HEARTBEAT DETECTION SYSTEMS

We are thrilled to present Heartbeat Detection Systems, the first project presented by The Bureau of Melodramatic Research (founded by artists Irina Gheorghe and Alina Popa in 2009) after the premature death of Alina Popa in February 2019. The project marks a retrospective moment, in which existing works are reevaluated and recontextualised, as well as a moment of anticipation, offering a reflection on the possibilities for a further expansion of the practice, while accounting for an inevitable absence at its core.

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Heartbeat Detection Systems can be seen both as techniques of examining affective flows in the wider social and political environment, and as means of exploring the pulsations of the heart in the Bureau’s own practice. How can the vital signs of a long-term practice be detected and maintained and how can they incorporate the idea of absence?

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To mark the second part of the retrospective yet anticipative exhibition by The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, The Internal Fire, taking place at Goethe-Institut Bucharest, pulls together existing works that were rarely shown before, together with a new large scale installation that has materialized on this occasion. The two artists founded The Bureau of Melodramatic Research while both working at the Goethe Institute in Bucharest in the late 2000s.

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The Bureau of Melodramatic Research (BMR) is a dependent institution founded by Irina Gheorghe and Alina Popa in 2009 to investigate the role of emotions in contemporary politics and the new economy. BMR projects include a self-help guide for public crying, a safety training for the new office work, a cooking show using love and gold as central ingredients, and a weather forecast camouflaged as a melodrama scene in contemporary industrialRomania. The Bureau's work was shown at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest; SUPRAINFINIT Gallery, Bucharest; Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest; HOME, Manchester; Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York; Times Museum Guangzhou, WING Hong Kong; SAVVY, Berlin; Art Encounters Biennial, Timisoara; Skolska 28 Gallery, Prague; bak, Utrecht; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; DEPO, Istanbul; Ujazdowsky Castle, Warsaw; messagesalon Zurich; Center for Visual Introspection, Bucharest; Galeria Posibilă, Bucharest., among others.