Matched Society – a Documented Active Art Project about the Need to Be Together
The Matched Society project, initiated by VAR Association, unfolded as a documentation phase between March and July 2024, within a multidisciplinary team. From July to September 2024, the project entered a full artistic curatorial process, culminating in a series of podcasts and a traveling interactive installation—cultural artifacts that archive, through active art, the precariousness, vulnerabilities, and sparks of hope in the ways we shape our sense of self and identity within romantic relationships.
The ability to create a metanarrative—an artistic cultural experience that reflects how we relate to the deeply personal and sharply defined issue of finding fulfillment in choosing a partner—reveals how our individual lives are subjected to social structures and embedded in the ethical context of the social, cultural, and economic environments we inhabit.
The three artists who led the documentation—Vero Nica, Jenniffer Corrales, and Oana Hodade—traced the evolution of the romantic landscape starting from the personal ads of ladies and gentlemen between 1870 and 1939. Their research continued from 1940 onwards, highlighting the distinctive void during the communist era, when matrimonial ads disappeared, followed by the transitional years of 1990–2000 and the subsequent explosion of internet usage, including the recent emergence of dating apps.
The voices of widows between the world wars, or of dowry-bearing girls seeking kind souls for peaceful marriages, as well as polished ladies and gentlemen from good families—well-mannered, presentable, and “without nerves,” distinguished or well-educated—reconstruct a simple and sincere world, where communication was candid and irresistibly ingenuous. Notably, ads were paid by the word, and anonymous replies were discouraged. (Please respond in detail and without anonymity. In the newspaper.)
This reconnection with the cultural experiences of our predecessors unveils intimate and private universes, historically less visible. The act of relating to and managing the need for marriage—by presenting oneself through the potential benefits of partnership—reinforces the role of marriage as a protective and desirable arrangement for both men and women.
Even in the post-communist period, matrimonial ads continued, catering to the same needs for safety—both financial and social—often idealizing life abroad (e.g., marriage as a means to emigrate, as revealed in the archival materials of that time).
The explosion of the internet shifted relational paradigms, influenced by the feminist reclamation of equal opportunities, the pervasive impact of pornography, and the increasingly competitive dynamics of relationships shaped by capitalism’s almost bureaucratic logic.
This structural shift between print and online media was also identified by project experts—sociologist Mihai S. Rusu and psychologist Doinița Elena Nanu—as a process of self-commodification and changing motivations: whereas print ads involved individuals engaging their personal repertoire toward monogamy and marriage, the online landscape, especially with the advent of dating apps, ushered in a form of “gamification.” The medium and its users became instrumentalized, facilitating the pluralization of relationships and the blurring of gender differences. Everyone is seduced by the promise of potential and easy access to others—an experience that starts playfully but can quickly become burdensome.
Sharing defense mechanisms, difficult questions about one’s own desires, aspirations, and patterns of idealization reveals how love—the ability to be moved by inexplicable signs or irrational details—remains a vital topic of both our psychic and social lives.
The testimonials, gathered through interviews with a highly active young adult audience, reflect an overwhelmed world where dating apps are the sharp-edged tool. The artists involved—and their neutral, unfiltered voices—are enhanced by a post-human sound design created by artist Vlaicu Golcea (featuring Vero Nica, Ionuț Grama, Vlad Nemeș, Florina Maria, Mihai Vasilescu, Jenniffer Corrales), revealing a world of residual desires weakened by reciprocity norms, but also fantasies liberated from the constraints of past generations. The recorded micronarratives speak of distance and strangeness, painful forms of discrimination, suspicion, ambiguity, as well as humor and curiosity.
When asked about the documented material, the participating artists pinpointed the defining outcome of this hyperconnected culture: loneliness and the transactional nature of interactions. Ionuț Grama emphasized the invalidating spirit of this seemingly permissive environment, where “anything is possible” often masks a deep lack of responsibility. We complain about others while ironically finding amusement in it, as this self-centered causality—focused on personal pleasure or the need for validation—pushes interactions toward anonymity and disconnection from identity or future projection.
Life, in general, is complicated, and though these apps promise the illusion of informality and simplicity, what once felt playful may ultimately lead to frustration. What truly matters for staying grounded in reality and protecting mental health is more humor, belief in chance, and openness to real-life surprises—adventure and experimentation, real-world connection, and perhaps… less time online.
The interviews with dating app users highlighted their deep need to confess, to express themselves—channeled through a transformative process of artistic sublimation, validation, encouragement, and dialogue. Art can be therapeutic through detachment and delegation, enabling artists to connect with real-world issues and prompting all of us to confront difficult questions about desires, aspirations, joys, and the absurdities of the world we live in.
The artistic output of this project, rooted in real-life material, mirrors the same obsessions and struggles we all face—a shared recognition of misunderstandings and a deep, urgent need to be together.
To be continued…