Jean-Lorin Sterian

Bucharest/Romania — Humanities, Solitude fellow 2015–2017

Jean-Lorin Sterian is a researcher, writer, artist and performer currently based in Bucharest/Romania. In 2008, he opened lorgean theatre, the first living-room theater in Romania. He has published several fiction books and one anthropological work related to his experiences of turning his house into a public space for performances. Currently, he is researching signs of what he has stated to be »homemade culture «, meaning theater, visual and performance art based only in private spaces from all over the world.

Akademie Schloss Solitude Profile

Articles with and by Jean-Lorin Sterian:

Homemade culture blog

THE PICNIC PAVILION: Unfiltered, Unadulterated, and For the Love of Art

Gabriel Adams in conversation with Jean-Lorin Sterian
On a less common morning in May 2014, I went out to drink my coffee in the beautiful backyard of the house where I had been staying overnight. There was another guy in the yard who I talked to. I invited him to the show I was going to present with Alice Pons that evening in the first edition of a house festival. The name of the festival was Hors Lits.

Homemade culture blog

A Domestic Picture of the Quarantine

by Raluca Moșescu-Bumbac, with a postscript by Jean-Lorin Sterian
In May 2020, before the end of the quarantine period, we had the sixth edition of HomeFest, the Bucharest festival of home theater, performance, and related arts. The shows were given online, live performances in artists' homes, attended by audiences from all over the country and abroad. Entrance tickets were symbol-pictures of the one object in their home, that signified the quarantine. The 70 images that we received reveal how people lived through this period of restraints – a unique time in the modern history of humanity – and how they felt about it.

Homemade culture blog

Hors Lits

with Leonardo Montecchia by Jean-Lorin Sterian
The longest surviving and ongoing diffused biennial project (until the pandemic’s spread), seems to be Hors Lits, initiated by Leonardo Montecchia in Montpellier (2005) and continued in many other cities in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Tunisia, Mexico, Chile, Austria, and the UK. The Hors Lits format involves a tour of the city with stops in the four apartments in which the performances are held.