Stay, Stay, Stay
The exhibition and events programme Stay, Stay, Stay involves artists whose work features an element of exploration of places as well as it conveys the notion of "opening".Their installations, performances, videos and objects often allude to cultural, social and political facts and phenomena, which though not necessarily invisible or inaccessible, often remain hidden or unnoticed by society.
Central Bathhouse, 1 Banski Square, Sofia
11-25 October 2008
working times:
Monday to Friday: 12:00 – 18:00
Saturday and Sunday: 11:00 – 18:00
Corinne May Botz, Petko Dourmana, Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went, Dagmar Keller/Martin Wittwer, Daniel Kunle, Min Kyoung Lee, Iassen Markov, Gergely Nagy, Olof Olsson, Theo Prodromidis, Henrietta Rose-Innes and Kaiwan Mehta, Venelin Shurelov, Helene Sommer, Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak, Kamen Stoyanov, Krassimir Terziev
curated by Margarita Dorovska and Antonia Lotz
Stay, Stay, Stay is an exhibition about places – places people pass by without paying attention to and places with which one stays – experiences, which linger in the mind. Some of them are facts from our daily route, passing-by landscapes, physical presence left unnoticed. Yet, they are part of constructed environments, with historical, social, cultural layers, subject to registration, reminiscence and exploration. Places changed by the time, changed in line with somebody's decision, squeezed between intentions, assigned purposes and reality. Becoming subject of artistic production, they come into sight, become visible and possible to observe, sharpen the senses for perceiving the traces of time and dynamics of social space. And so they stay, despite changes and physical erasure.
... somebody's train station in Berlin, no longer existent hotel in Gdansk, a lonely church in Rome, recently built to socially revive one neighborhood, a bingo hall in the subway of a central railway station, an oversized neon billboard from the mid 60s in Sofia, built to represent the traffic light substituting the traffic policeman, but also the party line from that time, architectural landscapes from Berlin and Vancouver, places, captured and archived through the camera of a restless traveller since 1950, a tropical amusement park, built in a facility meant as the biggest hangar in the world, situated in the former soviet military area near Berlin, property development sites, hesitating between present tense and projected future, a place, nominated to gather artist and audience and tested as a condition, sufficient for being entertained...
The exhibition is complemented by a programme, held in the first two days after the opening and the last day of the show. Taking place in a city developing rather speedy than planned, it quietly confronts the participants with different perspectives and standpoints to facts and phenomena from the physical environment and provokes sensitivity and intellectual engagement with their own surrounding. Featuring performances, talks, screenings, discussions and a literary reading, the programme is designed as an inseparable entity of the exhibition, which will be closed with the first public presentation of an epistolary project between a writer from Cape Town and an architect from Bombay. Leaving the domain of personal correspondence, this exchange of images and texts about the two cities, rich in affections, memories and concerns actually accompanies the whole programme by lending its title.
One of the places to come across during the show is its venue – the former central mineral bathhouse in Sofia, build in the very beginning of 20th century and closed in 1986. Situated in the very heart of the city, for more than thirty years now, hidden behind fences and subject to reconstruction, until recently it was a place without clearly assigned function. Having been used as an unofficial/unnoticed (in the sense of not spoken about) refuge for homeless people, a place for private parties, sporadic cultural events, setting for film productions, now one can see how the gorgeous old layers are being covered with white walls and sterilized to become a history museum of Sofia and a spa centre... For the last time one can visit the building and along with the works in the show, read through the stories of the place from the palimpsest walls of its halls and corridors.
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Programme
Pressconference
9 October, 11:00
Central Bathouse
Opening
10 October 2008, 19:00
with performances by Min Kyoung Lee, Olof Olsson, Venelin Shurelov until 21:30 and DJ Dontwarrior will play his tunes as long as you can dance
October 11th
14.00
Reading by Gergely Nagy
15.00
Performance by Olof Olsson
16.00
markov assoziatti: Grundprinzipien der Architektur - talk by Iassen Markov
17.00
Neuland - screening and talk by Daniel Kunle
19.30
Screening of works by Krassimir Terziev, Theo Prodromidis, Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak
October 12th
11.00
Residency experience – discussion with artists and curators
October 25th
Finissage
16.00 presentation of epistolary project by Kaiwan Mehta and Henrietta Rose-Innes
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The exhibition in Sofia is organized in partnership and with funding by Allianz Kulturstiftung, with the kind support of the Royal Embassy of Norway. The space for the exhibition is provided by Sofia Municipaity and ME "Old Sofia".
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