Slobozia, Texas

Slobozia,Texas relives the confrontation in the 80ies of Romanians under Ceaușescu's rule with Dallas, the long lasting American soap about an oil tycoon family, and this mainly through re-enactment.

Slobozia means freedom in Romanian but is also the name of a sleepy town in the east of the country. The project Slobozia,Texas (2020-21) relives the strange confrontation in the 80ies of Romanians under communist rule with Dallas, the legendary American campy soap about an oil tycoon family. It shows oil-related landscapes, palace interiors and kitschy portraits. Slobozia has a permanent Dallas-vibe since a Romanian millionaire built a replica there of the family mansion in the soap, which became a Dallas Hotel. Ceaușescu allowed the airing of Dallas, which was at the time the only western fiction on state television. Allegedly because he thought the soap would prove to be anti-capitalistic with all its corruption, sorrows and misery. It backfired and according to some, Dallas even played a part in the Romanian revolution. The aesthetics, the luxury, the way of life, the American dream – everything about the show exemplified the thing that Romanians did not have enough of under Ceaușescu’s regime: hope and dreams. It had a huge impact on their world view and was incredibly popular, some even named their children after characters of Dallas. Of course the soap carried cultural imperialist views on the world and how it should be run. In the project Slobozia, Texas, ordinary Romanians with a connection to the soap (people working in the Dallas Hotel or active on Dallas fan-sites f.i.) re-enact scenes of Dallas, and are being photographed in the unforgiving light of a soap opera set, dressed to kill, absorbed in their dreams of the past. They act and play themselves in the same image. Blending fiction and reality, theatrical gestures, cinematic gazes, pastel colours, mirrors and eerie video stills, the images constitute a throwback to the hyper-capitalist 80-ies. The photographed Romanians told me what Dallas meant for them, told me their personal stories, how it was then and how it is now, painting as such an image of the country's 30 years of capitalism. Together with pictures of the rough beauty of the landscapes, the rundown oil wells in Moldova, the personal cinema of Ceausescu, Slobozia,Texas is visualizing a past moment of future hope while documenting the present.

The presentation of the project contains images and framed montages of fragments (of portraits, Dallas stills, landscapes, pastel colours and mirror elements). The book Slobozia, Texas is also available (114 p, Munken Kristall, cold glue, self-published + dustcover containing all the interviews with the 'actors')