Unfolding Echoes: Choir, Neighbourhood, Memory
20 July 2025 + 21 March 2026
'Fondovi Zhilishta' District
The project is a collaboration with the international choral collective New Choir, led by conductor Pavel Naydenov and Vasilena Gankovska. The event is created specifically for the context of the Nine Elephants festival and explores the potential of choral music to become a tool for artistic and spatial exploration of the urban environment.
As part of the event, the choir immerses itself in the stories, architecture, vegetation, and memory of the “Fondovi Zhilišta” district and its surrounding areas — “Banishora,” “Zona B-18,” and “Zaharna Fabrika.” Through the practice of dérive — a walk without a predefined route — participants explore the neighborhood as a living organism, composed of memories, everyday narratives, and processes of rapid urbanization.
The collected observations and impressions become the basis for vocal and sonic interpretations. The choir, led by Naydenov, reinterprets through singing the multilayered existence of the neighborhood—its past and present social rhythms, architectural structures, vegetation, and invisible histories.
The project creates a meeting point between seemingly different traditions — sacred choral music, folk singing practices, and contemporary composition for choir and electronics. Instead of taking place in a church, square, or natural setting, the performance unfolds in the urban environment, which becomes a kind of laboratory for experiments in coexistence between people, sounds, and space.
It is developed in an open dialogue with the Choir of the Blind, and in the 2026 edition of Nine Elephants, individual members of the ensemble will participate in response to the suspension of their concert and artistic activity at the beginning of the same year.
As part of the project, a workshop led by Vasilena Gankovska is also held, in which participants and audience members create communicative and protest objects—flags, banners, signs, and other visual materials. These are conceived as “visible bodies” of position and care, which can be used in future civic actions or artistic interventions in the urban environment. The workshop also includes residents and communities from the neighborhood.
Based on the collected visual material, Vasilena Gankovska creates paintings that are reinserted into the same environment, testing new relationships and ways of seeing art outside the white cube of the gallery.
New Choir is a newly established international choral collective based in Vienna. Its vision is to present the tradition of choral music in a contemporary context—through the exploration of space using sound sculptures, bodily movement, and interactions with other media such as dance, performance, visual art, and electroacoustic interventions.
The choir is conducted by Pavel Naydenov, who has been living and working in Vienna since 2016. He is a classically trained musician and choral conductor, as well as a contemporary and performance artist, artist-researcher, and curator.
Vasilena Gankovska is a visual artist and researcher working at the intersection of art, urban environments, and social processes. Her practice includes performance, installation, visual notes, collective artistic actions, and artistic research, often developed within specific urban contexts. Her work engages with themes such as the memory of places, invisible social structures, and the ways in which communities interact with space. Her projects frequently involve the participation of local residents and create platforms for collective thinking and action in the urban environment.
The presentation is part of the project “Creation of New Cultural Products in the Urban Environment – Presentation in Sofia (Nine Elephants Festival) and Berlin (C*Space)”, funded under Component 11 “Social Inclusion”, Investment 6 “Development of the Cultural and Creative Sectors”, Procedure BG-RRP-11.020, Grant Scheme “Creation of Bulgarian Productions and Co-productions in the CCI sector and their promotion in European and international arts markets” of the Recovery and Resilience Plan.
The entire responsibility for the content of the project lies with Blue Cube Foundation, and under no circumstances can it be assumed that this document reflects the official position of the European Union or the National Culture Fund.
Links
Presentation of an audio guide that can be listened to individually or in a group during a walk through the city