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


SITES + SUBJECTS.
Performance Art Weekend, June 18 - 20, 2010

Elisabeth Penker, Susanne Rogenhofer, Marina Faust, Aymeric Hainaux, Albert Mayr, Aleksan Tchobanov, Selma Doborac, Lazar Lyutakov, Alexandar Peev, Panos Papadopoulos, Maximilian Pramatarov, Susanne Rogenhofer, Tamuna Sirbiladze, Axel Stockburger, Dorota Walentynowicz, Prodan Markov, DJ Sweet Susi, WILHELM GROENER, Ben Cottrell, Matthias Dornfeldt, Andrew Gilbert, Mariola Groener, Erwin Kneihsl, Markus Selg and Astrid Sourkova.

This years summer season at the Center for Contemporary Art CCA Plovdiv is dedicated to various forms of Performance Art, crossing the division lines of visual art and installation, sound, voice and dance. From Friday till Sunday, June 18 - 20, 2010, the CCA Plovdiv hosts as much as twenty international and local artists who will perform in interdisciplinary constellations and thus create unique settings for artistic encounters.

This project is kindly supported by Goethe-Institute Bulgaria, European Cultural Foundation, Austrian Embassy Sofia and AMTFA Plovdiv

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


ART POSITIVE
20.04.2010 and continues till 20.05.2010


Idea by Jakob Racek


Optimism
Doom-mongering is booming. Hardly a day goes by without news of currency crash, bankruptcy and crisis. It seems that the crisis has become the paradigm of our time. It?s found to be everywhere: in the economy, in our social values and last but not least in art. Hard times for optimists. But artists are experts in crisis. They meet the incessantly bad prognoses with alternative models, for their capital is creativity and is thus decoupled from the fluctuations of the global economy. Art has the power to create new spaces and discourses. This is as naive as self-evident.
The power of art is its liberty, and that means its critical attitude towards prevailing opinions and moods.

Participants: Antonia Kostova, Velizar Dimchev, Vyacheslav Esenkov, David Haywood, Desislava Dimcheva, Eleonora Hadjinikolova, Emil Mirazchiev, Krasimir Dobrev, Kosta Tonev, Lora Parmakova, Maria Mitkova, Natasha Kiupova.

Working time: Tue-Sun From 14:00 to 18:00h
Entrance fee: 1lv.(for students and pensioners fee 0.50 lv.)

Supported by:

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


Close View. New film and media art in Germany
retrospectives – lectures – panels – presentations


Art Today Association is pleased to invite you to spring?s program Close view, a sequel of screenings, panels and presentations related to contemporary film and video art production and reception in Germany. This event provides an opportunity for audience who are interested in broadening their knowledge about experimental formats, new approaches, discourse and debate as well as educational trainings.

March 9, 2010, 7 PM

Light is a kind of rythm, Alena Williams (Berlin, New York)
book release & films by Jutta Koether, Die T?dliche Doris, Jan Hammer, L?szl? Moholy-Nagy, Viking Eggeling, Ralph Steiner, Andreas Wutz, Matthias M?ller, Man Ray
March 10, 2010, 7 PM

Institute for time-based media – University of Fine Arts Berlin, Sebastian Bodirsky (Berlin)
presentation & films by Kaya Bekhalam, Karl Bongartz, Isabelle Spengler, Daniel Urria

March 24, 2010, 7 PM
retrospective Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen laureates 2005 – 2009

entrance free

Program::
Ga?lle Denis
City Paradise, UK 2004, 6’

Vincent Meessen
N12?13.062'/W001?32.619' Extended, Belgium/Burkina Faso 2005, 8’30’’

Guy Ben-Ner
Wild Boy, Israel 2004, 17’

Anna Berger
o.T. Untitled, Germany 2005, 12’

Alina Rudnitskaya
Kak stat stervoi. Vixen Academy, Russia 2008, 29'

Michel Kl?fkorn
n. n., Deutschland 2009, 11???


partner GOETHE-INSTITUT, BULGRIEN
kindly supported by ROBERT BOSCH STIFTUNG
Alena Williams is an art historian and curator based in Berlin and New York. She graduated at Columbia University, NY, and is currently working on her PhD thesis "Movement in Vision: German Aesthetics and Modern Culture, 1915-1930", concerning kinetic experiments of the modernist avantgarde in Weimar Germany and exploring the relationship between expressionist abstraction, Neue Sachlichkeit tendencies, and the representation of movement in drawings, sculpture and film.
An interval of approximately 80 years exists between the films of the 1920s and those of the present moment that are discussed in her recently published book "Light is a kind of rythm". It traces the relationship of light to the moving image from an early moment in the history of film - seen in the work of Viking Eggeling, L?szl? Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Hans Richter, and Ralph Steiner - to that of the present day. The featured contemporary artists - Jan Hammer, Jutta Koether, Andreas Wutz, Die T?dliche Doris, and Matthias M?ller - return to an earlier aesthetic engagement with cinema; in their films, videos and digital slides, the moving image offers an alternative mode for thinking through abstraction. Static paintings, collages, and walls are reconstituted as animate, reflective objects, while transient light effects are extracted from life and assigned entirely new meanings.

The media of film, video and computer open up possibilities, which are not by any means exhausted. The teaching of these subjects and their combination is central to the institute of time-based media, which is about experimental use of moving pictures and the design of multimedia or interactive systems.
Sebastian Bodirsky (born 1981) lives in Berlin. He graduated from the class "Experimental Film" of Prof. Heinz Emigholz at University of the Arts Berlin in 2007. He worked in several mostly informal collaborative contexts in Berlin and Belgrade and as an assistant curator at transmediale.04. He develops his filmic works along reflections on knowledge, observation and intervention.

The Center for Contemporary Art together with the Goethe-Institut Sofia present the a selection of the laureates of the renowned Oberhausen Short Film Festival from the years 2005 to 2009.

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


Art Today Association
in partnership with Goethe Institute Bulgaria
presents
Transmediale.09 Special selection

February 10, 2010, 19.00 o’clock
Center for Contemporary Art – Plovdiv, The Ancient Bath


Transmedialeis an annual festival for art and digital culture, held in Berlin, Germany. Originating as a video and film festival for contemporary art that started in 1988, transmediale has since 2008 been directed by Stephen Kovats. The annual competition started back then and is now in its 22nd follow-up. This continuity in selection and presentation of artistic works determined the festival’s popularity as well as the constantly high quality of its submissions from all over the world. Last year’s competition of transmediale was joined by some 1000 artists. The retrospective shows eight outstanding video works, which allow an insight into contemporary video art production.

Films by Joanna Hoffmann, Herrmann Asselberghs, Jоrn Staeger, Surekha Kumar, Elke Groen, Mark Boswell, Momoko Seto, Etta Sеfve

Program:
Joanna Hoffmann: Secret Life
Poland, 2008, 10:59 min.

Herrmann Asselberghs: Altogether
Belgium, 2008, 15:00 min.

Jоrn Staeger: Reise zum Wald
Germany, 2008, 7:00 min.

Surekha Kumar: Line of Control
India, 2005, 2:50 min.

Elke Groen: NightStill
Austria, 2007, 9:00 min.

Mark Boswell: Unknown Unknown(s)
USA, 2008, 13:43 min.

Momoko Seto: Planet A
France, 2008, 10:00 min.

Etta Sеfve: Unwavering (Sisyphus)
The Netherlands/Sweden, 2006-07, 4:11 min.

Additional information at:
http://www.transmediale.de/files/tm09_videoselect_de.pdf

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


AUTUMN CURATORIAL SCHOOL / SYMPOSIUM /

Co-organizers of the autumn curatorial school are Art Today Association – Center for Contemporary Art Plovdiv and New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Department.

The project is implemented with the financial support of the European Cultural Foundation and in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art (MUDAM), Luxembourg, PAVILION UNICREDIT – Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, Bucharest, and FEINKOST Gallery, Berlin, in partnership with the German-Bulgarian Meeting Centre, Plovdiv.

The Autumn Curatorial School combines the models of an educational seminar and a workshop where young curators meet recognized international curators – representatives of various institutions as state museums, private galleries, corporate centres and biennials, who present basic models of curatorial strategies. The educational seminar offers students and young professionals the opportunity to get acquainted with different kinds of curatorial practices in the frames of a series of lectures in the New Bulgarian University and a three-day workshop in Plovdiv. The thematic focus of the workshop is pointed at the elaboration of a concept for an exhibition, devoted to the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall – a topic which the lectors introduce through their own curatorial projects. Both the seminar and the workshop are aimed at stimulating the dialogue between foreign and Bulgarian curators, artists, and theoreticians in the field of contemporary art.

PROGRAMME

Thursday, October 29th / Sofia:

14.30 – 15.30 " Beyond-national exhibitions of modern art today – difficulties of curating. Two exemplary case-studies", Assist. Prof. Irina Genova / New Bulgarian University, Sofia

15.30 – 16.30 "The Biennial as a Post-institution", Dr. Pascal Gielen / Groeningen University, Belgium

16.30 – 17.30 Presentation of the new book "Being an Artist in Post-Fordist Times" by Pascal Gielen and the collection for the 1st Brussels Biennial 2008, part І and ІІ, edited by him.

18.00 – 19.30 Presentation of the Institute for Contemporary Art-Sofia (ICA-Sofia), Iara Boubnova, Director of ICA-Sofia, presentations of artists from ICA

Friday, October 30th / Plovdiv:

15.00 – 16.00 "ATLANTIS. Reflections of tomorrow", guided tour by the curator Emil Mirazchiev / Art Today Association, Plovdiv

16.30 – 17.30 ARTTODAY Association - Center for Contemporary Art Plovdiv, presented by Emil Mirazchiev / director

17.30 – 18.30 FEINKOST Gallery Berlin, presented by Aaron Moulton / co-founder and curator

18.30 – 19.30 PAVILION UNICREDIT – Center for Contemporary Art and Culture Bucharest, presented by Razvan Ion / director; discussion

Saturday, October 31st / Plovdiv:

11.00 – 12.00 "Handlung - On Producing Possibilities. 4th Bucharest Biennial", Felix Vogel / curator

12.00 – 13.00 "The CHALGA Temptation. An exhibition concept", Vessela Nozharova / curator

15.00 – 17.30 Workshop I: Conceptual design of an exhibition on the occasion of 20 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Aaron Moulton

18.00 – 19.00 Workshop II: Institutions as Instruments of Critical Thinking, Razvan Ion

19.30 – 20.00 Artnews Cafe, presented by Vesselina Sarieva, director

Sunday, November 1st / Plovdiv:

11.00 – 12.30 Workshop I: Conceptual design of an exhibition on the occasion of 20 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Emil Mirazchiev

14.30 – 16.00 Workshop II: Institutions as Instruments of Critical Thinking, Razvan Ion

16.30 – 19.00 Studio Dauhaus - Contemporary Art Platform Sofia, presented by Yovo Panchev / curator & artist

Monday, November 2nd / Sofia

11.00 – Workshop with artists and curators; visiting artist studios

Short Information about the participants:

Pascal Gielen teaches art sociology and cultural policy at the University of Groningen and is Professor of Arts in Society at the Fontys University of Fine and Performing Arts in Tilburg. He is the author of the book ???Art in Networks’ (2003) and a co-author of ???An Environment for Contemporary Art’ (2004) and ???Cultural Good’ (2005). ???The Unattainable Inside of the Past’ (2007), ???The Art Institution’ (2007) and ???The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude. Global Art, Memory and Post-Fordism’ (in press) are among his latest monographs.

Razvan Ion (born 1970) is a theoretician, curator, cultural manager and a political activist. He is the co-editor (with Eugen Radescu) of PAVILION - journal for politics and culture, co-director of Bucharest Biennale and in 2008 he was appointed as director of PAVILION UNICREDIT- Center for Contemporary Art & Culture. He has lectured at Art Academy - Timisoara, La Casa Encendida - Madrid, Calouste Gulbenkian - Lisbon, Apex Art – New York, etc. Razvan Ion is the author of the book “How Innocent is That?” (Revolver Publishing, Berlin, 2008). He recently curated "Exploring the Return of Repression" at Pavilion, Bucharest and rum46, Aarhus.

Felix Vogel (born 1987) lives and studies in Madrid, after his graduation from the Center for Media Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany. He is a curator and a critic who explores the relations between the aesthetic and the social sphere. Vogel is the editor of two books for OneStarPress (Paris) - “Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil: Fin de representation” and “Lia Perjovschi: Sense”.

Aaron Moulton has previously worked as an art critic at FLASH ART in Milan. Then he founded the FEINKOST Gallery in Berlin, which he presented in a number of leading fairs for contemporary art. Assist.

Professor Irina Genova is the Director of the Department of History of Culture at New Bulgarian University and the instructor of the doctoral seminar “The Visual Image”.

Emil Mirazchiev is a co-founder of the Edge group, the director of Art Today Association and a founder of Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv, The Ancient Bath. His latest curatorial project is "ATLANTIS. Reflections of tomorrow".



Art Today Association
presents
ATLANTIS I
Hidden Histories – New Identities.
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

www.atlantisprojects.eu

The project started in June 2009 with the exhibition Rohkunstbau in Sacrow near Berlin, it then continued in Bratislava and Vienna, crossing the Slovak-Austrian border, went subsequently to Thessaloniki and will finally end in Plovdiv, Bulgaria with the exhibition:

REFLECTION OF TOMORROW
Curator: Emil Mirazchiev, co-curator: Jakob Racek

www.atlantis.arttoday.org

10 October - 10 November 2009
Opening – 10 October 2009 (Saturday), 18.00 p.m.

Participants:
Аbb? Libansky,Adelina Popnedeleva, Alexander Yuzev, BURGHARD,
Bora Petkova, Venelin Shurelov, Georgi Georgiev – Jorras, Dan Tenev,
Doychin Russev, Evantia Tsantila, Emil Mirazchiev feat David Cerny,
Ergin Chavushoglu, Ivan Moudov, Yohannes Artinyan, Kamen Stoyanov,
Katerina Apostolidou, Krasimir Terziev, Lazar Lutakov, Luchezar Bojadzhiev, Lora Parmakova, Maria Papadimitriou, Milko Pavlov,
Max Neupert, Nadya Genova, Natasha Kyupova, Nedko Butsev, Orlin Nedelchev, Pravdolyub Ivanov, Plamen Assenov, Sevdalina Kochevska,
Simeon Stoilov, Francis Hunger.

Actions and installations in public spaces:
Dan Tenev – action – Common Grave / Memorial of amity – 4th of October, from 11.00 until 16.00
Dan Tenev – action – Central Square – 9th and 10 of October, from 11.00 until 16.00
Abb? Libansky – installation – water mirror at the Gyuro Mihailov’s monument, opening on 10 October, from 20.00.