Natures proposes situations of art making and presenting while wild camping in the Carpathians. The call is for artists that feel like exploring outside the usual art world terrain, at least for a while. We can dislocate our familiar practices from their art environments and let them be affected, maybe even reshaped by Natures, or we can pursue new ones. We will decide together, on the way, our nomadic path through the Carpathians, prioritizing our artistic processes, keeping in mind that Natures is an art project not an endurance challenge.
In art studios we usually optimize the environment so we can focus on our work with no outside interferences. In Natures, the outside interferes – weather, light fluctuations, wild animals, food resources might affect our practices, hopefully for the better. Maybe in order to depart from our established art habits, we need to leave familiar ways and surroundings sometimes.
Inequality, accumulation, domination, exploitation, territorialism, militarism, seem to be some of the consequences of abandoning nomadism for the safety and comfort that sedentism and agriculture were supposed to bring. A paradigm of control, management and exploitation that brought us to the present ecocides, wars and crises was deeply established. Natures proposes a return to nomadism, with an aesthetic twist. Nomadism, not in the sense of always being on the move, but in the sense of developing a feel for places and contexts, for when to stay and when to go, for conceptual and experiential wandering.
“Nature” in the current techno-materialist climate can sound like a romantic cliche, a suspect, uncomfortable term. Natures proposes a move from environment as data to nature as experience and base of all experiencing. Experiencing nature, the debates on environmental data (CO2 levels, climate changes) appear absurd – we can directly feel that it’s bad when cities are filled with cars, the air is poisoned, the forests are cut, plants and animals are going extinct – we can care about nature not because the data tells us to be afraid, but because we love it.
“The forest is the Romanian's sibling” was a saying here, coming from the habit of hiding in forests in bad times. We might tap again into this habit because for sure there are bad times, not only for art, and not only in Romania. We can even tap into the stories of mountains as majestic, mysterious, perilous beings in which if you retreat, you might emerge, after a while, changed, if not “reborn”. To complexify, Natures combines these Carpathian perspectives with the Amazonian multinaturalism – multiple realities (natures) that can be accessed through perspectives activated by our bodies, bodies that are not anatomical but bundles of affects and capacities. Back to Natures!
Natures 2 (August 2025)
One of the reasons for Natures was to propose occasions to escape the commercial and ideological imperatives of visual arts, the entertainment ones of the performing arts, and the managerial logic that took over the arts in general. Eliza was having some similar thoughts before Natures: “In dance, at the moment (and often), I feel that I'm trying to deal with the trap of pressure for spectacle and an immense focus on identity, both, it seems to me, having to do with a demand to impress. In visual arts, there can be too much focus on merely visual aesthetics, a push towards outward fashion. … For both mediums, the danger is that in this instagram era, things are being done to fit the advertising medium in order to catch the eye and primarily spark the brain, more than thinking of and proposing alternative ways of being, living, making.” I hoped that far away, in wild environments, some new possibilities might open. Unfortunately, the mentioned imperatives were following us deep in Natures.
We began in Orșova, a small city on the Danube. The train station was quite far from the city, and without any public transportation. We started to walk on the very narrow sidewalk along the road but the cars going at high speed very close to us were too much, so we ordered a taxi. To our surprise in the old, shabby car, next to the driver was his girlfriend, joining him for his work, with a basketball in her lap. This was strange and beautiful. They were very sweet, curious about us, wanting to help with some local advice, but they didn't know about the path through the forest at the end of the city. This is no surprise, people don't really hike anymore. During the ten days of Natures, we didn't meet other hikers. In Romania, the usual person being killed by a bear every year (almost always because they were doing some stupid thing like selfies with the mama bear) becomes huge news for weeks, producing a big irrational fear in people. Irrational because the chances to be run down by a car in the city are much higher than to be attacked by a bear in the forest. It's also a very convenient panic – the logging mafias can cut the forests without challenges.
After walking a while on the seemingly abandoned, barely visible path, we stopped to camp in a small meadow. The place, like almost any pasture in the Carpathians, was over-grazed. Sheep droppings and spiky plants were some of the results, yet it felt excellent to fall asleep under the stars. Discussing identifying them, I said that I see two categories: falling and non-falling stars.
The next day it was very hot and we looked for a spot along the Danube to swim. The shores were very abrupt and inaccessible. We finally found one flat open beautiful beach with sand and grass, but another bigger group was there. They came by boat and they brought their home comforts and more with them, an electric scythe and a chainsaw among other things. We tried to pack very light, three of us slept in bivies, not even tents, so the contrast was huge. Unfortunately they also brought a big sound system that, despite our complaints, they put to use until late into the night. At some point me and Eliza started to roar as loud as we could, just to make our point more comprehensible for them, and also out of rage, fed up with noise pollution. It worked, the volume went down and I heard them say something about the Loch Ness Monster. In the morning they told us that they rented the place. I don't know if it's true, but it's possible, it's not the first natural public space illegally claimed as private property. That is another constant on the rivers and lakes in Romania: it's more and more difficult to reach the water, let alone camp. The beautiful spots on the shores, public spaces by law, are illegally stolen, privatized and enclosed.
Later that day we found another place, this time on a hill above the Danube. This one was not reachable by boat, but worse, by cars. As usual with the places that are reachable by cars, if they are not completely “developed” (killed), they are spoiled, the nature remains just an image, there is no aura left, not that most people brought by cars to these places would notice it anyway. Caged in a car going much above walking speeds, you're cut off from everything. To appreciate nature you have to walk through it, to meet it slowly. Perception is shaped around body states and actions – when the body is stuck in a car, the perception is stuck too, you encounter the world as a remote image, not as experience. And unfortunately, most of the time, when you exit the car at the destination, the non-experiential perception stays with you as a second nature.
The cars were also raising dust from the dirt road next to us, and the heat was unbearable, so we decided to leave for the mountains. We still wanted to swim though, so we went for the closest lake, Prisaca. I saw on the map a path that can take us there from Herculane over a small mountain, with some waterfalls on the way. To our surprise, at some point the road was closed by the energy company who exploits the dam. We convinced the guard to let us pass, but soon we had doubts. It was a slow, painful walk through blackberry shrubs and we all had scratches from their spikes. We hoped that we would pass the blackberries section, but after a while we had to abandon the plan. We were not exactly enthusiastic about our way back, so we camped there.
The next day, still not wanting to make the way back through the shrubs, we took another path that went very steep down towards the lake. The zone being enclosed, the path had disappeared, it was only on the map. But we somehow made our way down only to reach an even more dense blackberry wall. Smaranda and Eliza reluctantly went through it. I didn't want any of that anymore so I tried to go around, but the only way was to cross some steep cliffs. The stone was calcareous, soft, two times it crumbled under my feet and I was holding onto some thin bushes. Anyway, we made it out after we reverse trespassed under a fence, inside out from the enclosure of the energy company. We went directly to the hot springs to soothe ourselves, the scratches and bruises on our bodies.
Frustrated for not reaching the lake, the next day we went for an area with three lakes. The first one that we reached was Trei Ape. Its water was much lower than normal. The landscape was gorgeous, the problem was again a forest dirt road close to where we camped. Cars and logging trucks with their illegal capture (it's a natural park, protected area) were passing from time to time. And the chainsaw was often the soundscape.
We left after a day there, following the Via Transilvanica route. What was probably a beautiful path, now looked like a messy construction site. They were building a bicycle path there and needed to clear and improvise a road for their noisy machines, and they cut a lot of branches. They don't bother at all to do bicycle paths in cities, so those efforts there seemed at least misplaced.
After the long hike we were craving a swim, but the second lake, Breazova, was barely existent, the water was very low. We went on to the third lake, Gozna. To our surprise the Via Transilvanica path was closed in two points, over two bridges, by another energy company. We had to make some dangerous maneuvers to trespass over those high bridges.
At the Gozna lake we weren't really surprised anymore that the most beautiful spots were enclosed, privatized and transformed into luxury beach-clubs with big white beds inside cubicle umbrellas, cocktails and dance music to cover the entire lake. I saw this on many lakes, in Bucharest too (like Park Herăstrău with its illegal clubs on the lake). Gabi and Smaranda already left Natures before the trips to these lakes (they said from the beginning that they would have to), and now Eliza, seeing the forecasted storms and very low night temperatures, decided to leave too, trying to convince me to join her.
Not being satisfied with how Natures went until then, and thinking that I might actually need some radical remoteness, I decided to continue alone, and to go really wild this time. For the next two days I planned a 45 km hike. The first part was a steep climb over the Semenic mountain. The peak was in the clouds, so not much to see from there. I'm not a peak guy anyway, “conquering peaks” is not my thing, I usually prefer the places from where you see the peaks instead of the peaks themselves. I especially don't like to be on high peaks where there is no vegetation. Semenic is the highest in the region but otherwise not very high, there was plenty of pasture, and the sheep appreciated it. The big shepherd dogs didn't appreciate my presence there though, they attacked me, barking fiercely at my feet for a while.
The sky was rumbling and darkening more and more. I tried to walk fast in the hope that I would make it to the shelter before the storm. At some point the path started to disappear. This was not a good sign, but after more than 1000m ascending and 600m descending over the Semenic peak with a heavy backpack, I didn't want to make the 20 km back. I had to use the map on the phone to continue. Then the menacing storm finally arrived. Heavy hailstorm. Soon the ground was white, covered with big white ice stones. With my head under the sleeping pad, I waited for a while under a tree for rain to stop, but it didn't, so I decided to go on.
The ground with its mixture of ice, leaves and mud was not particularly pleasant to walk on. And more and more often I had to walk between very dense small wet trees or … blackberries. Another problem was that, without a visible path, I had to keep the screen and GPS on, to navigate, and the rate of battery discharging was faster than the decrease of the distance to the shelter.
Increasingly more uprooted, fallen big trees started to block my way. At some point everywhere around me were just fallen trees but I kept going, hoping that on the other side of the hill things would improve. But they didn't. At some point I realized that I'm surrounded by a creepy dead forest everywhere I looked, a sea of fallen trees. My progress was slow and very taxing. When there was a bit of space between the fallen trees, it was occupied by blackberries, nettles and other spiky plants. We have the word “șerpăraie” (snakery) for this kind of place. Being in the region with the most vipers, it was a concern, but not the biggest.
The fallen trees were wet and slippery. The bark was sometimes breaking and slipping under my feet. Often I had to walk on those slippery trunks 2-3 meters above the ground or above another trunk. Often when I crossed the fallen tree crowns, the branches that I walked on or pulled myself up on, broke under me or in my hands, and my entire foot, and sometimes my entire body, disappeared in a mass of rotten wood and leaves, getting bruised, scratched, twisted. I was very aware that if in one of my falls I incapacitate one leg or worse, it's all over. There was no phone signal and nobody would find me in that dead trees sea.
Entering an area with more blackberries I thought of bears, and soon I found out that indeed, judging by the color of some alarmingly fresh excrements that started to appear, they must love those berries very much. This only increased my level of panic that was already very high. Then suddenly the entire dead forest was enveloped in a misty cloud. The visibility was gone. On top of that, my legs started to powerfully shake from exhaustion. Going over a mountain, and climbing hundreds of fallen trees for hours, with a heavy soaked pack on my back was just too much. Despite my desire to put some distance from the bears’ zone, I just couldn't. I was done.
Obviously in that terrain I couldn't find any spot to camp. I squeezed in a hole under a big uprooted root and tried to find the least horrible position to lay down my mat, and, uncomfortable as it was, I collapsed on it. I managed to get some dried clothes from the backpack, but to my horror, the sleeping bag was wet. All the tumbling down on trees managed to somehow get it out of the trash bag that I used as rain protection. Now my panic was total, I felt that in my state a long horrible cold night would be simply too much.
I didn't like my chances of getting out of there. Things constantly went from bad to worse, so I started to be afraid that soon the only worse thing that could happen is a painful death. My feet were bloody, covered in bruises and scratches. If I escape hypothermia and bears, and if, by miracle, tomorrow morning my legs will work again, the chances are quite big that one of the many incidents that I already had during my complicated parcours over the trees will end up worse, especially with my luck until then. I was also thirsty, with no water left. I felt doomed. The phone battery was at 2 percent. I tried an emergency call but there was no signal from any of the networks. Anyway I couldn't see how they could reach me there.
I know that many people say that death is not the worst, and usually I'm one of them, but not when death really feels near… It's a cliché that facing death you get a perspective about what really matters, yet, it really happens. And the other cliché was also happening – I had a clear, overwhelming conviction that love is the only thing that really matters. I started to write down some desperate last words on the dying phone. The perspective change was so strong that I wondered if all that ordeal had to happen for that affective clarity to emerge. I was also wondering what's the point of it if I'm dying. (Of course, back to civilization I quickly unlearned all that and returned to my old self. I hope this doesn't mean that the experience has to repeat. Yes, I feel that things happen for a reason).
I contemplated my mistakes that brought me to that bad spot. I also started to make a tentative plan for the next day. I knew that somewhere far to the right of my inexistent path should be a stream that goes to the shelter, and from there it should be a road out. But fearful thoughts were louder than my hopeful plans. Luckily, at some point my body took over and switched off my panicked mind, and trembling as it was, by cold, fear and exhaustion, it somehow found a way to take a bit of rest. Probably it was an emergency measure to give itself a chance to get out of there. To my surprise I managed to relax and even fall asleep for some short intervals.
Next morning, although in a crooked, uncomfortable position, I had to force myself to get up and check if I still had legs. They felt horrible, and I was hearing my heart beating in my ears, I wondered if it's a good idea to leave. To ease my pack and increase my chances of getting out, I left some of the food and some of the wet clothes there, the ones made of cotton, more biodegradable I thought. I started to move.
After some hours of slow advance through the dead forest, I noticed that my body developed a kind of skill to navigate that terrain, to better appreciate when bark can slip off the trunks, when branches might break under my feet, and how to draw the best lines through that landscape and go from one fallen tree to another with surprising balance and agility.
I finally reached the stream. After drinking water, I enjoyed the miracle for a moment. I couldn't believe that the hell was over. And it wasn't. Once in a while there still were fallen trees over the stream. Because of all the rain the water was big and strong. The stones were slippery, I fell a few times, managing to add some more scratches and bruises on my body. There were some small waterfalls that I had to climb down. At some point my entire legs were disappearing in some sticky mud that was very difficult to escape. Still, it was easier and less scary than in the sea of fallen trees.
After some hours like that I arrived at the shelter, and at the forest road. Although I couldn't imagine how I would walk the 20 km to the village on my shabby legs, I was totally elated. I tried to clean the backpack, some clothes and myself in the river, because everything was covered in mud and blood. I rested for a while there, and when I felt that I might have a chance to continue, I started the long walk towards the village hoping to catch the night train. Later on the train I remembered how strange it felt last year to be back between 4 walls, like returning from Natures to a prison, and now it felt like a huge relief to be in the sleeping car, escaping Natures.
It felt closer to death than ever, although in my 20 years of cycling in Bucharest (one of the most dangerous European cities for doing that) I had some close calls, and for 13 years I was a glider pilot having my share of emergency landings on scary terrains. Keeping the proportions, my experience in the dead trees sea makes me think of Jan Ader, In Search of the Miraculous (1975). We had quite similar motivations for looking to transcend our situations in art and life, but different results – just almost dying in my case. Of course this “almost” makes my Natures less interesting, but I'm not complaining.
With Eliza Trefas, Smaranda Găbudeanu, Gabi Baldovin, Florin Flueras.
More notes from inside – documentation as text
Natures 1 (August 2024), notes and images:
Yesterday evening, a baby fox joined us for a while, then a bear descended towards us, made an arc around, and continued its trip. Later, lying in the bivy under the stars, I had the feeling that I returned home. I felt again that special excitement and joy, Although last month I was staying in the countryside and for a few days in a mountain house, wild camping feels so much better, so paradoxically more at home. Not protected (enclosed, jailed) by fences and walls – you're interacting with the world, you're part of nature, your body opens, and this can be a little scary, yet, for the most part, in a twisted way, fear only enhances the experience, feeds the joy. (August 14, Wool mountain meadow)
Yesterday a bear was coming our way, we made some noise and it went away. This morning I was relieved when they passed close to the tent and apparently went their way. But they didn't. They stopped quite close actually, eating our food, retrieved from where it was hanging, at the entrance in the forest. I talked to them, politely asking them to leave from our camp and immediately realizing that we are the ones in their territory. I tried to explain the situation, telling them that we're sorry to come uninvited to their place, and asking them if we can stay one more day. They, mother and big cub, although now certainly aware of us, were mostly ignoring us, which we appreciated. They stayed until they finished to unpack, spread, and eat what they liked from our food, basically everything. After what felt like an eternity, they left, making an arc around us, respectfully keeping their distance, and disappearing in the forest, not before the cub climbed a tree to take another good look at us. The encounter was a mix of fear and curiosity, and confusion about what would be the proper way to behave. I felt that somehow everything depends on our behaviors and states. And, although that's what we work with as performance artists, I didn't feel exactly confident performing to this rather demanding audience. Yet, apparently our performance was good enough. (August 19, Paltinul lake)
Yesterday evening, and night, we were walking and walking without finding any suitable place to camp. Just an inclined path in an inclined forest. Exactly when the full moon was rising, we arrived at some cliffs with breathtaking views. It was not easy to find where to place the sleeping pads on the cliffs. It's early morning now and I'm lying down on my uneven pad. I have a huge precipice very close to my left, and Eliza has one, just a bit farther away to her right. During the night I woke up a couple of times, half-asleep rearranging my posture and position in relation to the precipice. Yet, taking in consideration how worried we were, we slept quite well, and no bears, and our food is still hanging there in the tree. And the landscape looks just out of this world. The thing with these kinds of places is that they're not very “productive”. I have things to do, to prepare, to organize, to write, to announce, but what's happening is that my gaze and my being are locked on the amazing landscape, in a light, suspended meditation, captured by the sublime. I'm staying like that in a state of just being. Not just being unproductive, but outside of the entire mindset of productivity. The normalized background anxiety is now exposed, and it's melting away. Well, not totally unproductive though, I somehow managed to write this, in some breaks from the wonder. (August 21 Cozia National Park)
Tomorrow is the closing presentation, and changing the plan, instead of camping at the venue, we decided to camp here and arrive at Somn right before the event. I hope that Jung was right, that when we travel fast, something stays behind, so we would still be partially here, and our bodies’ presences/absences might convey this. Maybe our bodies will be mediums for the natures that we encountered, maybe we will be in two worlds or maybe between the two, nowhere.
It’s sad to return to the city. It was always difficult to return from wild camping. And it was always difficult to go wild camping. It always feels like a difficult switch, too big of a change going from one to another. It's like you need a body at home and a different one for going nomad. From the home body perspective, going wild seems complicated, uncomfortable, dangerous, exhausting and unnecessary. From the wild body perspective, going civilized feels wrong, diminishing, ugly, depressing. (August 26, meadow next to Bistrița, Vâlcea)
I tried to find the Natures atmosphere by going again wild camping in the Carpathians, alone this time. I was a bit surprised that the magic was not quite there anymore. The absence of the others was crucial of course, but I realized that another important missing aspect was the artistic component. Natures was actually an art project, not just wild camping, and that artistic component should stay central if I want to find Natures again. Somehow my activities are better if they're artistically motivated. I was fine with wild camping in Tenerife because it was research for Natures. But when I did something similar for a much shorter time, as a holiday, it just didn't feel ok. (September 25, Somn Bucharest)
More notes from inside – documentation as text
Notes from inside – documentation as text
With Eliza Trefas, Smaranda Găbudeanu, Bogdan Drăgănescu, Florin Flueras.