Mimi Ciora - Dinu Bodiciu Curator: Edith Lázár September 12 - October 18 | La Cave | French Institute Cluj-Napoca "Not a real sound, but a sort of internal buzzing, like how you can imagine hearing nails and hair growing or buds opening." - Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot* It's already late afternoon and something tells you you should be productive, but the body seems to gradually disappear into the folds of the sheets, absorbed in the softness of the mattress, leaving behind the pressure to perform. Beyond the bed, however, a barely perceptible hum and the sense of subtle movements seem to animate the space even in your absence. The retreat into this state of sluggishness is increasingly coming to be known as bed-rotting, a viral term for sitting and doing nothing, defying the capitalist culture of perpetual productivity and the pressure to always give purpose to leisure. Bed-rotting, however, could just as well be a form of merging with the intimate space of the home. The philosopher Emanuel Coccia observes that the way we inhabit and experience the planet is primarily through the intimacy of a home, as this is where we spend most of our time. Unlike the home as a utilitarian living space, designed and compartmentalized to shape human behaviors, "being at home" is instead more an alchemical process of relationships between space and objects, beings, memories and stories that come to life.** Yet the world has always infiltrated the home despite the illusion of isolation and the promise of personal refuge. What transformative processes reveal themselves in these moments of human languor? What relationships blossom around us and what escapes our gaze? And what possible forms of cohabitation may lurk in seemingly silent domestic landscapes? In the art and design practices of Mimi Ciora and Dinu Bodiciu, the boundaries between materialities blur and reflect the porosity and fluidity of exchanges between bodies and the myriad of more-than-human entities and organisms with which we share our existence. Dinu Bodiciu proposes a perspective on fashion that addresses the different nuances of the encounters between the body, fabrics and more-than-human entities. The skin itself, as a breathing surface, becomes the substrate for the growth of inflorescences that tell about the possibility of symbiotic experiences and a different kind of sensoriality. Clothing, like a second skin, functions as a living ecosystem. Traces and stains left by bodies, the degradation of fabrics, bacteria, the animal resources involved in the production of the material, the technologies and labor involved in producing textiles, and the manual interventions become all forms of dialog and coexistence that not only constitute what we wear, but also reintegrate the world into the intimate space we inhabit. For Mimi Ciora, the entire domestic space takes the form of a personal, affective diary, in which household objects and houseplants - nowadays ubiquitous companions - take on a subjectivity of their own. Barely perceptible traces of interactions, subtle forms of adaptability, but also of coexistence, gradually link this supposedly interior setting to nature. They form the permeable film of a cocoon, as the site of transformations that are rarely visible or explicable but which take place on an organic level and which the body happens to register, breathe in and out. A continuous transformation, over time, as a way of being in the world. Sometimes everyday routines seem to be accompanied by the intuition of a hard-to-translate feeling of belonging to a vast ecosystem beyond the boundaries that people have often imposed on themselves. * 'Not a real sound, but a sort of internal buzzing, like how you can imagine hearing nails and hair growing or buds opening.' - Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot, transl. by Marjam Idriss, Verso Books, 2018, p. 222. ** Emanuele Coccia, La filosofia della casa. Lo spazio domestico e la felicità, Einaudi, 2021.