Views from Nowhere

Can a building inhabit itself? A project about the abandoned houses around the city that Yves-Christian Angelov and Elena Chergilanova liberate from their everyday existence.

The artists’ installation in the empty space at 11 “20-ti April” Street is part of a series of interventions in the urban environment titled Views from Nowhere, which draws attention to abandoned buildings and offers interpretations of their presence. Such abandoned houses are everywhere around us and all of us can recall at least one in the neighborhood where we live. The houses that Yves-Christian and Elena explore are scattered across Sofia in neighbourhoods such as Hadzhi Dimitar, Krasno Selo, Lozenets, Strelbishte, Zhenski Pazar and Banishora. “A place emptied of meaning, without purpose or inhabitants; a legal dead end, existing like an open wound between public and private space”, the artists say about these places.

Accompanying the project, the artists publish a zine presenting their artistic interventions across 24 pages (9 × 20 cm), revealing an uninhabited space of non-being – neither for living, nor for play, nor for rest. The publication is available at Swimming Pool for €4.10 (8 BGN) and it can also be viewed here.