Beyond “Istoriya Slavyanobalgarska”
2024
Around “Istoriya Slavyanobulgarska” Boulevard
Beyond “Istoriya Slavyanobulgarska” 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.
The project directs the conversation toward the ways in which urban space generates meanings, narratives, and poetics of its own, without the need for additional interventions — how an urban site becomes a space for themes of a transforming world, inequalities, and coexistence.
The artists turn their attention to “Istoriya Slavyanobulgarska” Blvd, as for them this boulevard reveals a liminal space that exists as an invisible boundary between the city center and its periphery.
There, using video techniques, they create a kind of journey between four urban points: the edge of Nadezhda Park, the recently closed building of the Nikola Korchev Vocational High School of Railway Transport, the building of TPP Sofia, and Central Sofia Cemetery.
In this way, they show how these liminal points are inhabited not by humans, but by “more-than-human” beings — inhabitants such as moss, water, and soil, as well as the physical infrastructure itself.
“We enter uninhabited places, around which residential neighborhoods have been built — places full of human and non-human lives, where even after people are gone, when infrastructural buildings decay, the pulse of narratives will remain within the very structure of the city. Urban space itself creates narratives — a cemetery, a power plant, an abandoned school, hope: post-human narratives beyond our control, in which we are merely in the role of documentarians.”
You can watch the video study here.
As a continuation of the research, we also publish the essay The Anthropocene in Sofia: More-than-Human Perspectives and the Poetics of Infrastructure in the Journal 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.
Part of the first edition of Nine Elephants in 2024. In collaboration with Center for Social Vision.
Links
Presentation of an audio guide that can be listened to individually or in a group during a walk through the city