Art Today Association
Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv
The Ancient Bath

OPEN CALL LUMMIX Light Festival

Dear Artists,
Details about the open call you can find at our web page: lummix.eu/index.html#opencall
You can send your submissions at: office@lummix.eu
Deadline for submissions is 30.01.2016.
You are welcome to apply and feel free to forward to those, who might be also interested!
Best regards,
Emil Mirazchiev
director of LUMMIX Light Festival

Art Today Association
Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv
The Ancient Bath

21st edition of the WEEK OF CONTEMPORARY ART 2015

Opening: September 9th 2015, 7pm, Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv
The Ancient Bath, 179, 6-ti septemvri Blvd
The exhibition will be hold until October 8th 2015.

Artists: Luchezar Boyadjiev, Nemanja Cvijanovic, Jos Diegel, Juliane Ebner, Vasilena Gankovska, Pravdoliub Ivanov, Dejan Kaludjerovic, Daniela Kostova, Angelika Krinzinger, Luiza Margan, Emil Mirazchiev, Ivan Moudov, Olaf Osten, Oliver Ressler, Susanne Schuda, Kamen Stoyanov, Miryana Todorova, Borjana Ventzislavova

Curator: Boris Kostadinov

MATURE AND ANGRY

There are two very significant historical facts that in present days are the main reasons to use the term “X generation.” These historical facts are separated in the time by almost 20 years: one is political, the other is economic; but these facts have proved crucial for the generation of today’s 40-year-olds.

The first fact is the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when today’s 40-year-olds were in high school. This generation bears the stamp of this change. Born and raised in a system of confrontation, these individuals were 20 years old when they had to adjust to a new political model. In the late 1990’s, unlike their parents, they were young and optimistic, and they saw the positive aspects of living in a globalized world with more opportunities.

The second important fact in their lives is the occurrence of the global financial and economic crisis of 2007. At that time, they were in their mid-30s. That severe crisis became the reason for the end of their utopias. The failure of the Western globalization model prompted them to seek opportunities in the non-Western world - in the Arab world, Asia and Latin America. But they realized that their lifetime was already half over and as a result, the economic crisis was largely the reason for their midlife crisis.

Today the consequences of this historical framework can be analyzed. In 2003, the Anonymous gave the perspective of the new activism of the disaffected. In 2010, the Middle East and North Africa were in the midst of the Arab Spring. In 2011, Occupy Wall Street launched a wave of protests that swept across North America and Europe over the course of several years. The protests from New York to Athens, and from Madrid to the bloody clashes in Kiev are a metamorphosis of the ideas of one generation: without utopias and illusions, but politically active enough to want radical change.

This generation (of course, along with their younger fellow citizens) calls for a new political system, transparent policy, and the participation of civil society in the governance. Their protests are organized entirely through the internet and social networks.

All this social, economical and political chaos coincided with personal chaos in the mind of a person in the middle of his/her lifetime. The term “midlife crisis” was introduced in 1965 by Elliott Jaques, but its principle is enshrined in Freud’s theory of the fear of approaching death. Even so, the midlife crisis has lately received more attention in popular culture than serious research.

The midlife crisis in the field of contemporary art is a different species altogether. The system of the so-called “art world” is largely undemocratic and a product of the commercial dictates of the late 1980’s. Just like in cinema or pop music, this system idolizes the young star. For many years we have been witnessing a continual process imposed by galleries, foundations, museums, art fairs, and biennials, which launches increasingly younger names. The terms “emerging artist,” “mid-career,” and “established” are major landmarks in the contemporary art world. Today major institutional support is directed exclusively to artists under the age of 30 or a maximum of 35 years old.

The project Mature and Angry collects viewpoints, theories, critical commentaries and analyses of various artists between the ages of 33 and 55. This group is precisely the generation that has formed their beliefs and viewpoints, their personal and career plans in the period from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the global financial and economic crisis.

The concept of the exhibition aims to strike a balance between private and general. On one hand, Mature and Angry presents personal narratives and mythologies, specific phenomenology of life, and some special cases. On the other hand, it represents the public in its most important events: politics, economics, technology, social environment and social theory, ethics, and economics of art. The participating artists have life experience and the distance of time, so they understand their development in different contexts. At the same time they are sufficiently active and young, which allows them to seek and offer alternative concepts for new “future contexts.”

“Week of Contemporary Art” is a project by Art Today Association in partnership with Municipality of Plovdiv and Goethe-Institute Bulgaria.

The exhibition has been supported by: Bundeskanzleramt ?sterreich Kunst und Kultur, Austrian Embassy in Sofia, Gaudenz B. Ruf Award For New Bulgarian Art.

Media partners: BNT, BNT2, Radio Katra FM, Mediacafe, Pod Tepeto, Kapana, въпреки.com.

PLOVDIV – EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2019

WORKING HOURS
Tue - Sun
10.00 – 13.00, 13.30 - 18.30
Entrance fee: 2 lv. / 1 lv. for students and pensioners/
Thursday - Entrance free

Art Today Association
Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv
The Ancient Bath

20th edition of the WEEK OF CONTEMPORARY ART 2014

DISCONSENT

Curator: Iara Boubnova

Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv
The Ancient Bath
179, 6-ti septemvri Blvd.

Opening: September 5th 2014, 6pm
The exhibition will be hold until October 3rd 2014

Iara Boubnova

The title of the project refers to a legal notion with multiple meanings that often separates the criminal from the none-criminal act. To do something “by mutual consent”, to have mutual consent is generally OK; if something happens between two or more people without consent (in disagreement, which is synonymous to disconsent) that is not OK, often goes beyond the boundaries of the legally acceptable and most of the time is considered to be outside of the human norm for harmonious life in a community of people.

And yet, even when there is severe disagreement between two people, or two peoples, communities, countries, parties or any other two opposing forces they are often bound to live together no matter what. The law has ways to settle disputes as to the legally (not necessarily humanly) acceptable levels of “disagreement”… But the fact is that often people disagree and yet have to accept the necessity to live together.

The idea for thus project is rooted in the general state of Bulgarian society at present. Though the situation in Bulgaria in the last year has its specific features it is in general not so different from situations in a number of other countries and societies around the world – think of Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, USA, Brazil, Spain, Thailand and so on and on. In one way or another, for various reasons and with great variety of explanations in many countries the last few years have seen waves of protests and massive expressions of disagreements between people as to the way their countries and lives are run now. The information about such popular movements questioning the status quo, the establishment, the way societies are set up is like a wide flowing river that comes to us via the media, the social networks and sometimes participating people. The events in other countries, not only your own, have become now part of everybody’s everyday life.

A situation of disconsent seems to have settled all around us. Disconsent between people and the state, between various groups of people, between people and governments, corporations, political parties, and so on. It seems it is here to stay; it has become part of life; the discontent-disconsent scenario of protests is very likely becoming a permanent feature of societal life in the countries of the so called democracies though these have different shapes indeed. In the past before 1989 when the world was split between the two opposing “camps” of the bipolar model we were talking about “peaceful co-existence” between the two hostile systems – socialism and capitalism. For a long time it looked like one of the systems has won. Now it would appear that the system of capitalist free market economy and parliamentary democracy is undergoing a process of redefinition. And although the global financial crisis from 2008 might be in the past (with no questions asked about who paid the price for its resolution) it is far from certain that the model of the representative democracy has found its new “footing”. On the contrary, it is under attack along the lines of “representative” though not necessarily along the lines of “democracy”. The discontent with the low level of citizens’ participation in the decision making process seems to be the underlying current shared between all protest movements of the last 2-3 years. What is more – at least in Bulgaria, there is also the issue of citizens not agreeing with each other as to what should be done. And yet all citizens in a society must live together even at a time of extreme turmoil.

It is this state of disconsent, of life without agreement is what we would like to address with this exhibition project. The notion of consensus in a society might be a desired aim. However, it is not a reality. It is much more important to explore how it would be possible to live without consent, or “by mutual disconsent”, in other words.

The exhibition will explore the state of disconsent in various spheres and forms:
- coexistence of political apathy and activity – both are predicated on mistrust in power and leadership in all its forms;
- disapproval with economical models – disconsent about the distribution of the public wealth, lack of social awareness and inequality, shifting centers of production and marginalization of old centers, people of whole layers of society;
- restoration of retrograde and ultra conservative values concerning gender issues, religious freedoms and tolerance, loss of secular state emancipation and influence of religion in secular matters;
- dissatisfaction with systems of education, lack of access to education and suspicion about the values it promotes;
- disagreement with governance in general, with value system of society, with rules and laws privileging the few over the many; with lack of ethics in societal life and politics;
- disconsent bordering on contempt for the different and the other.

In one way or another, using variety of media, across borders of state, religion, gender or ethnicity artists are working and dealing with these issues of our world today. They often express different views and ideas and always question the system they happen to find themselves in. In the general confusion of today when art is looking for its new “vocation” and place in society artists are offering new viewpoints, languages of expression and visual tools. Artists are asking questions once again.

Artists:

Hito Staerl /Germany/
Pipiloti Rist /Switzerland/
Christian Jankowski /Germany/
Chto Delat? /Russia/
Nedko Solakov /Bulgaria/
Dimitar Solakov /Bulgaria/
Luchezar Boyadjiev /Bulgaria/
Krassimir Terziev /Bulgaria/
Kiril Kouzmanov /Bulgaria/
Miriyana Todorova /Bulgaria,USA/
Kiril Prashkov /Bulgaria/
Emil Mirazchiev /Bulgaria/
Vadim Fishkin /Russia, Slovenia/
Iskra Blagoeva /Bulgaria/
Lada Nakonechna /Ukraine/


“Week of Contemporary Art” is a project by Art Today Association in partnership with Minicipality of Plovdiv and Goethe-Institut Bulgaria.

The exhibition has been supported by: Gaudenz B. Ruf Award For New Bulgarian Art.

Media partners: BNT2, Radio Katra FM, Darik Radio, Darik News and Mediacafe.

PLOVDIV – EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2019

WORKING HOURS
Tue - Sun
10.30 – 18.00
Entrance fee: 2 lv. / 1 lv. for students and pensioners/
Thursday -Entrance free