Start! On Necessary Pauses
Sometimes, the biggest step forward begins with a prolonged silence. If you’ve noticed my absence from social media over the last few months, please know it wasn’t an abandonment of Micul Haos, but rather a retreat into the creative studio and my own thoughts.
Today, I’m coming back to tell you that we are here and that we’ve been working intensely on something I can’t wait to fully reveal.
My working space for a few months now
The Art of Stepping Back
In February and March, I decided to take a conscious break from the digital noise. Social media can be a fantastic tool for community, but I felt how being constantly "on" was becoming exhausting, consuming my energy and, frankly, becoming a bit boring.
I decided to take a break. For two weeks at first, but it turned into more than five. I thought it would be hard and that I would face serious FOMO or think about it constantly. But it was actually none of that. On the first day, I found some watercolors and started drawing. Then some oil pastels (a medium I’d actually never used before).
I started drawing. A lot.
I started playing a game creating shapes of watercolour and then trying to develop them into characters.
After a while, I started thinking a lot about this quote by Roger Caillois, from his book Man, Play & Games:
“Play is an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money. In spite of this, or because of it, play constitutes an essential element of human social and spiritual development.”
Or using the shape of pastels to work with coloured lines on paper.
I surprised myself. There was a lot of joy in creating something not to be shared online, but just for the sake of it. Ok, maybe I already knew that, just forgotten it…
I did share them, but offline, giving them as presents to friends and family. I filled entire sketchbooks and gathered a bag full of drawings on loose sheets. These images don't have a direct link to our new projects, but they helped me process, observe, and stay connected to the playful spirit of Micul Haos.
A Note on Perspective: I realized that when we are constantly documenting our lives, we often see the world through a pre-filtered lens, wondering "how will this look to others?" By pausing, I stopped being a spectator of my own life and became a participant. A lens I’m usually using to create my games. So, yes, I unknowingly experimented on myself exactly the thing I am preaching: active participation.
Last October in Grenoble, Foto: George, on film
A New Chapter: The Resilience of the Forgotten Fairytale
While I was invisible online, we were actually laying the groundwork for an ambitious project: Rezilianța Basmului Uitat: Modernismul / The Resilience of the Forgotten Fairytale: Modernism.
This is an initiative where we aim to take a critical and poetic look at the modernist heritage of Romania and France. How are we doing this? In By using or characters as mediators and interpreters of space. It is based on the pilot we developed last year, France Brut. This time, were focusing on modernist architecture, in Romania and France, exploring and documenting it through play, stories finding the subjective and the poetic in this heritage that still influences us today.
We are fortunate enough to have amazing partnering institutions on this project: The French Institute in Bucharest, the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest, De-a Arhitectura Association, and Zeppelin Magazine, along with the essential financial support of AFCN (Administrația Fondului Cultural Național). Yey!
I will expand on the full concept in a future post, but for now, the most important message is this: we are back, and we are building new worlds.
Changing How We Communicate
This break confirmed one thing: I want to communicate more deeply, not more often. Therefore, I’ve decided that this blog and a future newsletter will become our primary home. I’ll still share some stuff on social media, but if you want the whole story, please join our list below:
We will launch a bi-monthly digital journal. It will document the creation process, the train journeys through Europe, and the stages of the project as the puppets come to life. I invite you to stay with us on this journey toward rediscovering the space that surrounds us through the lens of curiosity and play.
And do share this with someone who might be interested! :D
With love,
Maria & The Micul Haos Team