Km. 0 (Kilometer 0) 

Km. 0 (Kilometer 0) is a project conceived of and directed by American-based artist Oana Botez with writer/performer Mike Ladd, researcher Natalie Romero and producer Ruth Moe.

Building on her award-winning work as a costume and set designer, Km. 0 will integrate autobiographical detail of Botez’s childhood and adolescence in Romania, and evolve an innovative visual language to examine what it means to be Romanian today given the country’s legacy of displacement and socio-political violence. It is a story about a personal and national struggle for survival in the face of oppression, and the fight to define one’s own identity after existing in a cultural void.

Km. 0 will piece together interviews with Romanians and the Romanian diaspora to examine how their identity has been defined by history, and how they present and identify themselves to the world.

Conceived as a performative installation, Km. 0 will splice live action with scenes/interviews from the documentary. It will take place in an abandoned Communist-era building in Bucharest and integrate disparate theatrical modes that explode dramatic structure: filmed documentary footage contrasted with live performance; spoken-word, opera and electroacoustic music; and hip-hop dance and ballet, using American and Romanian artists.