Cultural intervention project | Augmented Reality | Multimedia Art | Oral History
NE/RE-VĂZUT: Muscel is a large-scale cultural intervention and multimedia art project initiated by Asociația Narative and co-funded by the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN). Developed between July and November 2025, the project transforms the town of Câmpulung into an open platform for artistic research, augmented reality, and community engagement.
Cinty Ionescu acted as Artistic Director, multimedia artist, and project manager, conceiving and coordinating a process-based framework that combines oral history, digital art, and cultural intervention. The project is grounded in extensive field research carried out by Cinty Ionescu, including tens of interviews and testimonies collected from local residents, exploring how personal memory and collective history can reshape the perception of urban space.
A Living Archive of the City
At its core, NE/RE-VĂZUT: Muscel approaches Câmpulung as a layered, living archive. The project focuses on overlooked narratives and everyday experiences, revealing how memory is embedded in places, gestures, and voices.
Through this lens, the city is reinterpreted from within, beyond official (hi)stories, revealing the complexity of transformation of the area on the past 150 years: a layered history shaped by political regime changes, war, industrial development, post-industrial transformation and shifting ecological conditions.
Augmented Reality and Multimedia Installations
The project resulted in:
– 9 augmented reality (AR) installations based on oral histories documented and curated by Cinty Ionescu and developed in collaboration with visual artists, sound designers, and performers, these works combine 3D animation, sound design, and documentary material. Accessible via mobile devices, the installations transform public space into a distributed, interactive exhibition.
– 3 multimedia and mixed media works.
Catalogue and Long-Term Access
A key outcome of the project is the NE/RE-VĂZUT: Muscel catalogue, available in both printed and digital formats. The catalogue functions as an artistic archive and research publication, bringing together artworks, visual documentation, texts and conceptual frameworks.
👉 View the digital catalogue:
https://www.narative.ro/catalogul-nerevazut-muscel/
From Installation to Film
The project also generated a series of moving image works, extending its research into film.
The audiovisual installation Echoes from Câmpulung: The Memory of an Affective Geometry evolved into the short documentary Echoes from Câmpulung, translating an immersive installation into a minimal, observational film centered on a single encounter.
Alongside this, Maria Năstase developed the documentary Playground: Câmpulung Muscel, a research-based film that explores the city through play, participatory methods, and everyday interactions, expanding the project’s interest in memory and lived experience through a more experimental, process-driven cinematic approach.
Together, these films extend the project beyond installation and cultural intervention, into the cinematic space, where research unfolds through time, presence, and encounter.
Community Engagement and Artistic Process
NE/RE-VĂZUT: Muscel functioned as a collaborative platform, bringing together artists and local communities through:
– workshops
– public events
– site-specific activations
– cultural mediation
By combining art, storytelling, technology and lived experience, the project proposes new ways of engaging with cultural heritage, moving beyond preservation toward activation and reinterpretation.
Artistic Direction and Practice
As Artistic Director, Cinty Ionescu shaped the conceptual framework, artistic coherence, and overall direction of the project, bridging research, artistic production, and public engagement. Her work as a multimedia artist contributed to the development of audiovisual works exploring the relationship between memory, space, and perception, continuing her broader practice at the intersection of live performance, installation, and digital media.
Context and Relevance
NE/RE-VĂZUT: Muscel reflects an ongoing interest in how art can reactivate memory and reimagine small urban contexts, particularly in post-industrial towns where identity and community are continuously renegotiated.
By transforming Câmpulung into a space of encounter between past and present, the project creates a dialogue between personal histories and collective futures, positioning art as a tool for cultural reflection and transformation.
