Situated between performance and film, Living Monuments I & II reflects on the invisible connections between people and places by staging these “living monuments” in the urban environment. Its two parts -formed by the two groups of videos within the installation, named “Acts” by the artist, were developed on the sites of two artificially built public parks in Hamburg. Realized with the help of unemployed citizens, the parks transposed the desire of the German administration from the beginning of the 20th century, to integrate into large cities places of recreation and closeness to nature by creating ‘a public park for all social categories.’ However, just like many other utopian projects set in contrast with the violent course of history, its construction came to a hault and was resumed after World War I. One of the sites filmed by the artist, the Altona Volkspark, was to host a monument that was never completed. A visual metaphor for humanity in the form of a living organism, Living Monuments unfolds as a performance caught on camera, in which 15 people, different in origin, skin colour, gender and age, come together as a single body. Each person holds in their right hand the head of their immediate neighbour, who in turn holds the head of their neighbour until the circle closes. The apparently simple scene repeats itself, growing in intensity while also remaining open to the interpretation of the viewer. Working with a diverse group of performers, many of them first or second generation immigrants in Germany, Mihai reflects on a history in transition, underlying the idea of a social and political balance that depends on the other to be maintained. In today’s context of constant ideological, social and geopolitical conflict, potentiated by colonial discourses and their underlying power structures, Mihai questions, in the form of an intimate and immersive encounter, our relationship with the other. Appealing to the collective societal ethos, her practice foregrounds the notion of humanity in a broad sense. (Cristina Bută)