Precarious spaces and subjects in transition: postcommunism and Romanian moving image art

Abstract

This article engages with the work of artist and activist Joanne Richardson within the D-Media Collective. Her films, part of the Commonplaces of Transition project, retrospectively reflect on changes following the fall of communism in Romania. I argue that Richardson makes a significant contribution to critically re-assessing the so-called “postcommunist” period in recent Romanian history. By investigating relations between media, art, gender, and politics, I situate her work as part of the struggle of a small number of artists and theorists to understand the “postcommunist condition.” In the current context, when the rise of right-wing political movements in the region demonstrates the continuities of nationalist and fascist undertones traceable to the pre-communist period, Richardson’s work proves instrumental in updating and critically assessing notions like “precarity” from a local perspective, in conversation with transnational feminisms, intersectionalities, and local histories of inequality and dispossession.

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