ICR Romanian Cultural Institute London

Photography, books and music

To celebrate Romania's presence at the London Book Fair, the Romanian Cultural Institute presents the exhibition Kombinat by Serban Bonciocat, with an introduction by acclaimed writer Anthony Daniels, the author of The Wilder Shores of Marx.

Kombinat: Industrial Ruins of the Golden Era is an outstanding album published by Igloo Media in 2007. The book gathers a generous collection of novelty images: wreckage, as if it was taken from a science-fiction film, of a world where absurdity is ordinary. The communist mega-structures of a utopian economy - towers, earth's entrails burnt in acid containers, bunkers, broken windows, pipes, concrete and bricks - lay down abandoned, while man and nature are strikingly absent.

Books of photographs can form the template or occasion of prolonged meditation and reflection. And of no book of photographs is this more true than of Kombinat. (...)
The vast industrial complex of ruins dominates all: the horizon, the eye, one's very thoughts. There is no escaping it; as there was never any intention that you should be able to escape it.
Anthony Daniels

Kombinat will be open at the Romanian Cultural Institute until 21 May 2010.
Partnership project with

The exhibition will be accompanied by a concert of traditional music (Elizabethan airs, French vaudevilles, Italian madrigals, Romanian romances and Russian songs) interpreted in a unique manner – half way between traditional and classic – by Maria Raducanu (voice) and Maxim Belciug (guitar).

Maria Raducanu, singer and songwriter, was born in Romania, in 1967. Encouraged by her father, she started to play violin and guitar at a very young age, but by the time she was 15, she had already 'discovered' her voice… a voice so hard to describe. Maria Tanase and Edith Piaf were a big influence.

Maxim Belciug is a guitar artist, born in Romania in 1967. He is often invited to play in recitals or involve with the jury in guitar festivals. Once established as a most valuable soloist, he has started to enrich his musical experience, involving in chamber music projects, such as flute and guitar, voice and guitar, or guitar with percussion duo.

When: 21 April, 7 pm
Where: Romanian Cultural Institute London
Admission: free.