The 4 Realms. A folk festival.

Folklore is naturally defined by dynamism due to its methods of transmission, which makes it a very powerful tool in the development of social and behavioural patterns.

Nonetheless, this value comes with a price, namely that the more flexible folklore is, the more fragile it becomes in the hands of uninformed users.

In other words, something so inclusive and unifying as folklore is exceptional for being so accessible and heterogeneous, but, at the same time, it is so unstable for the very same reasons.

Therefore, the viable solution is to use this delicate piece of culture in considerate manners and no longer neglect its historical origins.

I have transformed the research into practice by producing a set of 6 festival installations which transform the analysed motifs into tangible intriguing objects.

The festival is divided into sectors, each corresponding to one of the 4 seasons. The stories behind the surrealist objects refer to several Romanian traditions such as: the goat dance (“Capra”), the Midsummer (“Sanziene”) or the March Amulet (“Martisor”).

While some installations are built as statues (as a way to present the modernized folk patterns), others are more interactive (the flower tunnel, the labyrinth and the barrel) allowing visitors to perceive an authentic feeling of the tradition expressed in a metaphorical manner through symbols.

This approach allowed me to highlight the main purpose of the project, namely to adapt folklore to modern times so that it survives in the changing world of today. Therefore, making it attractive to the younger generation, by setting an aesthetically pleasing festival, is a romantic manifest and a brand experience.