Still now is then forever

In 2014 during WTAF we initiated a debate on the topic of future of alternative artist run initiatives

If it was for having more people speaking English in Bulgaria may be they would have appreciated the 3 day discussion with leaders of artist run initiatives form all over Europe and even beyond!

What became clear is that local perspectives and context are no longer attractive to us, and we laid our cards of making Europe our home and really use it, also make full advantage of that fact.

We circulate to different places and meet new people on the basis of our contacts, which make us richer in lesser time. One thing was clear – we don’t need to race with others in our younger years in order to have our first million by the age of 23, because we are to change the system which values that million on the first place.

We had representatives from Sweden, Bulgaria Latvia, Ireland and UK.

It was generally misunderstood what we are to talk about not because we talk strangely about it , but because topics of that sort have not even been introduced within the academic circles and it is also true that the academics do not mingle with the rest of the people .

There were a lot of topics presented and one of them stuck in my mind about alternative and mass culture. What would happen if alternative becomes stronger- it will become main stream culture (Kaspars)

How to make cultural products more valued in the society, which inevitably will ensure the above mentioned

Is it necessary to become main stream culture out of being alternative on the first time and what can we achieve by doing so

What is the artistic drive for each and every one of us that makes us want to do art and create

Those are a few of the questions that we had to nibble about

And I am not saying this was an extensive dispute which has an end point – it has just started, so until next time we will meet at another compartment of our new home called Europe

Correct me if I am wrong!

Поправете ме ако греша

Представих си че целия град е платно в което рисувам с представата си в него – намеренията и връзката ми с другите хора е една линия контур , ако не намеря връзка с този с които говоря няма да има и контур.

Моята  представа за това как  и какъв трябва да бъдеш е заложена в обрисуването на града.

Да влизам в непонятни пространства е моята специалност, ако не съм в правилната посока – има два варианта

Или да си заложа моят авторитет и да приема съвета и да ме поправят

Или с зъби и нокти се боря и повишавам тон в името на истината, която така браня както мечка малкото си.

В повечето от случайте се почва с пъвия вариант, но ако не ми дават съвет които да е адекватен а се впускат в борба на его и власт, в която аз също не отстъпвам защото спасявам 5тия елемент както нарисувах през 2000 „ Втората жена на Ной”

– Clairvoyance не случайно беше мотото на фестивала ни през 2010.

Изкуството има мощ като нищо друго, защото оправдава или подлага на съмнение защо сме тук.

Затова и понякога прибързвам защото са прекалено много от случайте в които трябва да браня нещо свято , и хапя и блъскам в отговор .

Дълбоко в себе си мразя конфликта , но може би и несъотвествието идва и оттам – аз съм готова да се обявя в грешка стига да ми се покаже по нормален начин това – ако не го получа в отговор – аз ставам агресивна !

Нали знаете, когато се чувствате че сте си на мястото и това което правите е плод на истинска радост и усилия в правилната(според вас) посока , оправдана от успеха с която се увенчава. Това е същото с целия този наш труд – разликата е, че наместването според очакванията какво и защо се прави не е посрещната адекватно и разминаванията са  съществени.

Трохите от замисъла на повечето събития организирани в София е трудно да събереш сам – трябва доста енергия за това – нека има повече случайност в избора ни на посещения на културни събития.

Despite, the shift from industrial to service and cultural production, discussed in the beginning of this literature review, changes became visible in the city setting. According to Savitch (1988, p.5): “Post-industrialism should be seen as transformation of the built environment”. The structures, left from the industrial era were to decay or be reinvented, reconstructed – given a new context. The regeneration by turning former industrial buildings and quarters into cultural consumption and production spots is one of the possible paths.

Where creative industries choose to locate became an important question, as more and more cities are trying to attract them. Researches on creative industries location choice have described different factors, which are influential for the decision. A division between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ location factors can be outlined (Dzembowska-Kowalska and Funck, 2000; Florida, 2002; Murphy and Redmond, 2009; Musterd and Murie, 2011). Hard factors represent the so-called classic (Murphy and Redmond, 2009) location qualities, which are tangible and represent the economic and physical rationale of a certain location. Soft factors, on the other hand are intangible and complex to measure. They can be the “look and feel” (Helbrecht, 1998), the atmosphere and identity (Zukin, 1989) or the aesthetic qualities of the surrounding environment (Smit, 2011). The first group is hard factors, also described as ‘classic’. They represent the physical rationale of the building or the location (external building scale and style, internal space configuration, basic surrounding infrastructure, proximity to the city center), the financial aspect (rent, price per square meter and possibility to extend accommodation, municipal taxes and available subsidies) or some downgrades, which can influence the decision (access limitations to disused buildings and accessibility by public transport, car or other modes of transportation).

The soft factors represent more intangible qualities, connected to the aesthetic, historical and cultural qualities of the building and the location. In the reviewed literature, this group of factors are argued to be really important for creative industries, because of their aesthetic reflexivity and sensibility towards historical and heritage values of the built form.

On the other hand, cities all over the world are left with material heritage from the previous – industrial economy. Factories, mills, power stations, water towers, warehouses etc. still exist and often shape the urban landscape. Those buildings are calling for re-use and new context. Authors claim, that creative industries appreciate historical and former industrial built form (Zukin, 1989; Hutton, 2006; Heebels and van Aalst, 2010) and are aesthetically reflexive towards their working environment (Drake, 2003; Hutton, 2006; Smit, 2011). Former industrial buildings can be attractive for creative industries, not only because of their historical and aesthetic qualities, but also because of the cheap rent they can offer (Champion, 2010; Rantisi et al., 2006), their physical configuration (high ceilings, big windows, big spaces) and the freedom for adapting the space for specific needs (Hutton, 2006).

The current research will make an attempt to show if the existing literature on western cities and settings is applicable on Sofia and its creative industries. Furthermore, we will make an attempt to bridge the gap in qualitative research on location choices of creative industries in Sofia. Narrowing down the focus on former industrial buildings as a location choice, which are the factors that influenced creative industries to make this choice?

The case of Sofia is a unique context for conducting the research for this master thesis, for three main reasons.

First of all, research in creative industries and their location choice in Sofia are scarce. The ACRE research team addresses some of the location factors, including the ones, connected to the soft infrastructure. However, this study focuses only on some creative industries and includes knowledge-based industries like financial and law services, which makes the studied sample not representative for creative industries in Sofia. Furthermore, the ACRE team focuses on creative and knowledge workers and not on the industries and organizations.

The mapping of the creative industries in Sofia, conducted by the Cultural Economy Observatory is comprehensive and based on data, collected by the National Statistics Institute, which makes it reliable. However, it shows that CCI have major contribution to the economy of Sofia and are stable source of employment, but does not examine the factors, which influence their location choice. A research on creative industries location choice has not been done in the context of Sofia.

Second of all, although the overall situation of the former industrial built form reuse in Sofia is still a big question mark, there are organizations that choose to locate in them. There are creative industries, which develop their projects there and make them their working environment. Examining the factors, which influence their decision in combination with the already proven contribution of the sector to the city economy, might result in higher attention towards these buildings from public and private parties.

Third of all, although it is a post-socialist city, Sofia’s creative industries development is dynamic and interesting setting to be examined. It is a complicated situation, because of the lack of statistical data, blurry policy making and no actual planning.

Focusing on the city’s industrial heritage, there are two types of former industrial built form in Sofia. First are the pre-war period properties, situated in the present city center, or the neighboring areas. Second are the big industrial landscapes and buildings, constructed during the socialist period, usually in the edge of the city and engaged in heavy industry production. After the central government fell in 1989, industries were either closed or privatized. Re-use of these buildings is a big question mark. However, there are creative industries, which chose former industrial buildings as their working environment.

The empirical research consists of five in-depth interviews with the owners/directors of the studied organizations. They are as it follows: a design gallery/studio in former paper house (Sklada); a tea house (Tea House in the Factory), organizing cultural events in the same building; an architecture studio (Conveyer) with an office in former sugar factory; a non profit creative organization (Water Tower Art Fest), responsible for one of the most popular contemporary art festivals in the city, using an old water tower as a main venue; and an advertising agency and studio (Fabrica 126) in a former mill. The map on p. 50 shows the studied organization’s location in Sofia. They all moved to the former industrial buildings in the past 6 years, Fabrica 126 is the most recent case, they are in this building since the fall of 2012.

The main characteristics of the studied organizations were not surprising – small creative enterprises, flat organizational structure and relaxed working culture. For all of the respondents, urban context was essential. They also proved to be influenced a lot by aesthetic and intangible qualities, both of the built form and the urban environment.

All the studied creative organizations operate in one of the creative industries sector – design, architecture, visual arts and advertising. The Tea House and the Fabrica 126 are also dealing with event management and organization of cultural events like art exhibitions, concerts and poetry meetings. Part of them are involved in the creation of products with ‘sign value’ attached to them, for which  aesthetic qualities are essential – advertisement materials and videos, buildings and design objects. The other part is focused more on cultural production with intangible qualities and meanings attached to it – exhibitions, art festival, musical concerts, and creative workshops.

The empirical research proved that creative industries, located in former industrial buildings in Sofia are attracted by the ‘look and feel’ of the old built form. They are also highly reflexive towards aesthetics both of the built form and the urban environment.

The results also confirm that there is a special relationship between the place and the creative process, according to the respondents. Furthermore, the interviewees also confirmed that there is connection between the building and the image of their organization.

Hard factors had certain influence on all of the studied organization’s decision. An interesting distinction can be drawn from the described results. There are three factors that were totally ignored and did not determine the location choice in any way. The reasons are different for all of the organizations. However, a tendency could be distinguished – all of the interviewees had no expectations for financial help from the public sector, so they did not consider it as a determinant factor for their decision.

Former industrial buildings are still not recognized as important for preservation and re-use from public authorities in Bulgaria. Some of the problems, associated with old industrial buildings in Sofia are: no public stimulation of the revitalization processes and private investments and extensive problems with ownership of the buildings, inherited by the privatization processes in the 90’s. The results show that public authorities are still considered to be inefficient and unhelpful. This can be further understood by the answers of two of the interviewees (Conveyer and Fabrica 126), who said that the best they can expect from the municipality is not to stand on their way. As for the access by public transport and the basic surrounding infrastructure, they were not considered influential for the location decision of the creative industries, located in former industrial buildings in Sofia.

The empirical findings show that three of the soft factors group, influenced the location decision of the creative industries, situated in former industrial buildings in Sofia. The distinctiveness and authenticity, historical and heritage values and freedom that the space offers all were considered as essential qualities of the chosen buildings and were implemented when the location decision was made.

Sanja Spassova

watertowerartfest.com/en/

Since 2006 NGO – IME (ime.sonance.net) has initiated art events around and in the abandoned and neglected for decays Water tower (currently not in use) in the area of Lozenetz – Sofia and also the train station Poduene 2007.

The first year the idea was involving cleaning up the space around the Water tower as a statement for the local community and not only, with the aim to attract the authority’s in charge attention and take care of such valuable from architectural and historic point of view buildings – populating it with fresh energy expressed at that time through the music of musicians part of the NGO and also artmospheric.org and the New castle DJ producer team sharing their wonderful music and visuals with us.

Next edition of the Art fest was “Chisto – Clean” at station Poduene 2007 – a place notorious with its bad reputation were we cleaned it and projected short films inside the hall; outside we had a musical concert for a day including the minority social groups taking part in the activity as well as addicts in rehabilitation process from a private clinic Kantchelov and under supervision of social workers.

The next issue of the Water tower art fest 2008 was under the motto of – Urban Guardian Angels; it involved more of the municipality of Lozenez in Sofia support;

the garden around the tower was cleaned again, this time presenting video installations inside the tower as well as short films and installations, a photo contest was launched and a concert in the close by area.

During the third year in 2009 of the artists initiative, the whole of the space around the tower was inhabited with workshops of different kind, such as: restoration of an old furniture, car boot sale, compost workshop and also ecological way of life workshop, and in the evening there was screening of experimental and art films for 3 days; inside the tower after a call of proposal a few video installations were chosen and artists from Europe and Singapore and Armenia came and presented their works.

The initiative has developed from a small idea of making the building known and used for non-commercial purposes raising an awareness of inhabiting urban areas with more dignity and notion for past and future as an intrinsic part of our life.

Water tower art events 2010 – short description:

The theme “Clairvoyance” was the idea that brought together a multitude of interests. It assembled the efforts of organizers, the creative energy of artists, the support of public institutions and local business and coupled with the unending enthusiasm of the visitors of the Water Tower Art Fest.

The event awakened the sensitivity and to cultivate the interest of audience members for the way contemporary art addresses current social topics such as: modern life in large urban areas, lack of communication and common ground for discussion among opposing social strata, and the loss of connectivity with nature coupled with the abdication of responsibility for its maintenance.

We estimate that the goals of the project: socialization of abandoned city terrains, decentralization, inclusivity, attracting new audiences and diversifying the offerings for contemporary art in the capital were successfully met.

The 2010 edition of the Water Tower Art Fest took place within five days (June 25th – 30th)  in three location in and around Sofia: 1) the old water tower of Lozents; 2) the rotunda and old city bath in Bankia; and 3) the subterranean gallery with remnants of antique Serdika (now Sofia) located on the corners of blvd. Maria Luiza and Ekzarh Josif str.

More then 30 artists representing the countries of Sweden, Spain, France, UK, Turkey, Armenia and Bulgaria lent their creative energies to the festival. Apart from presenting original works, installations and performances the artists conducted workshops for children and adults and participated in a open debate entitled “Alternative Art Spaces” held on June 28 in the courtyard of the water tower in Lozents. The festival program was supplemented by musical performances by Bulgarian artists such as “Popara” and DJ Cinnamint, which our visitors could enjoy while making purchases at the artisanal art market set up on the festival grounds.

Thanks to its diverse programming and well executed marketing strategy the forth edition of the Water Tower Art Fest was the most successful so far. We had 900 visitors who represented a wide socio-demographic range.  On the opening day (June 25th) at the courtyard of the old water tower welcomed 400 visitors, friends, the media, local residents and fans of contemporary art and music. The audience showed their appreciation for the creative adaptive reuse of the old water tower (built in 1929), whose interior was outfitted with video and audio installations that featured the most up-to-date technology available to artists. Thus the exhibition roped together the mute artistry of the tower itself with the outspoken images and sounds of the contemporary artists.

Main venues: Water Tower in region of Lozenets –The tower has been designed by an Austrian architects and build in accordance to French school of building of water towers in 1920s. It stands out with its unique construction and is one of the most interesting architectural sites in the region of upper Lozenec.

Its has quite a logical history behind its rising necessity – to play the important role in bringing water to the higher ( at that time 2 and 3 floor) buildings in the region, situated at the level or higher to the main reservoir in Lozenec, east of the seminary. The architect had in mind that the building would also be used as a watch tower and the citizens of Sofia will take pleasure in watching the view of the city center and the Vitosha Mountain. With its incredible resemblance to a medieval architecture and design, it stands out amongst the buildings of mid 50’s block of flats.

Underground known as the Tower of Serdika – archeological remains of the fortress around the capital of Bulgaria Serdika.  The basement hall of the corner building gives just a glimpse of what the massive wall must have been and how it surrounded like a belt the ancient main city of Serdika. It defined the size of the city for centuries until its final demolition in 15th century after the Ottoman conquest. It was built in 176-180 years, by the roman emperors Mark Aurelius and Commodious.

An old bath close to Sofia n Bankya – build by Zar Ferdinand in the beginning of last century with the purpose to play a role of rehabilitation place and leisure – aesthetically reinforced by its marble sinks and basins and spacious spaces. Today the Big Bath in the town of Bankya, the masterpiece from the beginning of the last century of balneological building, and its territories are abandoned and deserted.(currently under construction started by Municipality of Sofia induced by our actions there in 2010)

The goals in front of us and Obstacles and frustrations – the idea is to bring together people for the same cause and at the same time and work within a group for communicating between artists and play the role of hosting idea-based festival on an empty playground

Where the atmosphere is friendly and understanding

Not being touched by a general problems to the art world – experiencing the immediate outcome of a specific art work and its context and idea

Should it be dealing with cutting edge issues like politics, gender issues, nudity, homosexuality, tolerance towards other ethnicity and minority groups, Respecting other cultures religions and a friendly attitude towards the environment.

All of this done in unusual gallery spaces – like abandoned beautiful buildings with uncertain status and owners, let to be demolished by time and climate.

By populating them afresh with ideas, of non familiar with the situation, artists brings a completely different perspective to the viewers, local citizens, owners of building( in case of private ) or Municipality and  governmental structures- giving them ideas for further development of a particular building, region or social  issue. We are partaking and building a civil society where it doesn’t exist or just old forms of it left. We are helping to fill in a generation gap by taking an active stand on a local level.

By inviting the artists to respond naturally through their artistic talents to a space we provoke our own creativity and ability to see a place, a person/s anew.

The bottom line is:  by inviting to view contemporary art in alternative art space – we invite local people to view and understand the different and raise a dispute over the quality of life in a communal spaces such as are the cities. By accepting the otherness we incite the tolerance towards others and accepting the deviance within ourselves. So the level of tolerance will be pushed further away from the rigid understanding of the world. Thus is not provoking a chaos or anarchy, but a mere co- existence in a small community, a city, a country and so forth.

On a local level we draw a line between the free creativity of persons and elitarian way of looking or partaking in art and the way it could change ones life for the better.

On an international level we induce the communication so to develop a further inspiration by local showcases.

Local art scene ( in our case the Bulgarian art scene)  is restricted by default only to the professionals dealing with art. As far as the mass consumer is concerned with art – it falls in the category of craft or decoration with not much more quality than a mere colour coordinated object fitting into their interior design. By presenting artifacts by contemporary artists dealing in a creative way to the specific surroundings we bring closer to the audience and artists themselves. The audience is specifically intrigued because the exhibit is done in a familiar form their past ( the older generation) spaces reminding them of the specific purposes those buildings had played in the past , while the younger generations experiences the quality of certain aesthetics and how it all fits within the nowadays scene. The artists get to a certain point where they take a stand for the situations they find themselves in and the power art has over any community. And the sentence that “To be an artist you have to be a brave human being “– justifies itself and brings back the slightly forgotten or rather shifted purpose of art to its deserved place within society.

Post photo credit: Yaniv Waissa

I’m going to talk today in relation to my project Still. […] I want to talk to you about the work both in relation to the thinking that informs my practice, the architectural structure of Buzludja and socio-historical context to which this building belongs, and of which I feel it is emblematic.

[…]

          The work’s title, Still, conveys several different meanings that together communicate the sense of time past, passing and to come that I have tried to capture in the work. Stillness describes the condition of the photograph; an image that mechanically captures the dynamic flux of events, rendering periods of duration as stills. Similarly, still life painting uses inanimate objects to depict of everyday events. Furthermore, political ideologies claim to offer stable principles within dynamically changing circumstances, and monumental architecture such as Buzludja works to support this candidacy for permanence. But change is constant, and the word still also conveys another meaning which is useful to my work – a sense of the belatedness; the yet to come. Each of these meanings reflects my thinking about The Memorial House for the Bulgarian Communist Party, which is slowly disintegrating into the earth on top of Mount Buzludja.

The Buzludja monument shares its current condition with much Communist-era East European architecture and socialist realist monuments that are now surrounded by the bustle of commercial activity and the universally recognisable signage of globalised capitalism. Nearly twenty-five years after the collapse of communism, the projected future symbolised by these statues of political leaders, martyrs and heroic workers seems oddly disjointed from the social reality that has emerged around them¹. Such sites have recently become the object of several documentary projects exploring the legacy of communist ideology within Eastern Europe and beyond. Carey Young, whose recent video installation, Memento Park (2010) features shots of communist-era statues in Budapest, states that the statues she filmed now exist in “suspended animation”². A similar fate has befallen late communist-era architecture, and while Frédéric Chaubin’s Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed (2011) celebrates the buildings, Armin Linke & Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss’s Socialist Architecture: The Vanishing Act (2012) examines their status in relation to the contemporary architectural landscape³. Other projects, such as Unfinished Modernisations – Between Utopia and Pragmatism at Belgrade’s Museum of Yugoslav History, have looked to the lessons and unrealised possibilities that such structures still hold for contemporary urban planning.(4) I, too, as part of an ongoing engagement with Bulgarian culture facilitated by my three-year involvement with Water Tower Art Fest, have been drawn to a disintegrating late communist-era structure, Guéorguy Stoilov’s Buzludzha Monument, located in the Buzludzha National Park in Central Bulgaria.

Designed in 1981, this building commemorates both a battle with Turkish armies in 1868 and the Buzludzha Congress in 1891, a meeting which led to the formation of the Bulgarian Socialist Party. My interest lies in how this building, in its current state of entropy, testifies to a shift in Bulgaria’s political compass: how the country’s 1989 rejection of Communism can be seen to correlate with the abandonment and deterioration of this building. Documentary photos of its 1981 opening seem to capture not only a monument to Bulgaria’s Socialist past, but, with the flag-waving crowds, the apparent potential of the country’s Communist future; yet the building now sits atop its mountain as a relic, the left-over ideological construct of an unrealised – or unrealisable – political vision that nevertheless remains as the primary historical precedent for Bulgaria’s current cultural and political make-up. The building is a circular structure. One enters through a spacious ground floor foyer flanked by stair wells on its left and right hands sides that lead up towards a spectacular inner conference room. Four further stair wells then lead up towards a perimeter corridor enabling visitors to circumnavigate the site.

I chose to work with the perimeter corridor, because I wanted to deal with movement and explore the multiple functions performed by this transitory space. Aside from facilitating movement around the site the corridor performs two further functions. It facilitates views of the surrounding landscape through a series of large curved windows set in the outer wall, and supports the depiction of Bulgarian history, rendered in mosaic tiles on the internal wall. I have made a photographic installation designed to contextualize Buzludzha Monument as a part of the contemporary cultural landscape of Bulgaria. The shoot was made on the 16th and 17th of June 2013, a time of year that twenty three years previously the Bulgarian electorate was contemplating its future after the collapse of Communism. I positioned two Russian rangefinder cameras on tripods inside this corridor – a Zorki 4 and and a FED 4, also dating from the 1980s – at the furthest point before the curvature of the corridor took the Zorki camera out of the FED’s field of view. Facing in a clockwise direction the Fed camera took a photograph looking back into the space occupied by the Zorki camera. Then, the Zorki camera looped around the Fed camera, which also turned 180 degrees. In its new position the Zorki camera then looked back on the FED camera, in the position from which the previous shot was taken, from the furthest point before which it disappears out of range. I repeated the process moving cameras and taking photographs every eighteen minutes until after twenty four hours, having circumnavigated the site several times, I had produced eighty exposures; enough to make one full rotation of a slide carousel.

The resulting photographs are projected onto a gallery wall using a 35mm slide projector. Each photograph shows a section of the surrounding landscape of the Stara-Planina, and the camera that took the previous photograph in situ within a particular section of the corridor, which itself shows the murals of Bulgarian history. Each click of the carousel’s rotation continues the movement around the building, with the cameras perpetually moving counter-clockwise in the direction to which their back is turned. The carousel also continually repeats this day in the gallery space, during which the cameras documented this corridor space on multiple occasions, repeatedly re-contextualising these same features and vistas in changing conditions. During the carousel’s rotation the sun sinks to the horizon spraying shards of light throughout the corridor, and throwing complex shadows made by the wreckage of the building’s roof throughout the space. We then see the sun set before the building is suddenly thrown into darkness, a period during which we see nothing inside the building, and only the muted night sky through the congress house’s windows. Next the sun rises again, before we are finally brought back to the midday penetration of overhead sun light casting the space in deep chiaroscuro.

My aim with the work is to invite prolonged engagement with these continually varying representations of the same building. For the entire period of the exhibition the projector continues to rotate allowing visitors to continually view the work, and return to it on multiple occasions. Repetition and variation become key thematics of this serialised representation of Buzludja. The building also becomes the technical support for the work, as the building’s own circumference defines the cameras’ locations and the distance through which the cameras finally travel. Together the exposures offer multiple images of Stoilov’s building, featuring the mosaics produced by a team of Bulgarian artists, the refuse that tourists have left after their forced entry to the site and the wreckage now left by acts of theft, vandalism, and the forces of nature. The building now simultaneously embodies the multiple acts of production and its significance for a contemporary audience lies in the layering of their historical accumulation. In this way, I have invited people before my work to engage in a critical reading of the Buzludja site in its current state.

I intended for the work to take on an allegorical structure in the manner articulated by Craig Owens in his 1983 essay The Allegorical Impulse: Towrds a Theory of Postmodernism. My photographic intervention within the site becomes a vehicle for traversing through and reading the Buzludja site, as well as, through the carrousel’s perpetual rotations, suggesting the accumulation of time within the site. In this way I understand the work to be a palimpsest in the manner described by Owens, as ‘one text is read through another, however fragmentary, intermittent, or chaotic their relationship may be’.(5) Palimpsests are re-usable writing media from which text can be scrapped off allowing new writing, yet with each new inscription traces of former texts remain. Thus, whilst one reads the most recent writing, one is also made aware of the previous writings with which it mingles. At Buzludja the production and gradual dismantling of the site makes the layering of these multiple writings especially apparent, and in this way perhaps my own intention originates in the impulse towards allegory that Owens identified with critical postmodernism. Owens describes this through Robert Smithson’s comment that ‘in the illusory babels of language, an artist might advance in order to get lost’(6). By traversing the multiple layers of cultural meaning embedded in the ruined structure of Buzludja, I believe that such an activity could yield productive reconsiderations of not only Bulgaria’s cultural history, but also of what Socialism might mean in a twenty-first century context, here and beyond. Indeed, this was my intention in the day’s work I undertook as a cameraman within this space.

The work then brings together the sequence of the day, as mechanistically ordered by the slide carousels, with the historical sequence of time, as captured by the memorialising function of the Monument itself and the murals’ depiction of Bulgarian history. The conjunction of past, present and future that I wanted to generate is indebted to Walter Benjamin’s notion of Jetztzeiten, or ‘the time of now’(7). In this formulation, each passing moment contains the possibility of redeeming the past in a way that might transform future circumstances. Benjamin says, “For the revolutionary thinker, the peculiar revolutionary chance offered by every historical moment gets its warrant from the political situation. But it is equally grounded, for this thinker, in the right of entry which the historical moment enjoys vis-a-vis a quite distinct chamber of the past, one which up to that point has been closed and locked.”(8) Through this work, then, I want to invite both remembrance and re-evaluation of the problems and opportunities of Bulgaria’s past, a history that I believe at this moment of rapid political change across the globe might also carry broader international significance.

(1) See David Harvey, Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction. “Neoliberalization has in effect swept across the world like a vast tidal wave of institutional reform and discursive adjustment, and while there is plenty of evidence of its uneven geographical development, no place can claim total immunity.” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, Vol. 88, No. 2, Geography and Power, the Power of Geography (2006), pp. 145-158.

(2) Carey Young, Statement concerning the work Memento Park (2010), http://www.careyyoung.com/past/mementopark.html [accessed 18/01/13].

(3) Chaubin considers that his project “reveal[s] an unexpected rebirth of imagination, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990.” Frédéric Chaubin, CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed, (Cologne: Taschen, 2011), book information on rear cover.

(4) This project aimed to “analyse and compare the production of built environment in two opposed economic and political systems: those of socialist Yugoslavia and the market-based democracies that emerged out of its collapse.” Unfinished Modernisations, About Project, http://www.unfinishedmodernisations.net/pages/about-project-2 [accessed 18/01/13].

(5) Craig Owens, The Allegorial Impulse: Towards a Theory of Postmodernis,m, October, Vol .12, (Spring 1980), p. 69.

(6) Robert Smithson, ‘A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art’, in Robert Smithson: Collected Writings, (Los Angeles: Univeristy of California Press, 1996), p 78. Quoted in Craig Owens, The Allegorial Impulse: Towards a Theory of Postmodernis,m, October, Vol .12, (Spring 1980), p. 60.

(7) Walter Benjamin, Thesis on the Philosophy of History, translated by Harry Zorn, in ‘Illuminations’ (London: Pimlico, 1999), p 255.

(8) Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, ed. by Marcus Bollock; Michael W. Jennings, Vol. 4, (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 401-402.

In his unfinished collection of writings on the city life of Paris the Arcades Project¹ (Passagenwerk, 1927 – 1940), Walter Benjamin asserted that the modern city is experienced in a passive state of distraction. This suggests a coping mechanism for everyday life: a perceived need to adhere to accepted codes of public conduct, numb fear in relation to the authority of urban planning and the wilful projection of consciousness into the world of the advertising poster, aspects as relevant today as when they were first articulated. The message is clear; everyday life is mundane and as such there is a demand for escapism (that can be exploited). Certain things are necessary but they are not what dreams are made of, and so the expanding popularity of escapism becomes prone to commercialisation.

Henri Lefebvre expands Benjamin’s ideas in the Critique of Everyday Life² (Critique de la Vie Quotidienne, 1947) which was a powerful influence on the activities of the Situationists. Here he observes the experience of everyday living to be undermined by the experience of capitalism. Accordingly, the mundane is subordinated by a perceived need or desire to escape, perpetuating a sense of powerlessness. Instead, Lefebvre posits, everyday life finds its assertion through festival; a self-governing collaboration that celebrates and elevates aspects of the everyday with revolutionary potential. Nonetheless the festival, once a key element of community cohesion and self-pride, is centred on celebration and moments of ecstasy. Ultimately it translates to instants of self-effacement which fall easily under the banner of consumerism as leisure comes to be one of the major strands of free enterprise. It is a question of perceived powerlessness much like the hangover that follows, and whether the desire to escape can ever be politicised.

The revolution of the ordinary and commonplace evokes the politicising of escapism and it has frequently manifested itself throughout recent art history. Often it takes the form of an antidote to the alienating impact that an advanced technological society has had on the individual, primarily within Western Europe and the United States. From Impressionism to Dadaism and Surrealism, then more recently Situationism, each movement proposed an architectural blueprint to build the critical space needed for reflection from which man would be able to master his world once more. In 1968 as Modernism was giving way to Post-modernism, the Situationists proclaimed themselves to be the last avant-garde during the French Social Revolution in the spring of that year (before dissolving as a group four years later³). This juncture with Modernism illuminates the complex relationship that an artistic approach to empowerment has with urban life in present day consumerist society.

The Situationists had largely rejected the gallery white cube in favour of the construction of situations employing the city streets (particularly the Parisian streets) as their canvas. Establishing self-determination in the navigation of life as a series of constructed situations was to blend the theories of Existentialism and Lefebvre. The advocating of practices that might disturb or re-appropriate the rationalised efficient order of the city has in some respects meant that the Situationist ideas have a legacy as we can see with such practices of derive (drift) and detournement (the practice of making detours, thereby re-routing or re-ordering a given formation) in graffiti and skateboarding today. By extension, it would be tempting to define graffiti art to be the last painterly gesture in which a democratic conception of individual creative intent becomes manifest. Graffiti undermines the commercial order of society by visualising a voice of discontent, at least until it is washed away, tagged or sprayed over; its ephemeral nature resists a notion of art as material practice that contributes to the production of sellable artefacts. Nevertheless, to settle at such a conclusion now is problematic when a building is dismantled to auction a piece of graffiti (taking the graffiti artist Banksy as an example).

The tendency for rebellious artists to eventually be embraced by the art market, or more generally the system, is well-documented and does not require elaboration here. An industrial system can applaud those voices of discontent and even elevate the financial value of such statements of resistance to its very existence. This begs the question of whether we can continue to understand everyday living to be undermined in the same manner posited by Lefebvre or at least in the manner in which the Situationists understood it and translated this position into artistic practice. The exploitation of escapism and the appetite for participation in shaping its development has been the very undoing of such philosophies espoused by the avant-garde. It is plausible to contend that we need only turn on a TV set to witness a parade of ordinary or even trivial aspects of everyday life alongside the stories of those attempting its transformation. In other words, the minutia of everyday life asserts itself through festival and we can now subscribe to the channel.

The creative efforts by ordinary people to change their circumstances of living span music, dance, drama, but equally, design, business and competition. These come to be assimilated by the entertainment industry (reality TV, talent shows, docu-dramas) thereby usurping a given norm in favour of implementing diverse encounters which is in many respects welcomed. Not only is it likely to provide the stuff of prime-time viewing, an entrepreneurial culture needs such a state of affairs for its continual evolution through innovation and novelty. Intervention transpires to be a means of interaction, whether critical or playful; the Situationist belief in appropriation is now appropriated and employed in the mantra of consumption as advantaged via collaboration and participation. Everyday life comes to be fetishized in all its grim detail whilst new media provide the plinth upon which we can place our dirty laundry or simply come to gaze at each other’s.

Industrialised society recognises that people require opportunities for reflection as well as escapism; to reflect upon experiences we value and to acquire experiences of being valued. By interacting with our surroundings we validate our surroundings, both actual and virtual, but while we participate we are fully aware that this is consumerist in nature. Such a state of affairs gives rise to a situation repugnant to the left or liberal minded. The potential for self-expression through consumption might convey an ambiguity of power relations but thinking that way is a potential trap. A struggle for recognition of equal aesthetic rights amongst art forms is not resolved as the emergence of collective consensus drives content, even if some ivory towers are toppled by interactive media (particularly the internet) in the process. The architecture of urbanity is not so much faceless, rather it is reflective, like an internet cache our searches reflect back upon us all the more poignantly when we consider our increased awareness of surveillance. Marginalisation emerges as a flip-side to the power of the entertainment industry to absorb potential discontent.

Such disenfranchisement with our everyday encounters leads to an attempt to distinguish between the predictable and the genuine response. One common observation is that anger achieves little media exposure or popularity in contemporary art and music; instead we are presented with irony. This is pretence because to attain an ironic vantage point with which to address an issue, is to suggest a privileged position from which to take it all in. To separate ourselves from the things that impact upon our daily life is to play dead; it is to aspire to be aloof. Yet what reaction might we expect, when we see the attempt of a graffiti artist to reclaim abandoned space, giving voice to thoughts and frustrations transposed to the art gallery or when we hear politicians telling us to ‘hug a hoodie’ other than despondency? Such manifestations of protest are not taken seriously in the west, why not?

We are familiar with mass demonstrations; a vision of resistance suggestive of the potential of people’s power to bring down a prevailing political order. Protest is global; movements connect up across borders. Participants unite under a common aim, to state their anti-capitalist slogans and to demand change. This is an aesthetic of dissent; the creation of a sublime image of discontent. But it suggests that political leaders are little more than a minor part of a given (capitalist) establishment i.e. a regime that should be overthrown. It is mass expression of anger, perhaps because that is seen as absent from contemporary culture. However, directing our efforts against officialdom or ideology misleads because individuals do count, they do make a difference; undermine them at your peril. Ideas matter, but the implementation of change is alas, more prosaic, less grand and in need of greater precision.

It is arguable that what remains a challenge is the intensification of a sense of encounter with the everyday and the urban, in order to re-ignite a sense of possibility and transformation. It would follow that the utilisation of disused space for creative practice enables the setting up of new situations that re-configure social exchange and interaction. To locate the opportunities for such practice is to reveal the gaps in the story of a city’s development; the cracks in the ostentatious façade of brand particular to that city. This leads us to the derelict, the dilapidated and the overlooked – for what better critique of a city is possible other than a focus on its own decay?

The de-naturalisation of meaningful encounters within the city arises as commonplace interaction becomes absorbed by a narrative of consumerism, which equates to an experience of alienation. Here, we might contend that derelict space offers something altogether more ambiguous for the explorer: a place where an interface with urban nature is revitalised. Urban nature thrives amongst the dilapidated and decayed spaces of the city. Rats, mice, birds and insects are rife. Floors, walls and windows are distorted by arboreal intrusions for here is the arena in which the feral elements of nature disrupt the normality of the built environment. The bare essentials of survival become tangible, the explorer’s senses are heightened, and we can no longer be aloof.

The uncompromising vitality of nature’s determination to survive in the derelict building distorts and disfigures structures that would otherwise define the psychological boundaries of private territory. Order is undermined as the explorer is confronted by the fragility of the manufactured separation between private space and public space. Should the house be considered in terms of a metaphorical extension of the self, its decay renders it open to a stream of ideas, possibilities and departures; conjecture free from imposed order or consensus, where the dark and disagreeable may reign. There is no preconceived manner of conduct; we must interact on our own terms.

When undistracted by the familiarity of function derelict sites provide an environment where spatial experience is intensified, for without functional purpose, they could be considered as intermediate sites, places without fixed meanings. Their ambiguity demonstrates a resistance to the rational allocation of spaces for specific purposes within a materialist model of the city. A more uncompromising view of the city and the past can be conceptualised which is significant when we consider how persistently the societal problems and struggles of the past tend to slip into nostalgia. This reveals escapism to be an inherently critical action as it enables us to look at what we have and to say it is not good enough.

Neither one thing nor another but in-between; it indicates the adulation of the non-committal, however in order to conceive of alternatives to a given societal structure it must first be possible to imagine this undistorted by the pervasive market-oriented narrative that shapes everyday life. The derelict, the dilapidated and the overlooked provide such places of escape, the retreat from which it is possible to collect thoughts and reflect upon the world outside. It is narrative space that allows for the utterance which can suddenly assert previously unheard dialogue. How we occupy what was isolated or overlooked will empower us to rethink existing models of collaboration and exchange thereby bringing about the steady flow of subtle amendments to our everyday environment. In sum, it is within such spaces where we might learn that urban space is fluid and open to challenge, albeit on the small scale we as divided individuals are capable of.

John O’Hare

¹ Benjamin, Walter (2002) the Arcades Project, (Rolf Tiedemann Ed., Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin Trans.) Belknap Press, New York [1927-1940]

² Lefebvre, Henri (1991) Critique of Everyday Life, Volume 1 (John Moore Trans.) Verso, London [1947]

³ For a detailed discussion of the rise and fall of the Situationists please refer to the Situationist City by Simon Sadler (MIT Press, Massachussetts, 1998)

Outside: First it connects sky to earth, then you look closely and the sane notion allows you to go even further by following the lines. One of them goes differently allowing you to move in a different way, with tradition, in integrity and posture. The “Contains space” in Venice Pavilion “Silk Map” of Mimmo Roselli is extremely inward oriented piece of meditative work. First you see the lines behind the face, only to recognize the face itself after that. The lines give you a thought suggestive pattern. Willingly or not you find yourself strung in a more delicate frame of mind, where thoughts are born.
Inside: Spinning world – lines connect in obviously possible perspective regarding the silk roads both ideal and real.

By Nia Pushkarova

Nada Nesheva

Looked at structurally, from the side so to speak, the ‘art world’ can be seen to divide into several layers or strata. These strata also extend horizontally to an increasing or decreasing extent, like the cross-sections of a pyramid. At the ‘top’ are the Turner-prize winners and Damien Hirsts, Baselitzes and Koons, not to mention the Wei Weis and emerging Chinese artists of the future: artists who have made enough of an impression on the art world and who have a record of proven sales and collectors to guarantee their position financially and historically in the annals of world art. At the ‘bottom’ of the pyramid are all the amateur artists who enjoy making art, who spend some time doing it, are perhaps trained in it, but don’t make a living out of it. In between there are various other strata, comprising various other ‘art worlds’. There are the many serious artists who work on the ‘fringes’ of the top level art world or ‘below’ – Maybe they work all their lives at art, but never get the big breaks; they might participate in a few exhibitions and events with the major league artists but for various reasons are not ‘taken up’ by the élite art-world. They might earn enough from their art to survive as artists, or they might work in education or the arts sector to finance their practice. There are those ‘professionals’ of the art world, writers, critics, teachers, professors who work in the art world, participate in it at varying levels and yet are not living entirely through their art. ‘Below’ them (and these strata are not meant to be judgemental or qualitative – they are more structural), are those artists who work, with varying degrees of success, at their art, seriously, renting studios, collaborating in local initiatives, participating in the localised art culture of their place and space, and on, through the pyramid to the level of local amateur artist who survive by other means. The French government for example, takes quite a pragmatic approach to defining artists: It considers artists from a tax perspective – if you earn over a certain salary per annum from your art, you are a professional artist. If you don’t, you are an amateur.

This stratified model is quite useful because it enables one to see that the art world is not homogeneous, and that there are many simultaneous ways to be an artist in the 21st-century. It is also clear that not every one can be a Turner-prize winner numerically. It may also help one decide whereabouts in the art world one is located currently, and where one might wish to be.

Artist-run initiatives are clearly one positive response to this global situation. It is obvious that the vast majority of artists operating today, occupy some of the ‘middle ground’ of the art world ‘pyramid’. Some may aspire to the upper levels; others may be committed and happy to be operating precisely at the level in which they are – the ‘top’ is not necessarily ‘the best’. Each level or strata carries its own benefits and disadvantages. And of course, the ‘pyramid’ is not stable. Artists can be dropped as well as picked up by galleries and dealers, and stylistic or market changes can elevate or doom careers.

Given that artists are good at creative problem solving, they are often at the forefront of social development – Very often artists have been proven to give rise to urban development, simply by moving into a deprived or run-down area where rents are cheap, and creating something vibrant and positive in their environment. This then becomes attractive to local business, property developers and entrepreneurs, who see the potential, move in and create financial growth. The artists move on to other, cheaper areas, and so it continues. Artist-led initiatives, NGOs, artist residency programmes, open studios, artist-run galleries, open calls, Arts festivals and other cultural initiatives are the natural catchment, catalyst and stabilizer for much of these middle strata of the art world. Rather than wait around for an over-saturated art world to notice them and take them up, the organizers of artist-led initiatives create their own opportunites, utilising what and who they know, turning disused spaces into temporary art spaces, organizing opportunities for artists to create and develop their work, encouraging exchange and debate between artists and nations, and countering national, ‘top-down’ ideologies in favour of rhizomatic, trans-cultural exchange. They offer a very real and necessary service to artists, by stimulating them into action, encouraging mobility and open-ness and giving rise to new bonds of friendship and exchange.

It is interesting to note that one of the most prestigious of the élite art-world’s events, the Venice Biennale, was set up by a committee of art lovers, including Michelangelo Guggenheim, to address the problem that 19th-century Italian art had drifted off, from its glory days in the Renaisance and Mannerism, into provincialism and nationalist inconsequence. It had become separated from the mainstream events happening elsewhere in Europe (notably Paris). The committee which set up the first Biennale declared:

“An international exhibition should attract a greater public with the prestige of its illustrious foreign artists, placing their work at the disposition of all those intellectuals unable to undertake long journeys so as to get to know and to compare the various aesthetic directions, and will enrich the intellectual patrimony of our young artists who will thus be able to draw the broadest conceptions from the work of their fellow artists from other countries..”²

The idea being that an injection of international art into the localised art world of 19th-century Italy would act as a stimulant for national cultural renewal. For a culture to be vibrant, it needed cross-pollination from its international neighbours. What started as a local initiative to stimulate a stagnant local art scene, has now become one of the most prestigious indicators of the international art world. What is useful in this history is the realisation that the strata of the art world are not stable over time. Seismic shifts are possible whereby strata can rise and fall. What was once a local event or organisation can move up to become a significant indicator on the world stage, and vice versa: what was formerly ‘cutting-edge’ can decline and go ‘off the boil’.

For artist-run initiatives to develop and thrive, they need firstly to understand at which level of the art world they are aiming and at which level they wish to operate. If they are achieving their mission and fulfilling their intentions, then there is no necessity to change for the sake of it. Their goal will be to simply secure funding and opportunities to enable continuation. If their ambitions are to move ‘up’ the pyramid, towards greater impact and recognition, then they must realise that their agenda must change. They must become more competitive, and engage with the more ‘professional’ aspects of fund-raising, critical participation, journalism, PR, marketing, which moves them closer into the ambit of the commercial (and cut-throat) art world. This will inevitably change their remit, and their attitude.

Kenneth G. Hay, Leeds, UK.

(Kenneth Hay is Professor of Contemporary Art Practice in the School of Design at he University of Leeds, where he works as an artist, writer and teacher. He has exhibited widely, and writes on contemporary art, history and theory).

¹ Ashwin, C (ed), “The Education and Training of Craftspeople in Engand & Wales” (DES/Crafts Council, Middlesex Polytechnic, 1987).

² Discussion in Venice Council 1893. Preface to the Catalogue of the first Venice Biennale, 1895. http://www.labiennale.org/en/biennale/history/vb1.html?back=true

The motive for me to come to Sofia was the invitation of Nia Pushkarova, the initiator and organizer of the Water Tower Art Fest. In one of the locations, the restored Central Mineral Bath of Sofia, I constructed with the help of the young architect Olga Doreva an architectural glass sculpture (glass pavilion) in a monumental space with a beautiful tiled floor and a double row of strong pillars. The design for the glass sculpture I made in advance was based on the plans and pictures of the space the festival send to me. On the spot Olga and me adjusted the glass structure to create a real site specific installation.

It was not only a period of building up as a participating artist and designer and as a visitor of the enjoyable festival, but it was also an explicit opportunity for me to discover the city of Sofia. Based on their study background – architecture and city planning – and their catching idealism, Olga, Maria, Desislava and Radoslav Nikolaev (who joined us later) turned out to be real ambassadors of the spatial and functional history and even more of the present and future of Sofia and Bulgaria. The various excursions they led me in unfolded a city which is in an ingenious way veined by green radials, whereby cold fresh air ‘rolls’ in the city from the surrounding mountains and rises up again in the heart of Sofia because of the warmth of the sun. A convection by nature keeps the circulation of clean air going thanks to the ancient but very sophisticated way of city planning of the Thracian.

The green network of parks rolls out the ‘carpet’ for daily animated city life in the open air. Particularly during the summer from early in the morning until late at night. Polina Pankova, my favorite coordinator of the festival and graphic designer Denitsa Toneva, guided me along the hidden but vibrant places of Sofia. Being a little bit out of the sight of the legislature, you come definitely to the conclusion that Sofia is very much alive and inspiring.

In the meantime I got to know Sofia better because I also created two projects during the festival last year, again with the help of Olga Doreva. One project near Pancharevo Lake was a rather spectacular performance with a fragile structure build up with glass blades and balloons which crashes down at the end and a more sedate glass installation in Serdica Basement (ROCA building) related to the remains of the Roman wall and typical triangle fortification. The center of Sofia is build over the foundations of the Roman city of Serdica.

During the last opening hours of the glass installation in Serdica Basement, architect Vasil Kitov came to look at it. A few days earlier I visited the St. Sofia Church, where he showed to a group of students which I could join his restoration of the tombs under the vaults. Before that as part of my exploring expeditions along the city I visited the medieval church of Bojana, part of the world (Unesco) heritage. Vasil Kitov led this restoration as well, with a really excellent and amazing result.

After his visit to Serdica basement Kitov invited Olga and me to the restoration and building site of Metro Station Serdica. That is the place where centuries of ancient, medieval, renaissance, Ottoman and socialistic history come together in a present day development area in the center of Sofia. A real adventure in terms of extension of the public transport system in combination with increasing historical awareness by the passengers of the new extended metro station.

From my point of view Water Tower Art Fest is a unique festival. Especially for a person like me who is continuously working on the edge of art and city landscape and who has many times been involved in animation and reanimation of the built and rural environment in various regions. Ultimately, the festival operates rather directly in order to bring the ‘hidden treasures’ of Sofia to the surface. The festival invites artists and designers from all over the world to give them artistic opportunities to articulate and value important but ‘forgotten’ buildings and sites of Sofia in a surprising and at the same time meaningful way. The idea of the festival is as clear as plain day-light. The people who are involved want to contribute to awareness, development and manifestation of the identity of nowadays Sofia and Bulgaria as part of the international community.

Kalina Petkova who is also involved with Water Tower Art Fest showed me amongst other things two interesting places in Sofia. One was the Monument of the Bells, initiated by Lyudmila Zhivkova and inspired by the Year of the Child (1979). This monument symbolizes the ambition to raise all children in a world of beauty. The other one was the Grindhouse Skate Club. A similar place ‘Hall of Fame’ is developed by the young generations in my home town Tilburg in The Netherlands. I introduced her and than she connected the two places and organized a skate manifestation in the Grindhouse in collaboration with members of both the skate communities in Tilburg and Sofia. A very nice event which brought two young dynamic communities together.

Sofia City Bar is the name of my latest exhibition in Luycks Gallery Tilburg (NL). All the pieces of art reflected my stay in Sofia and other regions of Bulgaria. For many visitors the exhibition was a real eye-opener. Mostly they have heard about Sofia and Bulgaria but don’t know very much about the city and the country. Looking at my exhibition people were surprised by the liveliness of the eastern way of live and its expressive architecture and landscape.

What I’m trying to say is that the Water Tower Art Fest is rather influential. Nia, the initiator of the Water Tower Art Fest, and her helping friends threw so to speak a big stone in the pool and because of this manifest, ‘out of the blue’ act, Sofia and Bulgaria became noticeable in many ways and in a lot of countries.

This year I am going to take part of the festival again and will create a monumental glass and sound installation at the Royal Station Sofia Kazichene. Long time ago it was a beautiful building but nowadays it is an abandoned ruin. I imagine how important this building once was for the relationship between Sofia and Bulgaria and other countries and also as a connecting link towards the Asian part of the world. The building is in fact a kind of expression of modern unity.

The value of the Water Tower Art Fest is in my opinion beyond dispute. It is a fine example of how to connect in a very basic way art and architecture in order to bring the past to live, make a match to the present and open the window to the future of Sofia and Bulgaria as a valuable member of the international community. And all thanks to the altruistic dedication of the younger generations of Sofia and the surrounding regions, who succeed to involve many artists and designers with the Water Tower Art Fest.

I look forward to drinking a small beer in Hambara or in the City park at the National Theatre.

Jan Doms – LEF stadsdynamica

Post photo credit: Galina Yotova