Digital Young

This weekend, 17-18 may, there has been the second edition of Otaku Festival in Bucharest.

Now, this is an important event for all manga fans and creators in Romania. As manga remains a little bit underground as social phenomenon, it starts bit by bit to develop in Romania. Why did I say underground? The sources for manga fans and makers are not available so easily; either they download what they can find from DCC++, or they spend a lot of money buying them from SUA or other countries.

Last year, Otaku Festival took place at Carturesti library. This year, they needed more space because they organized expositions and projections of animes. The place of this year’s festival was the ancient center of Bucharest, on Selari street.

At the exhibit, here are few of the artworks exposed.

Even if it was quite a small place, there was a continuous dynamic. What I really liked was that there came parents with little children, teens, youngsters. Most of the people were, obviously, teens. It was like their space and I liked this fact very much. Here are some of the people who came and also who organized the festival.

At the festival, there was also a little table with a manga fan accessories:

In the other place, a bar where there were the projections, I bought myself a repertoire of a manga creator (I think her nickname was Anima, but I think I might be mistaken), the Otaku Festival poster and the last number of Otaku Magazine, the Romanian community of practices’ magazine.

I would like for the future to make a comparison between the different ways of figuring and the new forms of literacies. This my next project, to make a description and interpretation of this new digital culture, manga creators. Why digital? Because, mainly, they use technological tools. The creators who came to the festival were still drawing by hand. But here is a picture showing us the opposite.

So, if you are interested of how Romanian manga creators work, with what tools, what they come up with, stay tune because I am trying to put in place a mini-research and I hope that in a relatively short period of time.

Talking about where do teens and youngsters spend their time, when is beautiful, well, they are going in the parks. Another observation of a foreigner was that parks are filled with young people, every hour of the day, like it was holiday time or vacation one.

Three weeks ago, Sunday, there was the Youth Day in Romania. Several things happened during this day and some of them took place in the biggest park in Bucharest, Herastrau. Now, what I would like to talk about in this post is a very paradox attitude at youngsters. Most of the sociological researches (both French and English-American) announce, regarding the relationship between institutions (especially parents) and teens, a big rupture, in the sense that teens do not care anymore about parents, that teens replace in their life parents with peer group.

Well, just allow me a little bit to think about this. If we follow this line, then we might say that teens and youngsters are an anti-culture, that they are against all sorts of institutions like family, school etc. From my observations on the field, I could argue against this radical view. Yes, it is true that peer group starts to play a center role in teen years, but it does not replace family. And just to give you an example: a teen makes a tatoo without parents knowing. In their presence (when eating together or watching tv), he will hide the tatoo, he will put a blouse with longer sleeves. The same way with cell phone. What does this say about teens? That they do not care anymore about parents and family as an institution (with its rules etc)? If it was like this, then they would have reacted totally different: they would have shown their tatoo or their cell phone, just to position themselves in a rebel way AGAINST rules. So, by hiding the tatoo or the cell phone, that means they DO CARE about family. It is just that in teen years, the center of gravity changes from family to peer group.

And this is also what I saw in the Herastrau park, in the Youth Day, when Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Internal Affairs came to present their offer to young people, in order to attract them to apply to their academies. So, here we are, we speak about two important institutions, with a big tradition. If teens would not care at all, they would have not come to this manifestation. In exchange, the place was filled with teens. In plus, they liked very much the badges with Ministry of Defense logo. I am sorry if most of researchers look at these aspects – institutions, teens, youngsters, parents, family, school etc – in a radical way, but I think that things are more complex than that and that we really have to think differently when talking about a certain aspect of social life.

(in front of the park)

And, of course, graffiti…

So, I really hope you found this post interesting and intriguing. Or just to put you to think a little bit about how easy we become judgmental and how hard is to stay apart of prejudices.

I promised to bring more pictures of Bucharest. Now, I thought to bring some different perspectives of what everybody sees in this town, like the crazy traffic, the big number of cars or its dirtiness. I do not agree entirely with people saying that Bucharest is only this. Last week I was very occupied because my Belgian teacher, co-coordinator of my PhD thesis, came in Romania. With this occasion, he could see with his own eyes what I was describing in my thesis, as ethnographic descriptions. Also, it was really interesting for me to see Bucharest through his eyes.

First observation he made was that big Western towns, like Paris, Bruxelles, Wien etc, are not dynamic anymore, in the sense that they do not change, they do not offer surprises. From this point of view, Bucharest IS full of surprises, not always good ones. He gave me an example of his cultural shocks: walking in the streets, he saw, right next to a very high and big building, an old woman selling vegetables and fresh fruits. You see, this is, if you want, the essence of Bucharest: this mixture of modern and traditional ways of doing things. Or what much smarter people might call this, a new praxis. And right now, Bucharest is interesting to be seen in this process of recomposition.

Well, after making all this big introduction, here are some more pictures, every one with a little comment, just for you to know why I took those pictures in particular.

In the ancient center of the town, you can also pass by these kind of dark and fresh passages which lead to an inside court of an old house. This entrance is special from another reason also; in this house, in the XIXst century, the most known Romanian poet, Mihai Eminescu, lived. Here is another picture attesting this, but I also want you to see how the process of mixture, that I talked about a little bit earlier, works in different ways. Here it is:

What I really liked about this place and this particular image was that, besides the fact that it is attested that there, in that house, Eminescu lived, is the fact that under the memorial plaque, there is a fix public phone and an old post. Maybe you do not see anything special about that, but let me show you also another picture, taken a few more streets deeper in the ancient center of the town, which says a lot about how urban culture re-appropriates national figures, like Eminescu’s one.

On this wall, you can see painted, with a specific method that I will talk about immediately, the faces of the three National Writers: Mihai Eminescu (poet, XIXst century), Ion L. Caragiale (drama writer, XIXst century), Ion Creanga (prose writer, XIXst century). The urban artist who made this image did not put them aside for nothing. First, as I told you, there are the three national writers that are being taught in school. Second of all, they lived in the same time, being good friends. Now, the way that they are being represented in this image is really interesting for urban space; Mihai Eminescu is the first one in the left, in the center is Ion L. Caragiale, and in the right, Ion Creanga. Up from Eminescu’s head is written one of the most famous lyrics of his poetry: O, ramai! (Oh, please stay!) and the title of one of his most known poem. Since now, nothing spectacular. But look to what the other two are saying: Caragiale = wtf, Creanga = lol. For those who do not know chat and MSN language, I will translate: wtf = what the fuck (pardon my language), lol = laughing out loud. I did not find random that a few streets after Eminescu’s memorial house, I find this drawing. Now, about this kind of specific drawing. Bucharest is full of them. In the center (and not only there), on the walls, you can always pass by a drawing figuring Ceausescu or Che Guevara, or just a pork (and with the explicit message that people should wash more often). There are several urban artists making these kind if drawings, their technique being one really simple: they put a pattern and they spray the pattern.

I know that I also mixed several registers. The fact that a fix public phone is put under the memorial plaque is a different mix than the one with the drawing. Meaning that in the first example, the public phone was put under the plaque from an indifference and lack of care for preserving the national patrimony. But it comes out of this mix a comic situation (at least for me). Regarding the second example, the urban artist re-appropriated the national figure through irony, of course, putting the three classics talking into chat or electronic language that teens use these days, even in their current language.

Now, another example of mixing different things; the next picture is the image of a very touristic and known area in Bucharest, the Vilacrosse passage. Inside of it, there are several shops and bistros. But also, “Egyptian” cafe.

The old architectural style is mixed with the so-called modern ways

To tell you the truth, I don’t find a very happy choice to mix in this way different things, but judge for yourself. If it was for me, that passage could have been used for little bistros (carciumioare) and shops with ancient trades. But, as it seems, it is not for me to say this.