Galia Dimitrova

AGITPROP
Petko Dourmana/Kyd Campbell
Javor Gardev
Ivan Moudov
Evgeni Vasilev
X-TENDO

Galia Dimitrova’s curatorial contribution explores the ways in which artists respond to the socio-political processes of a country in transition. In this context, she selected works focusing on the shifts that are emerging as a consequence of increasing neoliberalism in post-socialist metropolises: city-dwellers are increasingly becoming the focus of attention in their role as consumers. The city space is being re-interpreted as an advertising space – but also as a place of surveillance and regulation and a reservoir of collective memories of a suppressed era of history. The videos, installations and interactive works present the intricate situation of an eclectic and chaotic urban life – as well as the ambivalent situation of the citizens.

Works and Projects

AGITPROP - Boris Missirkov, Georgi Bogdanov, Georgi Tenev, Transformation, 2004, Video, 4 min

The video Transformation plays with the stereotypes of electronic surveillance systems, passport and visa controls. It focuses specifically on the thin lines between reality and game, imaginary threat and justified paranoia.

Petko Dourmana / Kyd Campbell, CT_BT_GRAFFITI | Mausoleum, 2005, Interactive bluetooth installation

The mausoleum of the first head of state of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, Georgi Dimitrov, was a key landmark in the communist era of Sofia. Built after Dimitrov’s death, the massive marble structure was blasted in 1999 after several unsuccessful attempts to pull it down. The interactive work attempts to regain the lost physical space of the mausoleum in virtual space with the aid of the exhibition visitor: if he has a mobile phone. With the aid of the wireless Bluetooth technology, visitors can receive different visual and audio fragments with which they can reconstruct the space of the former mausoleum.

Javor Gardev, Visual Police, 2005, Video installation with 7 monitors

Visual Police explores the mechanisms and potency of media manipulations. Artist and theatre director Javor Gardev appears in the role of Major J. Stefanov – a fictitious character – in the programmes of the six leading Bulgarian television presenters. He pretends to be head of a recently established “Visual Police Unit” that combats visual pollution of the cities – for example by means of aggressive advertising campaigns.

Ivan Moudov, Teleporting Machine, 2005, Video, 7:25 min.

The video is concerned with the artist’s utopian undertaking of constructing a teleporter. For, according to him, this is “easier than building a time machine or learning to fly”. Following several unsuccessful attempts to teleport himself into a different space-time, he discovers the following thought of a philosopher: Walking is in fact a temporary loss of balance. Just before we fall, we regain our balance and thus move forward. His self-experiment, documented in the video, is based on this idea.

Evgeni Vasilev, Ad-driven mind signals, 2006, Multimedia installation

At different levels, the work negotiates the relationship between consumer behaviour, conditioning, and surveillance. Fictional scenarios illustrate typical patterns of consumer communication and action. As a result of the formal reduction, they seek to achieve recognition and alienation. This contradiction is amplified by using colour filters and confronting the fictitious scenes with webcam pictures from Sofia.

X-TENDO Association for City Research by the Means of Art

Elena Koleva-Ivanova, Eleonora Mihalkova, Maria Popova, Lilia Parvanova, Tsvetelina Gospodinova, Victor Ivanov

There to Here, 2004, Multimedia installation

At different levels, the project examines demonstration cultures and strategies of reappropriating public spaces. The installation shows a comparison of two films. One is the compilation of found footage documenting public demonstrations and gatherings in the 1970s and 1980s in Sofia. The other film shows a performance by the group of artists in a central metro station in the Bulgarian capital in 2004. In the film, they quote historical films, for example by wearing the clothes of the period. But these reconciliations of then and now fail, and indeed an irrevocable chasm becomes apparent.