The seven poems of Cristina Irian /
concept, illustration, manifesto: Mircea Bochiş ; text: Ana-Cristina Irian. Omnia Photo, 2023
The Seven Poems by Cristina Irian represent the result of a research conducted by Cristina Irian in 2016 on how information was presented on her Facebook account's wall. She tracked blocks of posts and advertisements that appeared within a specific time frame, transforming them into text, effectively creating a form of machine language. She translated images into plain text, similar to a computer program script. Through this process, she observed that the information gained meaning as she transcribed it. To ensure consistency, she repeated this process seven times, resulting in what she referred to as poems.
Later, in 2020, when Facebook announced changes to its algorithms, Cristina Irian revisited the process and noticed a targeted flow of information, presented in a different manner.
She discussed all these matters with the painter Mircea Bochiș, who had previously collaborated with artists on projects involving images, poems, and interventions via Google Translate. These discussions led to the creation of two illustrated object poem books by the artist.
Regarding the seven poems book, the artist Mircea Bochiș created a series of illustrations by photographing his Facebook feed and digitally manipulating images from his friends' posts, as well as details of images Cristina had taken containing walls (referred to as 'wall' in Facebook terminology).
The project is part of the subthemes Technological innovations in literature.
Author
Omnia Photo
OMNIA PHOTO is a Romanian cultural association that also operates as a publishing house specializing in contemporary photography and experimental visual art albums. Its primary mission is to promote visual arts, with a particular emphasis on both contemporary and historical photography. The association's most recent photo book, “Fântânile Olteniei MMXVII / The Water Wells of Oltenia MMXVII,” received recognition at Romanian Visual Awards 2024.
Author
Cristina Irian
Cristina IRIAN is a research-based artist, visual arts researcher, and curator who works with collections, photographic archives, and multimedia materials. She studied sociology (Trento & Regensburg), visual anthropology (Bucharest & Perugia), and holds a Ph.D. in visual arts from UNARTE Bucharest.
Her artistic practice, guided by the motto “No one left behind”, focuses on objects of memory, integrating photographic material into contemporary art pieces. Cristina has participated in over 50 exhibitions in Romania and abroad and is a member of Romanian Fine Arts Union and Futures, European Photography Platform. As part of her experimental endeavours in visual research and new technologies, she published the photo book „STRATA / B” (Omnia Photo, 2020, https://omnia.photo/2022/02/23/cristina-irian-stratab-ebook/).
Subsequent experiments conducted between 2016 and 2020 resulted in two object-books - “The Seven Poems of Cristina Irian” (available on Versopolis, Poetry Expo 2024) and “The Eighth Poem of Cristina Irian” - created in collaboration with artist Mircea Bochiș.
