Roxana Murariu – Pieces of life scribbled in pixels

One and Four Moons

October 27, 2026 by Roxana

Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs (1965) art piece presents a chair in three forms: the physical object, a photograph of it, and a dictionary definition of “chair”. This piece belongs to Kosuth’s Protoinvestigations series and is regarded as one of the earliest examples of conceptual art. Image credit: Wikipedia One interpretation is that the piece outlines three ways to know an object: encountering it, picturing it, and defining it. None of them is absolute on its own. Depending on the object, some people …

Short Stories (I)

May 11, 2026May 10, 2026 by Roxana

Introducere – Intro RomânăPentru aceste povestiri, traducerea nu este un pas care vine la final, după ce textul e gata. Este o parte esențială a procesului de scriere. De multe ori, în timp ce caut să traduc ritmul sau cuvântul potrivit într-o limbă, descopăr ceva nou și mă întorc să editez textul original. De aceea, în această serie de scurte povestiri (care sper să devină într-o zi o carte bilingvă) veți găsi mereu textele împreună. EnglishFor these short stories, translation isn’t an afterthought. It …

A Short Anatomy of the Browser Tabs

March 22, 2026March 22, 2026 by Roxana

Perhaps one day I will become the kind of person who reads 6,000 words on Roman aqueducts on a Tuesday evening. But right now, my Roman aqueduct browser tab sits pixels away from a live blog of a geopolitical tragedy, which sits pixels away from a Wikipedia entry for a painting, which sits pixels away from a page on pension funds, which sits pixels away from a stew recipe. The proximity of these worlds is absurd. In physical space, I would have to walk …

Notes from the Svalbard Cache, published 4026 CE

March 11, 2026March 8, 2026 by Roxana

We look back upon the people of the early networked societies not with scorn, but with reverence. Our understanding of the second millennium was permanently changed when our excavators breached the permafrost vaults of the far north and discovered a frozen city of text and images. From the Svalbard cache, we were able to partially reconstruct the twilight of that era. The world of these people was full of invisible spirits that listened without ears and spoke without lungs. While they also built larger …

Bits and Bobs – A Live Commonplace Book

February 15, 2026 by Roxana

What follows is a collection of thoughts and pieces of wisdom I have gathered so far. Some are my own words, others are quotes or ideas that have resonated with me along the way. This project is intended as a live commonplace online notebook, updated often. Some parts may seem inconsistent, even contradictory. Life itself tends to disagree with solid certainties. If you, dear reader, stumble upon an idea that feels irrelevant, wrong, or contrary to everything you’ve lived, maybe it isn’t for you. Skim …

Wristwatches or Strapping Time to Wrists

January 26, 2026January 25, 2026 by Roxana

Today, watches are more or less universal, folded into phones and fitness trackers or strapped to wrists of all kinds. And yet, not too long ago, in the 19th century, different ways of wearing time were sharply gendered and coded. For men, pocket watches coordinated time. Railways depended on standardised pocket watches to prevent collisions and make timetables possible at all. The logic of precise, shared time leaked into other social contexts. Catching the right train, showing up to court on time, and making …

Writing Insights (2025)

December 30, 2025 by Roxana

In 1965, the conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth set up an installation titled One and Three Chairs. It consisted of three things: a photo of a chair, a physical wooden chair, and a dictionary definition of the word “chair.” Kosuth was asking the question that haunts every writer: Which one is the real chair? The object, the image, or the definition? Now shrink the problem down to a single word: red. A car, a winter coat, and a traffic light can all qualify as red. …