Background

Living in a foreign country and interacting with people that ask about your cultural background and roots makes yourself wonder sometimes about who you really are . In the last year I started wondering about that because of the bits and pieces of information that I gave out of myself about here i come from and how are things in that part of the world . I tried to think about what my country is and how can i describe the situations and the mutations trough witch it went and still does . One of the ways in witch these things can be explained can become very political and I tend to avoid politics because personally I did not see any salvation in politics what so ever ;so I tried to take things on a biographical level from witch I'm aloud to explain things in the circumstances of my own experience .
so i started thinking about my child hood going back to my first memories about things and I started remembering the way I was going to the kindergarden in the communist period when everyone had to adore and hail one singular image the image of our dictator , the one person that had guided everyone until the revolution came in 1989 . In that period things where slightly grey , the food was rationalized , was not avalbel all the time and we all where wearing blue uniforms . I remember that food was poor and that I was waiting with my grandfather at the long queues to by food . The best memories where when I was taking trips with my father at the factory where he was working and I saw the first computers that where working in that period on magnetic bands and perforated cards , those where the things with witch i was playing and having fun . At the kindergarden we had a strict program and we where singing the national anthem each morning . After that the revolution came and things changed fast . I remember being followed together with my mum by the secret service that was looking for the families of the persons that where part of the revolution ( that being my father ) so for a period of two weeks we where changing locations and staying in the night time with the lights off . In that period i saw for the first time the television program change because until then things where the same the same programs all the time . The revolution passed and i found myself in the second grade in a democratic society . This was the period when the explosion of privatization brought the western type of products into the city where I was living in and suddenly the windows of the shops became colorful and animated by the people that started to buy products in a free economy that was promising prosperity and a better life to everyone . this was the period when I saw the first films that where smuggled in the country by the people that started traveling abroad and bringing video tapes that where quite rare in that period of time the same case in the music tapes that where rare because there was no entertainment industry back then .everything was new and fake in a lot of cases people where eager to make money and develop no matter the ways in witch they where doing it . A lot of i-legal things happened and you could see how fast the things where changing , there was only one type of car back in the communist period and now there where hundreds . The school became a colorful place where in a lot of cases the teacher where confronted with situations that where completely different from what was before . The difference between generations was becoming more and more obvious . In the same time we where under the influence of television and music that was new and wester and in many cases did not had the best quality because of the commercial infusion of media that was happening . Each one of us took things for granted and digested everything that was given out with no definition of taste or what is good or bad , nobody knew so we took things as they where .
High school started and in many cases the school was accentuating the gaps that started dividing on a social level things . The television was the same and nobody was thinking about the future only in terms of tests and exams . The school was a mix of things we where studying everything and nothing in the same time . The world was a small place school home and the best entertainment that you could have was hanging in the neighborhood with the outer guys or going at the neighborhood parties where i n a lot of cases the most important thing was how big your muscles are .
High school was passing away and everyone was in the situation to think about the next stage of their lives and choose a university . i saw this as an escape from the daily school routine and I wanted to study something that was related to the creative environment so I choose architecture . I met a couple of young architects that opened the doors of my imagination and made me think in a whole new and different way . I started the school and things became different . I started traveling and the world suddenly became a bigger place full of unexpected situations . I realized the way people from abroad where seeing the part of the world from witch I was coming and every time I was coming back” home “
I was seeing more and more flaws in the system where I grew up and in the school . From the neighborhood to the international art and architecture events was a big leap and there was nothing in between the school was not compensating for the desires that such events and new places triggered in us . everything became unbalanced and to a certain degree there was to much impute things where changing on all the levels there wasn't one channel at the television like in my childhood , now you could choose between one hundred channels , at the school you where hearing bad comments from some teachers that you did not had enough culture and that in this way you will never sucsede in our line of work . In the same time the question related to identity and what are we was raised and there was no explanation . The forty years of communism in witch society became industrialized erased the former traditionalist identity . We where pulling forward and the teachers where pulling back trying
to ressurect some form of vernacular way of dealing with forms . I realized that I was learning more
by traveling and from movies than from the normal relation between teacher and student . There was always the question of what is value and what is not to be valued and the answers that I recived where opposite to the actions so i started constructing my own system of values and under the spell of travel I decided that It would be a good idea if I would try to see things with my own eyes and be in a different environment. I was not the best person or student but how can one be flawless when so many changes a occur in the world in witch you live . Architecture was a dream world in witch everything was possible until people where dragging you back into the real and making you realize that the outcome depends on multiple factors and that if you want to realize your personal vision you have to put a lot of energy in all the chapters of the process and that architecture and the creative field in general are submitted to individual points of views that in many cases leave talent and imagination behind making place for the so called forplay with the investor. The way i started seeing things was not clean anymore it became corrupted by all the outer parts that where required from a creator to materialize the starting vision .
After all the struggle i decided to leave for Amterdam bradded as a “creative city “ where cultures clash and the events related to them are happening on a daily basis , a city where you can bee old and new in the same time where artists from different corners of the world are mixing ideas and where I wanted to feel the community consciousness that drives things in a certain direction . I started realising here that art and the creative realm in general has the purpose to “ alter your eye “ and to make you see things in a different perspective . In many cases here there is no place for small talk there is a sort of jargon language that takes you directly to the point of culture and concept talk and this makes one to develop a new breed of language that can be applied only in specific places .
I left behind the memories of primary school ,where we where fed with the so called eurotrash music by mainstream media ; the memories of home and enclosed “space”of the home networks where in some people could give their opinion about everything that was happening in the world , to start understanding the world and the people from outer parts of the world and to see the different relations that can be established between people , situations , systems and subsystems ( culture can be represented under the form of a system )