ANTIFON
Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
Photo: Stefan Dragomir
SABA, or Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu (b. 1991), are an artist duo who, until recently, were based in Iași. They have since relocated to Norway, where they continue their narrative and poetic explorations, engaging themes such as precarity, the past, truth, and the utopia of a shared future. SABA are difficult to define. Political and radical, yet at the same time lucid and incisive, the two artists—whose interventions have strongly marked the scene since 2015 through The Omelette Manifesto and Life is a Bitch—view the world and its paradoxes through the eyes of a generation largely abandoned by the systems that were meant to support it.
Nevertheless, fury and tenderness are two forces that, when encountering their works, disturb in equal measure. The selection in the ANTIFON exhibition confirms this tension precisely: a concept that opens, condenses, and orients, suggesting the register in which these video works are to be approached—a space where belonging is conditional, and its performance becomes a strategy of survival. The shift proposed by SABA is an essential one: from compensating to loving. In this sense, “antiphony” can be understood starting from its original meaning—antiphons, verses or paraphrases from psalms repeated by two choirs or voices, as if responding to one another—transposed here into an existential and political register. Their practice thus becomes antiphonal: a continuous alternation in which fury and tenderness, rejection and proximity, critique and attachment mutually construct one another.
Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu(both b. 1991) are an artist duo based in Iași, Romania. Working collaboratively since 2012, their practice operates at the intersection of social inquiry and visual art, exploring how artistic methods can be mobilized to challenge capitalist frameworks and imagine shared, alternative futures.
Positioning themselves as independent practitioners, they engage with the conditions produced by contemporary regimes of life exploitation. Within and alongside their micro-community, they seek to sustain a political and intellectual mode of existence through artistic means—foregrounding acts of questioning, highlighting, and collective exchange as tools for reflection and transformation.
Their work is inherently transmedial, flexible, and process-driven, drawing on a wide range of knowledge and skills. It extends across diverse contexts—from galleries and public space to online environments—adapting its form according to the conditions of each site. Grounded in perspectives shaped by marginality and otherness, their practice critically appropriates dominant discourses, maintaining a reflexive stance even as it navigates—and is inevitably entangled within—the layered structures of capital.
ANTIFON
Artists: Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
Contemporary Art Museum, Sibiu
*part of the special events in ESTE Film Festival
Curator: Alex Mirutziu
List of films
Life of a tree (00:09:35min), 2018
Est-ce là tout? (00:19:50min), 2025
How do you feel? I don't know how you feel (00:24:30min), 2025
Saba (00:18:10min), 2020
Life of a tree
“Life of a Tree” is a video ode that celebrates the great communist project of nature, focusing on the forest and its interconnected fauna and flora. This political vision unfolds throughout the short film in a dialogue between a dying tree and its companions.
„Life of a Tree” este o odă-video care celebrează marele proiect comunist al naturii, cu accent pe pădure și pe interconectarea dintre fauna și flora sa. Această viziune politică se desfășoară pe parcursul scurtmetrajului printr-un dialog între un copac pe moarte și cei asemenea lui.
Est-ce là tout? (Is this everything?)
“Est-ce là tout?” is a video that follows a deceased filmmaker and his encounter with death, reflecting on the nature of art and violence, of belief and faith, offering an ambiguous, nonlinear collage of settings and audio recordings—from children talking about God to philosophical definitions of art and accounts of murders from World War I.
„Est-ce là tout?” este un video care urmărește un cineast decedat și întâlnirea sa cu moartea, reflectând asupra naturii artei și violenței, a credinței și a convingerii, oferind un colaj ambiguu și neliniar de cadre și înregistrări audio, de la copii vorbind despre Dumnezeu până la definiții filosofice ale artei și relatări ale unor crime din Primul Război Mondial.
How do you feel
“How do you feel? I don’t know how you feel” is a video essay that reflects on the limits and powers of love and togetherness. The self-referential work aspires to be an ode to hope, one that could be sung in moments of anxiety and alienation. Coagulating reflections on art and society, desires and dreams, the work is both a renunciation of struggle and a spark for alternative forms of resistance.
„How do you feel? I don’t know how you feel” este un video-eseu care reflectează asupra limitelor și forței iubirii și ale împreună-ființării. Lucrarea autoreferențială aspiră să fie o odă a speranței, una care ar putea fi „cântată” în momente de anxietate și alienare. Coagulând reflecții despre artă și societate, dorințe și visuri, lucrarea este deopotrivă o renunțare la luptă și o scânteie pentru forme alternative de rezistență.
SABA
SABA a video-portrait by s.a.b.a -- is an introduction video of ourselves and our “Unlovable Prospects. Scripts, Screenplays and Stories. SABA’s look on the Future” on-going project. The video portrait was made for GuestRoom Maribor on the occasion of our residency participation.
SABA, un video-portret realizat de SABA, este un video de prezentare a noastră și a proiectului nostru în curs, „Unlovable Prospects. Scripts, Screenplays and Stories. SABA’s Look on the Future”. Videoportretul a fost realizat pentru GuestRoom Maribor, cu ocazia participării noastre la rezidență.
