Stage I: January-December 2025
The research objective of this stage consisted in investigating the complex relationship that tie post-socialist advertising to the communist past. This investigation unfolded, according to the plan outlined in the research proposal, along three research foci, concerned with socio-historical contextualization and critical theorization (RF-1), film-analytic interpretation (RF-2), and an analysis based on artistic practices (RF-3).
Within RF-1, we examined how the reinvention of the advertising sector after 1989 intersected with the development of the private retail sector, against the background of the last socialist decade, marked by consumption repression and the accumulation of private savings, analyzing how these legacies influenced demand, consumer imaginaries, and the redefinition of vernacular ideals of respectability and prosperity. Within RF-2, we compared socialist and post-socialist advertising in terms of form, iconography, and discourse, while also analyzing some of the continuities relating to the transfer of resources and specialists from the “Alexandru Sahia” Studio, the strategies of animators who migrated into advertising after the decline of Animafilm, as well as the influence of socialist fiction film on early 1990s commercials. Within RF-3, we expanded the existing archive and began to explore, through audiovisual means, the contrasts and continuities, both discursive and visual, between pre- and post-1989 advertising, focusing especially on advertisements for health- and life insurance.
In summary, the first stage of the project involved submitting 4 articles for publication to journals indexed in Web of Science (AHCI and SSCI), organizing a special issue dedicated to the topic, and initiating an artistic research article. Additionally, team members organized an international conference and an international workshop at the host institution. Finally, the project team delivered 13 presentations at international scholarly events throughout the year, three of which within a pre-constituted panel. The team also devoted attention to presenting the project’s results to a broader audience, organizing two events at the Romanian Cinematheque, accompanied by screenings of relevant materials.