Oana Clitan

'Pixels of lost time and space' is a visual research involving creative re-use of archival materials in projects with science fiction or alternative-reality scenarios, focusing on experimental video and animation.

Through different techniques I try to create scifi visuals starting from archival photos of Rotterdam.

A single screen video installation exploring the social consequences of the rise of surveillance in public and virtual space.

The project is set in a future Rotterdam, which has been rebuilt again after a mysterious disaster. It follows a fictional narrative inspired by the reconstruction politics of Rotterdam after the bombing of the Second World War, reimagined in today’s context of constant urban renewal, displacement of socio-economic groups and the development of surveillance technology.

Themes of nostalgia and estrangement are intertwined with issues of privacy and censorship. By exploring how catastrophes are used as clean slates for creating ‘new and improved’ urban and virtual spaces, the project dives into how this can also be used as an opportunity for new ways of governmental or corporate control to be inserted.

The project started during a residency in Dresden, Germany in autumn 2020, where I started to research how Dresden and Rotterdam evolved after being bombed during WW2, how this disaster was presented in the media and became part of the cities' identities, as well as the social, political, ideological and economical factors that influenced their rebuilding. The research become the basis for a story set in a future Rotterdam.

In the video we experience the perspective of Victoria, who lives in Nieuwe Erasmus Plein, the rich part of the city where the citizens’ data is sold for profit. Through a series of video messages, she is trying to contact her best friend April, who chose to keep her privacy and stay in a poor neighbourhood.

The project uses past and present news rhetorics to make a speculation about how information will be presented in the future - and by whom.

It explores a future scenario where, after a certain event, electrical devices are damaged. This causes the production of new visual content to be momentarily not possible. The only means of visual expression are some rescued materials, which are used by the government to provide information about new developments of the crisis. The installation takes the form of a news station on the street, the news being a more exaggerated form of today's tendencies to base everything on opinions and emotions rather than facts.

Themes adressed are the relationship between private news media, governments and corporations, post truth and the current attitude towards official news, the decaying belief in photographic realism.

A series of concept-drawings as the starting point of a research about language used in Terms and Conditions texts, particularly when it comes to collecting and sharing information. An obvious starting point is Facebook, which is where the phrase below comes from. The crochet shape references welcome slogans which are mostly empty of meaning in private households, but the lace itself is also a surface of carefully connected points that form a network.