Identity and Social Representations within The Craftsmen Fair in Craiova, Romania

Abstract (English)

The Craftmen Fair is organized in Craiova, a city of Romania, in the day of Saint Dumitru. In 2019, it celebrated its XXVIth edition. It gathers craftsmen from all over Romania, here you can find traditional art – ceramics of Oboga, Horezu, pitchforks from Valcea ethnographic area, skinners from Bihor, popular costumes from all over Romania etc. We propose the analysis of the ‘traditional art’ objects, their story of the producing and their consumption into the urban area, which are subscribed on a symbolical axis between ‘to bargain’ and ‘to negotiate’ the value, the authenticity. The metaphor of ‘bargaining’ preserves the marks of the local aspect, of the rather occult interests, unexpressed directly, but accepted tacitly, which fascinates through ‘text’, through the local colour, through the sudden familiarisation that establishes between the performers; that of the ‘negotiation’ implies the rationality, the construction, interests formulated ‘contractually’, predictability, transparency – at least as rhetoric necessity. Thus, a question is aroused: who are the buyers? The identification of the ‘consumers’ of ‘traditional art’ and the analysis of their impulse of buying can unravel interesting information on their identity. Everyone finds themselves amidst these silent narrations of the artefacts. Negotiation-bargain, choice or impulse of buying… The dialogue with the artisans seems to show few aspects of these stories told by the objects. Some of the traditional craftsmen have adopted an ‘ethnographic’ fragmentary discourse; others ‘reconstruct’ artefacts studying archives, archaeological collections from museums. The silent narratives of traditional art artefacts may speak about authenticity and preservation practice.
The metaphor of ‘bargaining’, respectively of ‘negotiation’ of the value, ‘authenticity’ of objects of ‘traditional art’ is articulated through constant relating to the contemporary cultural context and to the redefinition of these artefacts as goods involved in complex economic relations, into a specific economic and cultural circuit. The social-symbolic space of the craftsmen’s fair allows their temporary activation. The romanticisation of the small communities reproduces a symbolic horizon of a ‘genuine community’. The ‘bargaining’ and the ‘negotiation’ are met, are interconnected in this ‘reinvented’ space, in which the rural-urban dialogues are re-established, in which the economic calculation is present, and it is slightly occulted by the ‘old-times’ stories of the ‘recent’ artefacts. This mixture of old and new, of ‘kitsch’ and ‘authentic’, of history and recovery, of personalisation and vanishing in a past considered significant, fixes a particular horizon – a space characterised by a specific sensoriality.
Some of the recent artisans ‘have gained’ a bookish ‘traditional-ethnographic culture’, which they insert in the discourses on the artefacts meant for the economic circuit, for this reason resorting to possible ‘certificates of guarantee’: diplomas, archive documents that attest the ‘similarity’ with the new products etc.