Observe a geographical “periphery”: southeastern Europe... Romania, a nation with more than 22,000,000 people... the capital: Bucharest. Look closer: eastern edge of the country... close to the border with the Republic of Moldova, formerly part of the Soviet Union... the city of Iasi...an important cultural and historical center...home to one of Romania’s oldest universities... Iasi today leads an isolated existence as a geographic and economic peripheral zone. Look much closer: the Periferic experience.

The years following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe have been a period of transition towards a market economy and democracy. In Romania, this transition has been an especially arduous search for an identity following the fifty years of Nicolae Ceaucescu’s brutal dictatorship, a dictatorship committed to tearing apart the country’s cultural roots. As a consequence, traditionalism has come to dominate the cultural sphere and doors have been closed on provocative contemporary art. In the first half of the 20th century, Romania’s artistic contributions were similar to other country’s in Europe. The works of artists like Constantin Brancusi, Tristan Tzara, Benjamin Fondane, Mircea Eliade, and Eugene Ionesco were at the center of European art movements. However, during the “red period,” culture was heavily censored and reduced to a mere ideological and educational weapon. Contemporary art — the art of the city — was considered dangerous, as it was understood as a creation of the capitalist metropolises of the West.

Romania’s contemporary art, though “peripheral,” is beginning to make its way to the “center.” Having been clandestine for many years, the Performance Actions emerged after the revolution in 1989 as a vital means of communication, addressing the public and rediscovering the freedom of opinion. One of the current festivals for contemporary art in Romania is the Periferic Contemporary Arts Biennial. Located in Iasi, Periferic was founded by artist Matei Bejenaru and is now in its sixth year. From the beginning, the event has been a manifestation which brings together different artistic attitudes about the relationship of the margins to the center. “The event aims to successfully connect peripheries — cultural, geographic, political, and economic — by recognizing and binding alternative worlds,” Bejenaru says.

The first two festivals, in 1997 and 1998, took place at the French Cultural Center and focused on performance arts. For Periferic 3 in 1999, the number and diversity of artists — from Romania, the Ukraine, Republic of Moldova, Bulgaria, Germany, and the USA — was increased, and for the first time student projects were accepted. The festival was also enriched with new exhibition spaces: the old Turkish Baths and the more official space of the Art Museum in the Palace of Culture.

The Turkish Baths, one of the city’s most remarkable historic monuments, was a particularly exciting and moving place for exhibition, stimulating a dynamic interface between the city and the region’s past and its evolving present. Underneath the intricate tilework of the baths’ domes were installations and performative interventions. The entire exhibition was titled “Steam.”

The communist regime created The Palace of Culture for its ideologically-driven art exhibitions. Engaging this troubled past in order to understand the complexity of the present, the Palace of Culture was used as a site for a symposium on “The Musuem and Contemporary Art” and an exhibition called “Correspondences.” The event gave this space, a monument of censorship and rigidity, the quality of a living, transforming cultural organism. The museum went beyond the traditional notion of a space for exhibiting objects and became a place animated by people.

Periferic 4 was held May 24-28, 2000, and still aimed to challenge uncritical traditionalism and a damaging addiction to the past. Once again, it combined exhibitions, performances, and a colloquium. Peripheric 4 established itself in four distinct locations: the Turkish Baths, the Palace of Culture, the French Cultural Center, and the Public Bath. The opening event was held at the French Cultural Center, where the Denis Tricot Company of France used the ambient sounds of electronic music and shifting photographic elements to create “sculpture in motion.” The Turkish Baths housed the exhibition “Dry/Wet,” bringing together artists from Switzerland, Great Britain, Russia, Germany, the USA, and Romania. The exhibition “Personal Map-Drawings” took place in the Palace of Culture. It poetically recorded and presented the pulse of the city through works brought by artists from Germany, the USA, Hungary, and Romania. The Public Bath was the site of an exhibition containing works made by women artists from the Czech Republic titled “Girls Show — 2000.”

A dream in 1996, Bejenaru now believes that “the Periferic Biennial seems to have a good chance of becoming a vital point of cultural exchange, organized in the eastern extremity, of the future united Europe.” The emergence of such an event forces us to raise many questions. Is the periphery trying to approach the so-called center, attempting to imitate the program of a hegemonic zeitgeist? Or is it the center that always develops itself towards the margins? Can we still talk of “centers” and “peripheries” in today’s globalized world?

Like so many contemporary art biennials that were created outside of the established reaches of the Western art world, the Periferic Biennial is both approaching the center and is evidence of the center expanding itself. Such an event has the potential to destabilize the status quo of the art world. Periferic approaches the center in order to force those abroad to expand their vision. As a grassroots event engaging with the distinctly local qualities of its site, Periferic is an inspiring example that challenges the corporate and homogenizing paradigm of globalization. The event redirects the current process of globalization in alternative directions, suggesting a movement towards transnational interaction that is founded on cooperation and respect of local histories.

Despite so much discussion concerning the dissolution of center and periphery, the current global order following September 11th clearly illustrates that the United States and the EU are still the command centers of the world. Periferic may inspire in the “center” a genuine interest in understanding and engaging in a dialogue with the “periphery.”

During his performance Speaking to Europe, Romanian artist Teodor Graur locked himself in an immense box and from a loudspeaker obsessively repeated his question: “Hello, hello, can you hear me?” Writing from the periphery and addressing a center, I ask, why should there be now, as always, nobody home?