As well as promoting academic research and original conceptual thinking in the field of the imaginary, the Centre encourages artistic initiatives that explore the realm of the fantastic in a variety of modes and manners. It has thus acted as catalyst to the work of a small circle of writers who came together in Cluj in the ‘90s, whose writing features techniques aimed at erasing the boundaries between fiction and reality, as for instance, hallucination, delirium, dream, nightmare, trance and ecstasy. These so-called “Neo-Onirists” are Corin Braga, Ruxandra Cesereanu, Judith Meszáros and Ovidiu Pecican, authors that share a common poetics and sensitivity.
Manifestos and neo-oniric literature recapture established derealization strategies and revisit parallel worlds, valorizing their metaphysical, psychological and aesthetic potential, as discovered/ invented by the romantics, the surrealists or by onirists of the ‘60s and the ‘70s such as Dimov and Tepeneag.
On these bases, Ruxandra Cesereanu organizes a creative writing workshop of oniric literature. The first seminar, started in 2002, consisted of three series of writing sessions. Two further workshops have been organized, taking as inspiration models respectively Boccaccio and Roth, and the One Thousand and One Nights.