COURAGE

connecting collections

From 1964 until the end of the 1970s, Hedwig Ulrike Ruşdea, a museologist at the Museum of Folk Technics, conducted multiple pieces of field research on the technology of windmills and on their history and role within rural communities in the region of Dobrogea. In this file, she compiled specification sheets for the researched windmills, notes on the history of artefacts, interviews with former owners, who had been labelled as kulaks (chiaburi in Romanian) by the communist regime because of their owning a windmill, observations on the economic and social role of windmills, analyses of their numeric evolution, photographs of windmills rescued from the villages of Enisala, Dunavăţ, Frecăţei, and Mahmudia in Dobrogea, and reports on the acquisition of these windmills. The information included in this file persuaded the leadership of the Museum to rescue and reassemble the four mills at its open-air exhibition located on the outskirts of Sibiu. The various data gathered in the file are also a valuable historical source on the history of the region's cultural heritage and on the impact on this heritage of the economic and social modernisation policies implemented by the communist regime.

In February–March 1977, the Baptist ministers Iosif Țon, Pavel Nicolescu, Radu Dumitrescu, and Aurelian Popescu, the Pentecostal minister Constantin Caraman and the Christian Evangelical minister Silviu Cioată (a member of the Christian Evangelical Church of Romania – a Plymouth Brethren protestant religious denomination) drafted a letter of protest concerning the infringements of human rights in Romania focused on cases of infringement of religious freedom affecting those religious denominations to which its authors belonged. The letter was sent to several Western embassies and to Radio Free Europe. The latter broadcasted the open letter in April 1977. Due to the criticism of the communist regime expressed in the document, those signing it were arrested and interrogated by the Securitate.

In the film, the actor roams the city and uses the opportunity to overcome various obstacles that lie before him (walls, fences...). He walks aimlessly. Speed walking, the artist passes though various surroundings. In motion, he marks his own individual path of movement through the city. He jumps across obstacles, representing a symbolic act of defiance and appropriation of the micro-space, of the free subject. This work is a statement on the intertwining of art and an everyday action – walking. In his works, Neša Paripović creates an intimate atmosphere. He did not perform in public. Movement, like the actor's roaming, represents deviation from a stable place in society. The actor conquers the public space precisely through his own private space of action. Rhythmicality is immanent in the work as the rhythmic film shots match the motion of the artist.

Keston has 69 anti-religious and political propaganda posters, though it remains unknown how the Keston Institute acquired them. Archivist Larisa Seago deduces that they likely came from different sources over time. The poster featured here was created by V. Zharinov in 1977, as part of the set “Razum protiv religii” (or “Together Against Religion”). 40,000 copies were printed. A. Karasev and S. Rezin were the authors of the rhyme used in the image: “Honest people’s sacred duty is to save children from the church’s darkness.” This poster is a reminder of the Soviet state’s foundational atheism and efforts well into the 1970s to dissuade and discourage the life and work of faith communities throughout the USSR.