Panna Adorjáni & Haveit

On the perilous journey of creating a lecture performance about the 90s in Romania, Panna’s perspective can only be skewed, anxiety-inducing, and random, given the fact that she was born at the end of 1990 and spent most of the important political, social, economic, and cultural events of the decade in question with the earnest task of becoming a human child. 

Among the most important events of this first decade of her life are events such as crossing multiple borders without a visa on her way to France at 9 months old, learning to read before entering primary school at the fresh age of 5, or composing her first poems at 9 years of age. Meanwhile, Romania spent most of the decade in tumultuous lostness after the fall of Communism at the end of 1989, with ethnic conflicts, debilitating pyramid schemes, violent altercations, and, of course, ex-commies back in power.

 Although these two timelines seemingly have little in common, the personal and official histories of Romania do seem to interlace in unexpected, albeit meaningful, ways. A recurring connection relates to how this transitory period marks a shift not only towards some idea of democracy but also, just as importantly, or even more so, towards globalism and capitalism. 

In this sense, Panna’s lecture performance focuses on this period of history through the lens of money, a subject that seems to have become a far greater taboo in Western Europe – where, together with the Global North in general, inequality is at an all-time high – than the taboos that Panna grew up with, such as sex, God, and ethnic supremacy. By uncomfortably lingering on the ways in which money, or the lack of it, made both her childhood and her home country’s world turn, or rather, stall, she offers a contemplation on inequality, philanthropy, and the concept of eudaimonia, of living and doing well.