Film screening and debate – In Comparison, Harun Farocki

In the film Zum Vergleich / In Comparison (2009), Harun Farocki examines the production of brick in different contexts from Burkina Faso or India, to France and Germany. Labour in African communities, which is exclusively manual, is compared to mechanical and high-tech work in Western European societies. The relevance of these comparisons, unaccompanied by any comment, highlights the social gaps and the different work relations through the most basic element of modern construction work, the brick.

The screening of the film will be followed by a debate with the curators of BETA’s exhibition Enough is Enough, Anca Cioarec, Brîndușa Tudor and Ilka Ruby, and the writer Alex Condrache. The debate will be moderated by Diana Marincu, the curator of the exhibition Harun Farocki – Reality Would Have to Begin.

Anca Cioarec has studied architecture at the University of Architecture and Urbanism ’Ion Mincu’ in Bucharest (UAUIM), Università degli Studi di Genova and Academie van Bouwkunst in Amsterdam. She is interested in the relationship between contemporary art and architecture and she holds a phD degree regarding the contemporary spaces for art. Anca is currently a teaching assistant at the University of Architecture and Urbanism ’Ion Mincu’ in Bucharest.

Brîndușa Tudor has studied architecture at the University of Architecture and Urbanism ’Ion Mincu’ in Bucharest. She is interested in architecture without architects and she is currently a doctoral student, researching the urban neovernacular in Bucharest after 1989. Until recently, she was a teaching assistant at the University of Architecture and Urbanism ’Ion Mincu’ in Bucharest.
Brîndușa Tudor and Anca Cioarec co-founded Stardust Architects in 2011. Their interests focuses on questioning the current forms of architectural education, practice and dissemination, reformulating and testing alternative ways through students workshops, competitions and self generated initiatives.

Ilka Ruby is a Berlin-based publisher and curator on issues surrounding architecture and urbanism. She studied architecture at RWTH Aachen and TU Vienna. In 2001 together with Andreas Ruby she founded textbild – an office for architectural communication, and in 2008 Ruby Press – a publishing house with a focus on architecture, art, and other cultural practices engaged in the production of space.

Alex Condrache is a young researcher in comparative literature, writer and trainer. He holds a pHD degree in philology from the West University of Timișoara and is completing a second pHD in comparative literature at Western University in Canada. Alex currently commutes between Canada and Romania, where he is involved in several cultural and educational projects.