8th – 12th July 2013
We are surrounded by emptiness, but it is an emptiness filled with signs. – Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World.
Over the last two decades, our modern cities have increasingly been filled with images most of which convey commercial messages. For this purpose, they also developed a visual language of their own reflecting the political and social changes rapidly taking place in our neo-capitalistic societies. Even though Ruse does not have a Times Square, it is certainly not a city devoid of images. The question is rather to what extent we are aware of that. Do the residents of the city notice how many images they are faced with continuously? How do they absorb them? What kinds of signs are we dealing with? And how do they influence city life?
The events under the title “Places and images“ which build the second part of the project “On the marks“, pursue these questions in a creative as well as analytical way and try to bring some clarity into the maze of images and signs.
- Photos: Momchil Mihaylov
08.07.
THE ALLEATER – Theatre Performance
8 pm Canetti House
THE ALLEATER is the hard, but volatile mass in which we immerse our hand only to find out that our fingers are legs and our mouths – asses. THE ALLEATER is the edge beyond which gender, size and matter does not matter, because are in the same time male, female, in between, miniature, gigantic, consistent and fragile. In Alleater’s mouth stalks little, sexy black hole, blazing in its estrangement and in it the nothing yawns.
“The alleater is a figure of human without profile, gender or individual image. It is a central gestus of consumerism in contemporary world (or mixture of gestures and words) that is taken as starting point while attempting to understand who is this person passionately searching a “better eaten world”. Gaya Kostadinova transforms this into immediate, extreme physical presence. A hard actor’s work.” – Violeta Decheva, Kultura newspaper
Director: Ani Vaseva
Text: Miroslav Hristov
Performer: Galya Kostadinova
Design: Georgi Sharov
Sound: DataTransporter
- Photo: Luchezar Boyadjiev
- Photo: Momchil Mihaylov
09.07
Visual Seminar – Lecture with Luchezar Boyadjiev
5.30 pm Canetti House
Ad panels, billboards, street signs – the Visual Seminar aims at investigating the urban environment and its visual languages, taking Sofia as an example. Conceived as a multidisciplinary project by the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Center for Advanced Studies, Sofia, it was orginally held between 2003 and 2006, involving various art projects, public discussions, and a university seminar. In Ruse, it will be presented for the first time and serve as a theoretical background for the workshop on the following days.
Luchezar Boyadjiev, born in October, 1957 in Sofia, is an internationally known artist with numerous solo and group exhibitions in Bulgaria and abroad, as well as a curator and founding member of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia. As Resident Fellow of the Visual Seminar, he realized several art projects in Sofia and abroad. In his art works, he reflects upon the social and economical changes in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and critically investigates the aesthetics and rithorics of advertisement in urban space.
- Photo: Krasimir Mandzhukov
- Photo: Tomas Tsonev
10.-11.07
Imaging Ruse – Workshop
11am – 5pm Canetti House
The two-day workshop aims at developing a visual analysis of Ruse and searching the city for prominent and less prominent visual signs, taking a close look, among others, at advertisment and visual marketing strategies, Street art, fronts of buildings, monuments, public art works, and urban “micro architecture“ such as sales boothes, kiosks, and benches. The photographs and texts resulting from the workshop will be displayed and discussed at Canetti House on July 11th, at 5 pm.
We ask everyone interested in taking part in the workshop to join the Visual Seminar on Wednesday, 9th, as well. Also, we kindly ask you to write a short email confirming your participation to: irena.markova@eliascanetti.org
- Photo: Momchil Mihaylov
12.07
Metrobranding – Film by Ana Vlad and Adi Voicu
Romanian with English subtitles
9 pm Canetti House
A film about brands and how they influence our desire: „In the communist Romania we had but a single brand of each basic product: the Relaxa mattress, the Dragasani sneakers, the Pegas bicycle, the Mobra motorcycle, the Fieni bulbs and the Ileana sewing machine were the stars of the Romanian golden era. These six brands had spectacular destinies. They appeared approximately at the same time, along with the socialist industrialization. As overnight towns were built around the factories producing them, they have become the objects of desire for the Romanian daily life and dreams.“ (Ana Vlad, 2010)
With the support of:
