Beyond “Istoriya Slavyanobalgarska”
Author
Visual Research and essay by Maria Ilieva (artist) and Martin Tomov (activist/anthropologist)
When
2024
Where
Around “Istoriya Slavyanobalgarska” Boulevard
“Beyond ‘Istoriya Slavyanobalgarska’” is a video installation by Maria Ilieva and Martin Tomov that explores the concept of the city’s image by closely examining the specifics of parts of its periphery.
“Beyond ‘Istoriya Slavyanobalgarska’” directs the conversation towards the ways in which urban space creates meanings, narratives and poetics for itself without needing additional interventions – how an urban place becomes a topos for the themes of a transforming world, inequalities and coexistence.
The artists turn their gaze towards the Blvd. “Istoriya Slavyanobalgarska”, because for them this boulevard reveals a liminal space that is present as an invisible border between centre and periphery. There, using video techniques, they create a kind of journey between four urban points: the periphery of Nadezhda Park, the recently closed building of the Nikola Korchev Vocational School of Railway Transport, the building of the Sofia TPP and the Central Sofia Cemetery Park. Thus, they show how these border points are inhabited not by humans, but by “beyond-human” beings. These can be inhabitants such as moss, water, soil, but also the physical infrastructure itself.
We are entering uninhabitable places around which residential neighborhoods have been built – places full of human and non-human lives, where even after the human, when the infrastructural buildings mold, the pulse of the narratives will remain in the very fabric of the city. The urban space itself creates narratives – a cemetery, a TPP, an abandoned school, hope: post-human narratives beyond our control, where we are only in the role of documenters.
In continuation, we also publish the essay “The Anthropocentre in Sofia: More-Than-Human Perspectives and Infrastructural Poetics” by Journal for Social Vision.
Part of the first edition of Nine Elephants in 2024.
In collaboration with Center for Social Vision.
Maria Ilieva is a multidisciplinary artist with practice mainly in the field of drawing and text. Spending her life between three countries, Maria was confronted from a young age with the reality of immigrants abroad, the rapid need to adapt to unfamiliar environments, and the limits of language. Relying on personal and collective memory, as well as various methods of memorization, she seeks to rethink boundaries-both social and self-imposed.
Martin Tomov is an anthropologist by education and by profession he is part of the Greenpeace Bulgaria team. With an interest in fine art, poetry, acting and theatre, Martin undertakes social projects and engaged practices with an eye towards various social and environmental issues. He has experience in projects uncovering police violence and racism in urban environments, and has authored research on the cultural history of antidepressants and the impact of climate adaptation policies on marginalized communities in Rotterdam. Today, he works on issues related to the climate crisis, the environment and biodiversity in the Black Sea.
Links
Presentation of an audio guide that can be listened to alone or in a group during a walk in the city