Art Today Association

Open call

Art Today Association invites artists working in the field of contemporary art in Plovdiv to take part in the RE-CONNECT 2023 residency program.
Plovdiv - Timisoara.

For detailed information on the program s regulations, as well as to apply for the program, email us at office@arttoday.org

The project has been realized with the financial support of the National Fund "Culture" under the program "Restoration and Development of Private Cultural Organizations".

RE:CONNECT gathers 9 artists from Plovdiv and 9 artists from Timi?oara to explore and illustrate through different techniques of contemporary art their interpretation of an event, place, history, impression or cultural heritage of the city in which they come from. “Urban Mythology” will create a collection of prisms for viewing and experiencing the two capitals of culture, denoting analogous or opposing trends in collective experience.

Mythology brings to life "psyche" - the Greek term for soul. It is a mediator from the private to the general perception of the world. In this way, myths describe unconscious processes at the individual and societal level. They connect our inner and outer worlds, through personification, moving us from the conceptual to the experiential. With their metaphorical meaning, myths are like invisible influences that both shape us and recreate the cyclicality and transience of being. Myths are an internal chronicle of who we are. They can be intimate truths that are best understood when born into stories.

The modern urban topos provides an opportunity to study various historical, political, social and individual phenomena. Each city contains and gives life to a complex system of narratives, legends and stories that reflect the structures of the collective unconscious. Can modern life illuminate new horizons through the urban stories it tells? What stories are going around town? What is the modern mythology of the urban?

Art Today Association

Presents

WEEK OF CONTEMPORARY ART 2022

2-11 September 2022

"THE WEIGHT OF BEING"

Participants:
Ariel Reichman (Izrael / Germany), Boriana Ventsislavova (Bulgaria / Austria), Desislava Terzieva (Bulgaria / USA), Elena Bellantoni (Italy / Germany), Emil Mirazchiev (Bulgaria), Lachezar Boiadjiev (Bulgaria), Selma Selman (Bosna and Herzegovina / USA), Sevdalina Kochevska (Bulgaria), Venelin Shurelov (Bulgaria), Veronika Tcekova (Bulgaria / Austria).


Curator Galina Dimitrova-Dimova

After Milan Kundera"s The Unbearable Lightness of Being

At the core of the project concept laid the antagonisms: weight and lightness, freedom and dependence, responsibility and passivity.
The theme refers to the desires and longings of nowadays humans, but also the responsibilities and dependencies that they give rise to. Like the desire to free ourselves from activities and cares in order to have more time for ourselves. This is a contemporary obsession to gain time from our everyday activities in order to dedicate or invest it in our health and self-improvement. Although in most cases, we end up consuming something, and thus fulfilling marketing agendas, or wasting calories in pointless movements in the gym...
Here we consider time as a value, as a unit of measurement or a coin of exchange that we use to fulfill our desires. This currency is observed again in the perspective of the human desire to free ourselves - from thoughts, actions, and responsibilities. It is often linked to our seemingly easy abdication of responsibility with the statement "it"s not up to me", combined with a constant sense of frustration turns us into slackers who always have someone to blame for our unenviable fate, or into modern-day slaves who sell their most precious possessions - time, thoughts and ideas - to capitalize them into a comfortable existence.
It is responsibility and the determination to act, however, that gives meaning to our existence, gives significance to our being. As much as this overwhelming burden scares us it can only bring us the feeling of living with dignity.
And the beauty, as the last thing that supports us in this difficult path. "Beauty as error, the last phase of evolution" (after Kundera)
The conceptual framework of the Week of Contemporary Art, Plovdiv 2022 will be the call to reclaim the weight of existence and the poetics of the image that lightens and lifts us from the ground, because "Creativity for humans is like flying for birds"

Dedicated to Plamen Dimov, for the sacrifices we make in the difficult path of realizing the unbearable lightness of being.

The format of the 2022 Contemporary Art Week in Plovdiv will be art in public space and will include temporary artistic interventions in the urban environment in the form of installations, performances or guerrilla actions that refer to the theme.

On September 3, from 6 to 8 p.m., a conference will be held with the motto "Call the city, call the people". It will examine artistic interventions in urban environments, as an artistic practice that seeks engagement or interaction with the public
The opening of the event is on September 3 at 8 p.m., after which the performance "MirroMorphosis" by Irina Stoyanova and Hristo Zhelev will take place.

Week of Contemporary Art is supported by the Goethe-Institut, Municipality of Plovdiv and the City Art Gallery - Plovdiv and the financial support of the National Fund "Culture"

Art Today Association

Presents

ART POSITIVE 2022

Kapana Gallery
Plovdiv, 29 Rayko Daskalov Street

23.03. - 20.04. 2022
Opening: 23.03.22, 18 pm

Work time:
Tuesday - Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00 h
day off: Monday

FREEDOM

The 15th edition of Art Positive shows us again an exciting topic - about freedom, eternal and increasingly relevant in the modern context of the war. Although created and planned before these events, the works in the exhibition seem to add new dimensions that bring us even closer to the meaning of this topic.
With this topic, we hope to shake off our excessive focus on the pandemic and take a full look at the painful, never-ending and complex issue of freedom. With this topic, we hope to shake off our excessive focus on the pandemic and take a full look at the painful and yet eternal and complex issue of freedom. The search, as well as the embodiment of freedom, are primordial human dimensions that should unite and elevate us all. Freedom as a collective, not just an individual phenomenon, carries within itself a conscious responsibility to others, as well as to the social and natural environment. It is actually the key to a better world.
Freedom can be seen through various social, political, cultural, artistic and spiritual thematics - such as freedom and society; freedom and social differences; political forms of freedom; freedom, gender and sexuality; freedom and ecology; spiritual, physical and creative dimensions of freedom, and others. Reflections on the many aspects of freedom will be presented through the innovative approach of Art Positive, which will bring together young and already established artists together to exhibit works to us using all mediums of contemporary art.
Text: Kalina Peycheva

Participants: Aaron Roth, Biser Kirilov, Velina Hristova, Dorian Bolca, Eva Petkova, Elena Savova, Emi Kurtova, Emil Mirazchiev, Women of the Edge, Iva Vacheva, Ivan Ivanov, Ivan Karev, Ivelina Ivanova, Iliana Manukova, Mira Mohsen, Mitch Brezunek, Nadia Genova, Osman Yuseinov, Petar Kochevski, Sarkis Nersesyan, Sevdalina Kochevska, Sofia Grancharova, Harita Asumani, Yana Kostova.

The exhibition is realized with the financial support of the Municipality of Plovdiv and the
National Fund "Culture"

Media partners: BNT2, Radio Katra FM, MediaCafe, въпреки.com, Pod tepeto

Art Positive is a project of the Art Today Association, a member of the international network of German cultural societies abroad at the Goethe-Institut.