Elena Stanciu

Around About Circus • 28th August 2026

Imago Mundi: the speculative minimalism of SYMBIOSIS

Interview with performing arts company Symbiosis. 2026

Around About Circus • 11th August 2026

Things we need in times of crisis: a throwback to the 2026 UP - Circus & Performing Arts Festival

A review and op-ed on contemporary circus and performing arts, as hosted by UP Festival in Brussels, 2026. Published by Around About Circus.

Around About Circus • 16th May 2025

The Great Dreams of the Grand Danois

Cirkus Grand Danois This article is part of the CIRCUS FROM THE NORTH series in which we engage with this rich and exciting region and its emerging aesthetics within circus creation. What is a circus dream? Is it the promise of freedom and...

Around About Circus • 28th September 2024

On Nordicness and Contemporary Nomadism: Interview with Jakob Jacobsson

The Nordic Council is a trio of artists from Finland, Iceland, and Sweden (Merri Heikilä, Bjarni Árnason, and Jakob Jacobsson), who have been creating contemporary circus shows about Nordic identities and Nordic themes since 2017. The aesthetic and...

18th September 2024

Thinking Through Other Things – In Conversation with Lenka Clayton

Lenka Clayton is an interdisciplinary artist whose works are clever, witty instances of engaging with the “every day.” The artist uses objects and language, intentions and relations, stories and traces, to intervene in the mundane and propose new...

11th September 2024

DYNAMO Magazine #4: Process, Practice, Perspective - Spark and Origin in Contemporary Circus

What should we make of invisible traces of artistic process? How do we (or should we) differentiate between the work of art and the work of the artist? How does a piece of art come to be - what was the initial spark? What is the first idea? And what...

Around About Circus • 14th August 2024

UP Festival 2024: the Ethos of a European festival

Thanks to Visit Brussels and our involvement in the INCAM network, from 26th to 29th March Around About Circus participated in the biannual Festival UP PROS days led by the eponymous circus creation centre in the quarter of Molenbeek. If one of the UP...

Around About Circus • 27th May 2024

Smells Like Clown Spirit

In its seventh edition, the festival is organised by a partners’ consortium, VIERNULVIER and Miramiro, in collaboration with CAMPO, KOPERGIETERY, Circuscentrum and Cultuurcentrum Evergem. The proposed theme of the clown and clowning, allowed space for...

Academic writing • 3rd November 2022

Horrors of History and Colonial Imaginaries

The Construction and Representation of Black Embodiment in THEM (2021) This paper departs from an interest in exploring the depiction of Black bodies and experiences of suffering, death, and being terrorized in popular television, applied to a...

6th November 2021

John Olsen – Drawings in SKITSEHANDLEN

The artist’s sketches. Traces of intention; the journey from nothing to something, marked on unintended pieces of paper, exposed to unexpected curious gazes.

PETRIe • 17th October 2021

Kindwashing: A Critique of Contemporary Danish Design— PETRIe

In their graduation project, aptly titled Kindwashing Kills, Jasmin and Louis formulate a verbal and visual critique of a Danish design scene they’ve come to see as “self-reinforcing of own cultural narratives.” Their creative gesture is here one of...

PETRIe • 17th October 2021

Yuki Hayama — PETRIe

Yuki Hayama works at the crossroads of ceramics/pottery and painting. He creates his meticulous designs without drafts or preliminary painting – the present moment of the act of painting lovingly blended with histories from the past and hopes for the...

PETRIe • 17th October 2021

Recalibrating human connection: In conversation with Atticus —

Canadian poet Atticus has been called “the most famous poet you’ve never heard of” and the “world’s most tattooable poet.” Choosing anonymity over fame has allowed Atticus a different type of access to the spotlight – one mediated by a more intriguing...

PETRIe • 17th October 2021

Protests - Ways of Looking —

Photographer Morgan Hill Murphy joined the recent Black Lives Matter protests in London, in an effort to support and stand with those affected by the critical struggle against systemic racism, violence, and prejudice our society faces today. This...

PETRIe • 13th November 2020

Everything ends and the show begins — An interview with photographer Michele Brancati

Originally from Italy, now based in Germany, Michele Brancati focuses on photojournalism. He traces his love for photography to first encounters with the greats of the mediums of photography and cinema at the University of Bologna. His work is indeed...

This is Odense • 12th November 2020

View from the mud

“A world [is] the sum of many things – the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns – the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense of the now.” - Frank Herbert, Dune Looking at Thomas Klein’s...

This is Odense • 12th November 2020

Bodytecture - Archaeology of today

“Bodytecture” is a touching series of works by artist Dan Stockholm, currently on show at gallery M100. Moving around the selected works is one of those rare and beautiful experiences of discovery, of poetry jumping out of your body, when you didn’t...

PETRIe • 6th July 2020

A more meaningful physical future. The designs of Hank Beyer and Alex Sizemore —

Industrial designers Hank Beyer and Alex Sizemore present a new series in their portfolio of objects designed to challenge commonly held positions on the function and purpose of objects that surround us. For the Rest of Us is a series of recognisable...

PETRIe • 6th July 2020

Living generously together. Thoughts on a riverbed —

We live together because there is no other way. The lives we have built are intricately connected and dependent on each other. The alternative to togetherness is not isolation, but better togetherness. Or so we thought. The question of how we live...

PETRIe • 14th October 2019

The heavy body and the poetic self: exile into the sensuous society —

The Sisters Hope manifesto revolves around the ideas of sensuous society and sensuous learning, formulated in response to the 2008 economic crash. With a solid theoretical framework based on the works of John Dewey, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Antonio...