Projections // Chapter I: making // SUPERPOSITIONS THREE

Living Together is an artistic research and production program curated by Katia Anguelova and Lucrezia Cippitelli in the context of the exhibition series Superpositions, initiated by ICA-Sofia.

The program aims at proposing a complex network of audiovisual projects and installations, which will gather in Sofia an international community of artists who reflect through their practices on the idea of living together, coexisting, co-creating, inhabiting as a collectivity, recalling common hidden memories, inventing outer spaces and outer lives in common.

 

The program follows the strategies proposed by Superpositions series, a set of events which follow each other, organized in three chapters on two main displays: public screenings of the work of three artists followed by a site-specific exhibition within the spaces of ICA-Sofia.

The first chapter, Making, invites Døcumatism & Menelaos Karamaghiolis (Greece), Juan Pablo Macías (Mexico/Italy) and Kamen Stoyanov (Bulgaria/Austria) to present their video works in one of the Sofia’s public underpasses (Tzarevetz underpass).

The first chapter, Making, starts with a set of audiovisual works by artists who work at the intersection of contemporary art and moving images. For this section we invited DØCUMATISM & Menelaos Karamaghiolis (Greece), Juan Pablo Macías (Mexico/Italy) and Kamen Stoyanov (Bulgaria/Austria) to present their works in one of the Sofia’s underpasses, the Tzarevetz underpass, a site which has changed many times its functional, social and esthetic identity.

 

Making is a metaphor that pushes the boundaries of the functional meaning of the term, which suggests the material action of “producing” something formalized, on to the idea of creating, proposing, and activating seen as a social act. As anthropologist Tim Ingold suggested, making is a process of growth, which does not only produce forms, but indeed generates processes. We embrace this suggestion as an analogy which untangles the work of the artist, and which is a synesthetic action not limited to the proliferation of physical formalized outputs, but instead produces perpetual beginnings. Making is for us an act which also involves thinking about the community and imagining ways of being together, or building alliances and spaces for companionships.

 

Based and active in Athens, the group of filmmakers, artists, curators, historians, social workers, researchers, and educators, DØCUMATISM, works as a space for co-creation which triggers possible solutions to crucial social issues. Their audiovisual productions and documentaries aim at making the “invisible” visible through moving images. With their artistic actions, films starring anti-heroes and stories that break barriers and stereotypes, the Døcumatism collective (active since 2009, founded by filmmaker Menelaos Karamaghiolis) practices the art of film as an experimental and functional tool for those who live on the margins of society.

Presented for the first time in Sofia The AfroGreeks – prologue (2015-2019, 14’, digital video, single channel, color, stereo sound), can be described as the starting point of DØCUMATISM’s work with the African Diaspora community in Greece. Here, the moving image sparks live actions and the visibility of the very existence of a lively, complex community which is normally made invisible and marginalized in European countries. In addition, there are two more portraits which are part of the series: The AfroGreeks – Aggelos (2020-2022, 9’53’’, digital video, 3 channels, color, and stereo sound) and The AfroGreeks – Jessica (2019-2020, 7’22’’, digital video, 3 channels, color, and stereo sound). Both videos systematically turn upside down any attempt to deny the very presence, identity and subjectivity of African diasporic citizens.

The second audiovisual work is Owen (2015, 41’ 19”, 1 channel video B/W with sound) by Juan Pablo Macías. The film follows the story of the US engineer Albert Kimsey Owen, who settled the Pacific Colony, a socialist community in Topolobampo in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, which eventually grew to 500 inhabitants, showing him while in his print shop. The video intertwines shoots of the editorial production of the first translation to Spanish of Owen’s seminal book Problems of the Hour in Nine Brief Studies with an original musical score conceived by the artist in collaboration with Gonzalo Macías. The sound track accompanies the printing process of the book. Juan Pablo Macías learned of Albert Kimsey Owen’s work through Mexico City’s Biblioteca Social Reconstruir (Social Library Reconstruct), an archive specialized in anarchist thought that has guided several of his projects.

 

The third work The City for the People (2024, 5’, digitized 16 mm film) is a new 16 mm film production by Kamen Stoyanov. It pictures Dimitrovgrad, a city built by thousands of young people, labor brigade members, workers and construction troops from all over Bulgaria. It was a model of a city used as a tool of for Communist propaganda and promotion of its power. Kamen Stoyanov brings up the image of an idealized city, emptied of life and human presence, reenacting the language of ‘national’ images of the Soviet Block propaganda. A kind of a city symphony (an experimental film form that presented the city as a protagonist instead of a mere decor), The City for the People, became a symbol of the collapse of a dream and an ideology. The film ends with footage showing people in the city’s Sunday open air market which attracts people the most after the changes of 1989.

 

 

Living Together is a program of artistic research and artistic production curated by Katia Anguelova and Lucrezia Cipitelli in the context of the SUPERPOSITIONS THREE exhibition series initiated by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Sofia (ICA-Sofia). The events are realized with the financial assistance of the National Fund "Culture" under the program "Creation" and Gaudenz B. Ruf, with the support of the Municipal Security Company "Egida - Sofia" Ltd.

 

 

Døcumatism is an Athens based collective that consist of filmmakers, artists, curators, historians, social workers, researchers, and educators, Døcumatism was founded by the artist and filmmaker Menelaos Karamaghiolis in 2009. Starting with the moving image and documentary, the collective has gone on to organize art actions and public dialogues on critical social issues with the aim of exploring invisible and inaccessible landscapes and launching possible solutions to crucial social issues. Their goal is to initiate dialogue and make the “invisible” visible. Through art actions, films starring real-life heroes, and stories that break barriers and stereotypes, the Døcumatism team makes film art a functional tool for those living on the margins of society.
The collective’s collaborations foster the interaction of artists, protagonists, and viewers; these figures work together to design art actions that focus on one key social issue at a time. Each issue functions as an “apparatus” throughout a given action’s preparation, production, and distribution, mobilizing broader debates and making the recipient and eyewitness in situ.

 

Juan Pablo Macìas (b. 1974 Puebla, Mexico. Lives in Livorno, Italy)

In editorial projects, poetry, installations, performances, video, text, and photographs, Juan Pablo Macías investigates systems of representation and affectivity. His research-oriented work often considers the specific history of anarchism as a critique of representation, contrasting authoritative hegemonic knowledge to the often-hidden or repressed insurrectional knowledge passed between marginalized communities and activist networks. He is editor in chief of TIEMPO MUERTO journal (2012-ongoing) and WORD+MOIST PRESS (2014-ongoing), two editorial projects on anarchism and libertarian thought. Using the anarchist logic of expropriation, these publications draw from the unique resources available in contemporary art institutions and foundations to bring this information to light (using public resources to make information public), and often are accompanied with conceptually oriented works by the artist.

 

Kamen Stoyanov (b. 1977 in Ruse, Bulgaria. Lives in Vienna and Sofia)

Born and raised in Bulgaria. He studied visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and Film at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia.
His practice includes film, video, performance, installation, painting, and drawing. He recently shot and is in the process of finishing his first feature film “Zvezda”, funded by the Bulgarian National Film Center. His short experimental film “Up and Through” was awarded as the ‘Best Experimental’ at the Dumbo Film Festival 2020 and was nominated for Best Experimental at the Long Story Shorts 2020 International Film Festival in Bucharest. His works have been presented at exhibitions, festivals and biennials worldwide.