LUMI LA INTERSECȚII / WORLDS AT CROSSROADS

Oral History | Multimedia Installation | Archive-Based Art | Research Project

Lumi la intersecții / Worlds at crossroads is a research-based multimedia project developed by Asociația Narative in collaboration with the oral history archive of the “Eugen Todoran” Central University Library (BCUT) in Timișoara and co-funded by the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN). The project explores how personal narratives, memory, and archived testimonies can be reactivated through contemporary artistic practices and digital media.

Within this project, Cinty Ionescu worked as a multimedia artist and project coordinator, developing a process that bridges oral history, visual art, and installation-based formats. The work builds on extensive archival research, engaging with recorded interviews that document everyday life, migration, identity, and social change across different historical periods.

From Archive to Artistic Form

At its core, Lumi la intersecții investigates how archival material can be translated into experiential formats. Rather than treating the archive as a fixed repository, the project approaches it as a living structure, open to reinterpretation and artistic transformation.
Through multimedia installations, digital platforms, and visual reinterpretations, the project creates new entry points into the archive, allowing audiences to engage with personal histories in a direct and affective way.

The online platform  👉 https://www.lumilaintersectii.ro/  functions as a digital extension of the project, offering access to selected materials and expanding the archive into an accessible, evolving space.

From Archive to Film

Lumi la intersecții also extends into moving image through the documentary Lumi la intersecții. Archiving and Process, directed by Maria Năstase and Cinty Ionescu.

The film focuses on the working process behind the project, tracing how an extensive oral history archive coordinated by dr. Smaranda Vultur, researcher and writer, is accessed, selected, and transformed through artistic practice. Drawing from interviews that span several decades, the film reflects on how personal testimonies are mediated, interpreted, and reactivated in the present.

Rather than constructing a linear narrative, the documentary unfolds as a reflection on process, following the stages of research, discussion, and reinterpretation. It captures the dynamic relationship between archive, artist, and context, revealing how memory is shaped through acts of listening, selection, and translation into visual and sonic forms.

In this sense, the film positions archiving not as a neutral act of preservation, but as an active, creative process that continuously redefines the meaning of the past in relation to the present.

Artistic Approach

Lumi la intersecții reflects an ongoing interest in oral history as a creative medium. The project operates at the intersection of documentary research and artistic interpretation, where narratives are not simply presented, but reconfigured through form, rhythm, and spatial experience.
By working with fragments, voices, and layered temporalities, the project proposes an approach to memory that is non-linear, multi-perspective, and open-ended.

Exhibition and Spatial Translation

The project was presented together with the exhibition Destine din arhivă / Destinies from the Archive by visual artist Renée Renard, where archival content was translated into a visual and spatial experience. The exhibition explored how individual stories intersect with broader historical contexts, creating a dialogue between personal memory and collective history using photograph and documents from the archive in the process.

Context and Relevance

Developed within a broader cultural and research context, Lumi la intersecții addresses the need to reactivate archival resources and make them accessible to contemporary audiences. It reflects on how personal histories can inform present-day understandings of identity, belonging, and social change.

Through its combination of archive, multimedia art, and public engagement, the project contributes to ongoing conversations about how memory is preserved, mediated, and reinterpreted in the digital age.

Launch and Public Engagement

The official launch took place on October 22, 2024, at the Central University Library “Eugen Todoran” in Timișoara. The event featured the opening of Renée Renard’s exhibition and the premiere of the documentary film Worlds at Crossroads. Archive and Process by Maria Năstase and Cinty Ionescu.

Additionally, the event featured AR installations from the new media project Ne/Re-văzut, which reinterpreted two selected life stories from the archive as 3D works combining animation and sound in augmented reality. These were created by a team led by Cinty Ionescu.