The industrial, serially produced raffia bags can be seen everywhere in the countryside, carrying all sorts of produce, waste, and also animals. The bag stimulates an almost Pavlovian response in most, being immediately associated with immobility, lifelessness, and restriction of freedom; many animals find their untimely end in these contraptions, suffocating, drowning, or starving to death. These powerfully negative and visceral associations provided a contrast to the scene witnessed, where the nonconformist mode of transportation provided a rite of passage of sorts and a supposed change of destiny. From one person with a dog too many, to one lacking a dog, this exchange cleanses the ”sins” of the raffia bag.
The bags are inscribed with doodle-like schemes and most have text made using industrial stencils - a choice that reflects the patterns of thinking individuals apply to existence often without questioning their validity, utility or morality, leaving little place for improvement or open discussion. The interventions themselves are reflections on the relationships between man and dog, between language and the way it forms and enables certain habits and attitudes. Many popular Romanian sayings - and not only - imply a somewhat negative perception of the canines. They appear as either disturbers of the common order, lesser beings compared to others, agents either too passive or too active. The bags tell the story of the dogs of Hundorf - “the village of the dogs”, as the inhabitants themselves call it - with their heartbreaking relationship to humans and the environment they’ve been born into. The installation is an exercise in empathy and reflection on many a powerless creature in a seemingly irrational system of existence of which they are a victim.
