The Golden Lie that Kills. MindBomb for Roșia Montană.

Mindbomb’s action The Golden Lie that Kills – MindBomb for Roşia Montană aims to raise public awareness in Romania about the toxic propaganda used in Rosia Montana of Gold Corporation’s (RMGC) media campaign.

Aggressively broadcast on TV channels and across a wide range of Romanian media, RMGC’s publicity aims at embellishing the image of the company. RMGC has flooded Romania with its brand of brutal colonialism; promoting the cynical politics of profit; this despite the huge costs that it entails: the destruction of an area and of a community, the wiping out of four mountains from the face of the earth and the demolition of a unique cultural patrimony of global significance.

In order to raise awareness about this danger, thousands of Mindbomb’s posters were posted in the streets of cities, towns and villages in Romania during the night from 11th to 12th April 2012. The action whose scope has been to raise awareness about the danger of the lies featured in RMGC’s PR campaign was supported by roughly 200 volunteers who distributed the posters in 43 towns throughout Romania, including: Alba Iulia, Arad, Abrud, Bucharest, Bacău, Bârlad, Bistrița, Baia Mare, Botoșani, Brașov, Câmpeni, Constanța, Cluj, Craiova, Deva, Huedin, Iași, Luduș, Medgidia, Mediaș, Onești, Oradea, Pitești, Piatra Neamț, Ploiești, Râmnicu Vâlcea, Roșia Montană, Rădăuți, Reșița, Satu Mare, Sebeș, Sibiu, Suceava, Târgoviște, Târgu Mureș, Târgu Ocna, Tecuci, Timișoara, Turda, Valea Arieșului, Zalău.

The volunteers are united in their determination to defend Rosia Montana until it is saved!

Lies have short legs, says an old proverb. However, in Romania when a lie is gilded with money; dressed-up as publicity and supported by those in power, it can blind people’s minds and the laws in force. A gilded lie kills consciences as easily as cyanide kills life.

RMGC’s PR campaign has since many years offered the lie of a would-be economic and social paradise where everyone will in one way or another reap from the “benefits” of cyanide mining. During this time Romanian NGOs and citizens have constantly exposed this lie. The “moti” (the local population in Rosia Montana and in the region) by refusing to leave their homes; students and young professionals by occupying and protesting in front of ministerial buildings, squares, stadiums because they refuse to give up Rosia Montana. Scholars and the Romanian Academy have also, in their turn, drawn attention to the inherent and significant risks that RMGC’s murky mine entails. They are all living proofs that RMGC’s bait of “a piece of gold” is sheer bribery that Romanian people can do without; particularly when what is at stake are the lives of other Romanian people, Romanian patrimony and its national identity; the endurance of its mountain ranges, waters and the strategic resources of the country, namely our children’s inheritance.

The gold underneath Rosia Montana belongs to all Romanian people. It will be taken away from us and we will be left with cyanide instead without having had a say on it; as has been the case for the past 74 years. The governing parties and the mining company want to give us a golden bullet; omitting to say the bullet will take away our conscience, dignity and possibly even our lives.

The Mindbomb Project was initiated in 2002 by a group of artists, architects, journalists and writers as a pioneering action of using art as a form of protest. This brought about the introduction of the truly autonomous socio-political poster in Romanian culture which has aimed at hacking into the mainstream discourse of politics, mass-media and advertising industry.

Mindbomb’s latest poster campaign is raising the flag about the very basic but grossly obscured trade-off entailed by the planned gold mine at Rosia Montana: through cyanide leaching, the environment and our national heritage will be ground into oblivion with the false promise that we will all get richer as a result.”

The ultimate purpose of these actions has been the creation of an autonomous space for the purpose of dialogue and debate that initiates social change. MindBomb started as a challenge to the consumer culture and later developed into a broader critique of contemporary Romanian society and its public space.