The third flow festival took place from October 18th – 21st in Ruse, Bulgaria. The general topic was „Activating Spaces, Activating People by Micro Imagination“. One essential part of the festival was the common creative work on different subtopics in several working groups. And beside this, flow offered attractive festival events on three evenings for the participants and also for the local audience.

Abandoned urban spaces and locations with a rich and exciting past were reactivated and transformed to unusual festival venues. Representatives of the contemporary science and culture scene from Bulgaria and the Danube Region not only had the chance to meet during the festival, but also to exchange and develop new ideas and interdisciplinary collaborations. flow aims to develop various micro-projects, which are to be realized in different countries of the Danube Region in 2013.

The flow community is digitally connected by a dynamic social media platform. The platform gave all participants the opportunity to communicate with each other before the festival start. After the festival the platform was transformed to a digital working space for the several groups to develop concrete projects on the basis of their discussed ideas and prepared concepts.

Official web page…

photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio

Oct 18th: Official opening

6.30 pm, Historical Museum
With representatives from Austria, Bulgaria, and the Municipality of Ruse. flow participants and flow Advisory Board members presented their work and the concept of flow.


photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio
photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio

Oct 18th: Sofia Underground 2012

Exhibition opening with Yovo Panchev and Ivo Ivanov from Sofia
8.00 pm, Dom Canetti
Sofia Underground Performance Art Festival 2012 was dedicated to the memory of its creator and director Ruen Ruenov, art critic, journalist and curator (1958 – 2011). Created in 1997, the Sofia Underground Festival has won a reputation of a major art event in the interdisciplinary genres of visual performance art, actionist art, happening and new media in Bulgaria. From October 18th to November 3rd Sofia Underground presented in Ruse a selection of works from their last festival.

The topic of this edition is based on a concept by Ruen Ruenov: “Justified Actions“. He reflected on the current cultural situation framing the artistic life and the conditions for artistic practices. He arrived at the conclusion that Contemporary Bulgarian art is not less provincial and faceless than the one characteristic for the regional stage prior to 1989. There are no alternatives to the framework-status-quo, which prevents development in the near future. For the artists, who start their work now there is a lack of any perspective and a sense of continuing to work in contemporary arts outside the set conformist parameters.


photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio

Oct 18th: Kottarashky and the Rain Dogs

Live concert
9.00 pm, Dom Canetti
Kottarashky is the stage name of the musician and architect Nikola Gruev (born 1979) which started as a solo project and evolved into a music band Kottarashky & The Rain Dogs. Vintage Balkan rhythms, classic jazz and blues, psychedelic sounds, club beats, gypsy motives are mixed together and the result is the unique style of the electronic trip-hop-influenced music of Kottarashky. Kottarashky is also part of the Berlin label Asphalt Tango and their music is included in the soundtrack of the movie Love.Net. Two albums have been released so far. Opa Hey! is Kottarashky’s debut album, released in November 2009. The second album Demoni was recorded together with the musicians Aleksandar Dobrev (clarinet), Hristo Hadzhiganchev (guitar, synthesizer), Yordan Geshakov (bass) and Atanas Popov (drums) unified in the The Rain Dogs.


photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio

Oct 18th: Dekonstrukt

Audio-visual performance
11.00 pm, Pulp Fiction Bar
Dekonstrukt: „dkstrkt“ is a group of experimental artists: Y_NOT (one of the founders and former member of the band Ambient Anarchist), Yves_O (visual artist and event organizer from Studio Dauhaus) and friends. dkstrkt deals with thepreliminary processing of analogous and digital works or art in an attempt at creating a new audiovisual product; this is a constant process of а conscious deconstruction of a moment.


photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio
photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio

Oct 19th: flow city walks Discover Ruse!

Starting point: Hebros Banka
Walks end at: Restaurant Pontona

Tour 1: Let’s Go Shopping!
The tour dealt with commercial habits of Ruse’s citizens. From the old bazar to new shopping malls, from broad boulevards to the small shop on the corner, the tour rediscovered the city through the eyes of the consumer. It also showed different urban environments and visual contradictions. Guide: Bernd Janning

Tour 2: Multiethnic Ruse
Past and present – the tour showed not only the history and vestiges of the many different ethnic groups and communities that enriched the city’s life and culture but also their current situation and future perspectives. Guide: Svetlana Kirova

Tour 3: 1866 and the first railway line Ruse – Varna
The tour guided the participants a bit out of the city centre, just passing by the beautiful Mladezhki Park, entering an unknown and not well visited area of the city, full of spaces and places in need of reactivation. 1866 was the huge hall built in which the first Bulgarian locomotives and rails were constructed. The tour offered a view of what Ruse was, what it became, and what it could be. Guide: Elisa Calosi


photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio
photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio

Oct 19th: P.O.Box: Unabomber

Theatre performance of the group 36 Monkeys from Sofia
9.00 pm, Dom Canetti
P.O.Box Unabomber fuses ecology with terrorism. And it seems the result is an exciting piece of theatre eco-terrorism that asks important contemporary questions but in a light manner, without losing its sense of humor. The structure of the play rather resembles a puzzle, in which the roads of Ted Kaczynski (a promising math professor who abandoned his academic career to become a social critic, genius and long sought-after terrorist) and the Proechidna (an ancient, intelligent, egg-laying mammal who is about to go extinct) intersect and overlap at different levels. And while Kaczynski begins to apply his radical means in order to warn society about the dangers of the rapidly-developing technology to human dignity, the Proechidna, who probably lived on Earth even during the Ice Age is now doomed to wander in search for a mate of its kind. Texts: Zdrava Kamenova and Gergana Dimitrova. Director: Gergana Dimitrova / 36 Monkeys.

“36 Monkeys” is an independent NGO established in 2007. It is largely known for its long-term initiative ProText in which the team of theatredirectors renders a specific dynamic form of set-specific reading performance (an action in-between a play’s stage reading and completed performance) and presents a selection of new European drama authors and titles in their first Bulgarian translation. Convinced that contemporary theatre can happen everywhere their shows have been performed in places as different as basements and corridors, operating and abandoned bars, fitness and Internet halls, museums, art galleries and libraries.


photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio

Oct 20th: flow final presentation

Presentation of the group outcomes
5.00 pm, Rechna Gara
One essential part of the festival was the common creative work on different subtopics in several working groups (for details see flow topics). The flow working groups presented on Saturday their project ideas and concepts.


photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio
photo: momchilmihaylovimageware studio

Oct 20th: Nasekomix, afterwards Space Dub Jammers

Live concert
9.00 pm, Rechna Gara
Nasekomix are a Bulgarian musical group from Sofia. Their style could be described as an avantgarde minimalistic mixture of electronic music, jazz-rock, punk, indie, fusion’ and trip-hop. The group themselves define it as ‘melodramatic pop’ with drum & bass and electonica influences. The band had published digitally one multimedia album – ‘Insectomix’ – with the single ‘gradAD’, meanwhile gathering popularity with the songs ‘Inject me with Love’ and ‘Lady Song’ included in the soundtrack of the critically acclaimed film ‘Eastern Plays’ by Kamen Kalev. Afterwards (approx. 23:00) opened speed dub jam and electronic jazz of tomorrow with the team of SDJ Space Dub Jammers. SDJ are Mr.Smiff – trumpet, vox, JIB – bass, vox, chello, zazizazi – synths, DIY electronics, Moonkey – drumz, perc. and FunKiro – synths.