Copacul lui Gagarin

We had this intention of working with Ovidiu Tichindeleanu and to film some material, an interview with him focusing on decolonization. At some point, while researching through materials on modernist architecture and its history, we found the Gagarin Youth Center in Chisinau and decided to start the film in that location because it was pointing somehow toward an utopian horizon. We try not to impose a preconceived social framework on the viewer, our artistic practice consists of research, observation, reflecting on the material and the poetical elements of reality. This piece is related to our research on modernist brutalist architecture and the ideas that stood at the base of the conception of those constructions, a path that a significant part of our practice follows.

Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor​ in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (August 2017)