Opus Alchemicum : Of myths and affects

Abstract: Opus Alchemicum explores the fabrication of “reality” upon imagination, and the affective relation between ideas and matter in the built environment. Like an alchemic experiment, through the manipulation of real facts and their transformation into myth, stories, rituals and objects, the project tries to demonstrate how myths are not just produced but also produce “real” by creating a collective understanding and a pattern of relations, roles and ideas. This project’s attempt is to reveal the mechanisms of reality in an act of analogy. The role of architecture, buildings and objects is investigated in its transfigured correspondent. Myths are both constructed and revealed as the language code of a discourse. The result is a work of alchemy, a product of imagination as a path of understanding. The project starts with traveling to Romania as a study case, in a journey where encounters and empathy win over maps and scheduled visits. What I bring back with me is a series of situations, assemblages, a pattern of history, places, culture and affections belonging to the very present of Romania.These situations are plunged in another larger assemblage, the European one, with Sweden as a partaker. In this country’s desires and metamorphoses we can discover those myths that belong and affect our culture and our spaces.  Opus Alchemicum is a tale about myths, behavior and built environment. About Romania, or somewhere else. About ruins and gold. About invisible values and material affects. About a vanished land, about desire and nostalgia. About displacement, diaspora and costumes. About migration. About a journey and the gas station at the mid of the road. About metamorphoses, gypsy palaces and dowries. About matter, produced, traded and extinguished. About Prussian Blue and honey. About a tower, a fountain and a secret garden. About the alchemic process of making reality out of ideas.