OPERA ECOLOGICA

On the second and final weekend of the third edition of Nine Elephants we invite you to OPERA ECOLOGICA at the Botanical Garden of BAS (Sofia’s Ring Road), where through workshops, an installation, sound and film, we turn attention to a different kind of work (from the Latin opus) – that of plants and more-than-human systems. In the interaction between living and non-living beings, a poetics of interdependence is revealed, which we think of as opera – at once work, process and a celebration of invisible possibilities.

All events are entrance free.

5:00-6:30 PM – two workshops
*Limited capacity, advance registration is recommended.

Reserve a spot here

SHARED GROUNDS
Workshop by Deyana Stareva and Jaione Cerrato
Where: Wooden shelter and surrounding
More info here

The workshop invites participants to engage with the botanical garden as a shared environment in which human and more-than-human presences coexist and co-create. The artists also activate animals, plants and natural forces from Bulgarian mythology in the form of roles that participants can “embody.” These roles guide a process of rethinking Sofia’s ecosystem, which culminates in a collective installation.

SONIC SEEDS
Workshop by Violeta Tsenova and Gemily Rime
Where: Greenhouse and surroundings
More info here

Botanical gardens are living archives: they preserve plant diversity through collections and seed banks, providing access to species for scientific research, conservation and future restoration in the event of climate-related disasters. But how can we represent and imagine these gardens as active networks? And how do we situate ourselves within this ecology of already “composting” histories? Through a workshop on sonic performance led by cultural heritage researcher and participatory design specialist Violeta Tsenova and sound artist and researcher Jemily Rime, we will practice orientation – ways of attuning ourselves to entanglements with past and present, with “non-human” and human collectives – reflecting on the role of botanical gardens as repositories of biodiversity and collective memory.

18:00-19:00
Presenzia
Audio walk with Valentina Sciarra and Alessia Simonetti
Where: Orangerie
More info here

A synesthetic journey through the Orangerie, inspired by the names, characteristics and symbolic stories of flowers. Presenzia is the voice of the narrator, performed by the artist herself, while the music is composed by composer and sound artist Angelo Maria Farro. The project creates connections between the human and the non-human, the visible and the invisible, reality and imagination.

* Bring your headpones and mobile phone to scan a QR code.

MYSTICAL CREATURES
Installation by Maria Minkova
Where: crossroads above the rosarium
More info here

Mystical Creatures is an intervention in the space of a botanical garden where plant species from the Himalayas, Japan, China, the Far East, Central Asia and Siberia coexist.
The intervention explores the boundary between the real and the imaginary, drawing attention to the botanical garden itself as a site that gathers plant species from different geographical and climatic zones.

19:00-20:00
Opera Ecologica: The Gartena as Co-author
Conversation with experts and participating artists
Where: Green field next to the Rosarium

A conversation about the different ways in which plants, landscapes, sounds and stories can be understood as co-authors of artistic practices, as well as about the botanical garden as a space of memory, imagination and coexistence.

20:00-21:00
EIGHT EYES
Sound and text by Mitko Mitkov & Mona Steinwidder (Museum of No Art)
Where: Courtyard of the administrative building
More info here

The artists are developing a new play inspired by the Botanical Garden overlooking Sofia. This is a place where nature exists alongside, with and despite its proximity to the capital, creating a contrast between the calm and abandonment of the garden – its overgrown meadows and cracked concrete paths – and the noisy, densely populated urban structure that hosts a large number of people operating within a complex system of social, economic and cultural rules.

21:00-22:20
DOUBLE TAKES
Film programme in collaboration with KADIST
Where: Courtyard of the administrative building
More info here

Following the first evening at Swimming Pool, this is the second film screening presented from the KADIST location. To conclude the evening in the Botanical Garden, we will screen works by Giselle Beiguelman, Alice Bucknell, Olga Grotova, Driant Zeneli, and Isadora Neves Marques. These works insist on the need to listen to the earth, plants, the river, and the wind as bearers of stories that outlive empires and their extractive logics.

* Total duration: 70 minutes. The films have English subtitles.