring various pieces of urban furniture made from wood, coloured in black and purple, in a geometric, modern style. Inside the space, you find a restaurant with a terrace and various shops placed in metal containers, selling even craft beer. Thus, after the distribution of the vegetables, for an hour or two, the consumers socialize and drink beer and other stuff they buy on the spot. The subscriber group comprises middle class people; a Political Science professor from the Western University in Timișoara, also a subscriber, notices: “this thing is very posh, professors, artists. I would like something for the working class”. At the end of the night, together with Brândușa and Anselm, we collected the crates and went back to Stanciova. A few members of the consumers group left together to keep hanging out in some other place in the Fabric neighbourhood. Research and text by Alexandru Vârtej Translation by Dana Andrei The research is part of Regenerative-Reliable-Resourceful, the mapping of resilient practices in the Romanian countryside that tranzit.ro develops in the frame of C4R and of the Experimental Station for Research.

From Legumim to Gastronaut Legumim (1) was in the spring of 2021 a naturally grown garden of vegetables which took shape the previous spring as the result of a project in collaboration by Mona Petre (freelance graphic designer and author of the page Ierburi uitate (2), where she is popularizing the universe of edible plants from the local spontaneous flora, as well as recipes which incorporate them) and Mihai Petrescu, following the experience he had with the Kultivă (3) workshops of the SNK Association. Between 2017 and 2019, the association held workshops on how to autonomously grow healthy food; the Kultivă garden in Chitila hosted in its third year 20 amateur gardeners which cared for small sized lots spread over 1000 square meters (0.1 ha). The two have also worked together while conceiving the project and the activities for the Historical Garden, developed on the premises of the „Dimitrie Brândză” Botanical Garden of the Bucharest University; the goal of the project was to imagine a „permanent and durable home for many botanical species and varieties eaten throughout the European dietary history, some of which were gradually abandoned along with the permeation of the plants brought from the New World”. Its role was, according to the page of the initiative, that of „collecting, preserving and distributing these species, continuing the research and educating the audience in regards to the diversity of edible plants”. Mona Petre is also involved in an initiative supported by Pro Patrimonio with the aim of creating a garden with plants which have adapted and resisted the desertification processes; this happens in the village Olari (Pârșcoveni commune, Olt county), together with the locals and based on a research of local ethno-botanical knowledge. Belonging to the Pantelimon commune (Ilfov county), the garden was inaugurated in March 2020, when Mihai and Silviu Ene (the administrator of the firm) started the planting (inside the two solariums of 300 square meters each), with tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, salad, kale and mangold: „The glasshouses are part of a project made by a center for recuperation for children with disabilities – we rented from them and we started making the garden. The people from the center realized that it is a project in itself which they in fact cannot sustain. So everything was here as you see it, it was already laid out. Only no one was using it, it was quite sad, especially since the glasshouse were built as they should, solid, they are sturdy”. In the initial phase of the project they created a Facebook group with the same name (counting over 180 members, most of them the same who followed the activities of the Historical Garden; the group adheres to the set of values belonging to the Association for the Support of Peasant Agriculture (4)), whose purpose was that of facilitating the connection and communication between producers and consumers and posting online the list of available vegetables according to the seasons. The vegetables could be picked-up weekly, every Thursday between 17:00 and 20:00 at a Bucharest address, but there was also the delivery option, for a fee, to the homes of the consumers, in the neighbourhoods Pantelimon, Vatra Luminoasă, Traian, Dristor and Titan. The seedlings were grown by themselves from seeds sent mostly from American producers: „collectors of rare or old seeds from all over the world. We knew about them because that is were the seeds for the Historical Garden came from. And we had to take them from there, even if it is not very sustainable when you think that they were brought from the United States, but we couldn’t find any reliable source, I mean to make sure they have a history I can rely on and strains which are truly old; I’ve been looking for them, I found some belonging to some Germans and in Romania we got some from EcoRuralis”. The problem of trust appears under the conditions where one in two tomato strains from Romanian producers which they cultivated proved to be problematic: „Because what they have tried to do by plant breeding resulted in that tomato which all sellers look for, with a long shelf life, with a uniform colour, which, in fact, is the plastic tomato, which is horrible if you ask me, no juice, no taste, however you might care for it”. The restriction period associated to the pandemic, but which allowed for the mobility of people involved in activities such as gardening and agriculture, facilitated their commute towards the garden and through the city when the deliveries started. The summer season came also with a lesson which he deems important to whomever imagines a basket-of-vegetables type of project: „After you produced, you have that mood where you work and work and work all spring, then comes the summer boom when it’s the hardest, because all of a sudden you have an over-production. And that’s exactly when people are leaving to the seaside!” – it made Mona and Mihai rethink the configuration of the project, especially since a part of their crop ended up being processed: curry pickled cucumbers, after a British recipe specific to poor kitchen during and after the Second World War. Midway in July, when I visited the glasshouses, the tomatoes stalks, the peppers and the eggplants where half picked, but the destination of the vegetables this year was exclusive to testing products from the future processing point they built in Bucșani, using European funding for social business, and the temporary name of the new project is Gastronaut. To start-up the processing plant, Mihai contributed with the household which belonged to his grandparents. At the beginning of September, when I accompanied him there, the furnishing works happened against the unique smell of baked bell peppers which two local employees were turning over to fry on a cooking stove. „We try to hire locals and buy vegetables, when we are lacking any, also from the locals”, said Mihai, while, on the road to the processing plant, we stop at a relative of his which cares for a garden of peppers that they will use for the zacuscă tests. „It’s interesting how after the June rains most of the peppers looked compromised, and now, at the end of August and beginning of September they seem to be bouncing back”, adds Mihai. During the tests, the temporary processing point is placed in an annex of his grandparents’ former home. Under the veranda the peppers are baked, and the rooms are populated by technology elements which help the thermal or congealing preparation (a pressure cooker, a vegetable oven and a cooler). For now they will store everything in a large capacity cooler because Mihai only recently managed to identify a source for jars. The yard of the household is crossed by a ditch almost one meter deep, on the bottom of which the water pipe goes towards the few containers which are the premises for the future processing center. Beyond this, there is an orchard and in its middle stands tall a walnut tree with an ample crown. The last week of September, Mona, Mihai and the three employees gathered to begin the product testing: one day for tomato juice (with onion, garlic and oregano), the second with classic zacuscă. More tests will be made with one type of tomato juice with peaches, which they will also buy from the locals. The challenges are coming from identifying strains of fruits and vegetables coming from ecological sources, from trying to test the economic reliability of the products, so that they will not end up being sold for too high prices, but also from identifying possible distribution networks (Bucharest grocery stores, most likely). Notes: (1) Roughly translates to We grow vegetables. (2) Translates to Forgotten herbs, https://www.facebook.com/IerburiUitate (3) https://www.facebook.com/kultiva.romania (4) https://asatromania.ro/carta/ Text and research: Bogdan Iancu, Monica Stroe Translated from Romanian by Dana Andrei The research is part of Regenerative-Reliable-Resourceful, the mapping of resilient practices in the Romanian countryside that tranzit.ro develops in the frame of C4R and of the Experimental Station for Research.

Resilient practices in the Romanian countryside Statistics show that in 2020 around 78 thousand people moved to the villages from urban centres in Romania, not counting those who have returned home from abroad. In itself, it is not a very telling statistics, as almost double this number moved the other way around and, comparing to other EU countries, Romania still has one of the highest rates of poverty in the rural areas. What is interesting is that the majority of those deciding to “downshift” to the countryside are the middle-class who can afford the telework. They want to reconnect with nature, with their families’ roots, they take classes on permaculture, they exchange advice, photos and business ideas with peers on the many Facebook dedicated groups – the most famous of which, “Moved to the countryside. Life without the clock” counts now 147000 members, having doubled in the year of the lockdown . Within this trend, a special place is occupied by those who make this move as not only an individual life-style, but also trying to be consistent with a sustainable and ecological living with and for larger communities. We are looking at practices that redefine the relationship with the countryside, with land and soil, with nature, with food and natural resources, with the rural communities and also with people in the big cities who are looking for sustainable alternatives to their lives. We are mapping some of these practices: a regenerative farm in Dambovita; an ecological farm that delivers fresh products to people in Bucharest, also in a village in Dambovita county; a community and educational centre built on ecological principles in Mogosoaia; a village eco-touristic campus and co-working space in Banat region, and others. A more in-depth mapping takes place of a series of case-studies on ecological or regenerative farms or gardens, thus focusing this part of the research on a different approach to the land as not only provider of resources but also as a fragile ecosystem that needs to be tendered and respected. We are conducting sociological interviews, interpreting them, we are asking questions about motivations, structure, sustenance, difficulties encountered, awareness of the wider contexts and of the climate change impact. In addition, we are observing with artistic means (video-documents, sketches, drawings, notations), in order to situate these case-studies within a larger picture of emancipatory practices in the relation between people, nature and communities.