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

URBAN DREAMS
20.10 - 30.11.2012


URBAN DREAMS consists of two project modules:

1. Artistic interventions in public space

Based on manifold perspectives of diverse artists URBAN DREAMS explores public and semi-public spaces. Through URBAN DREAMS art becomes a research strategy and the city changes into a laboratory. Arts, the city and everyday life confront each other. Reactions and interactions with the inhabitants will join the continuous process of research. Since the attained insights stem from urban spaces, presentation opportunities are to be found in precisely these spaces. Connections will be generated directly at the place of origin. Recipients turn simultaneously into objects of observation and observers of objects, into the investigated and the investigators. The act of (re-)search becomes an artistic performance itself.

2. The exhibition as an “archive” of dreams
26.10 - 26.11.2012

For this project the exhibition space of the Centre for Contemporary Art changes into an archive and reading room of (mainly Eastern) European artistic urban research saving dreams expressed in explicit, such as in implicit manners. Beside the results of the latest artistic urbanism in Plovdiv and in other partner cities of the HEICO network, this archive will also present international projects from the last twenty years by different forms of media, based on material provided by partner organisations and artists.

Curator: Emil Mirazchiev

Program:

20/21 October 2012, 11 am - 6 pm. HAMALOGIKA - Artistic interactive intervention in public space.
Place: The Water Mirrors next to the City Park
www.ekipnews.com/news/bulgaria/plovdiv

26 October 2012, 7 pm. Opening of the interactive exhibition, library/archive of the European artistic urban research.
Place: Centre for Contemporary Art – Plovdiv, The Ancient Bath

28 October 2012, site-specific installation. Artist: Tilmann Meyer-Faje
Place: In front of the Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv, The Ancient Bath.

27 October 6-8 pm. 29 October 1-6 pm. KISS - two channel video installation. Artist: Sevdalina Kochevska.
Place: Roman Stadium
http://youtu.be/MifJt4OCoGM

7 November 2012, 2-3 pm. FOOOOTBALLLL – Football game between 4 football teams, 4 football gates and 1 ball. Artist: Veronika Tsekova
Place: Stadium Plovdiv
http://youtu.be/zwhVvMSgwps

17 November, 6-9 pm. Space 0 Space – Storm - Artist: HR-Stamenov.
Place: City Art Gallery, Plovdiv, Old Town.
http://arttoday.org/site/space_0_space.html
http://vimeo.com/53811989

22 – 29 November 5-6 pm. successively opening of SPACE FOR CULTURE.
22.11. – Museum of Film and Photography, above house of Hr. Danov in Old Town.
27.11. – Museum of Architecture, Museum of Contemporary Art - ул. Ivan Vazov str., Tobacco storages.
http://youtu.be/_QNvpsC9Ji4

30.11. – 5 pm. Opening Center for New Media Art, house in Old Town above Monday market, 6 pm. Opening Center for Unlimited Art, Cinema Kosmos.
Artist: Emil Mirazchiev.
Place: different locations in Plovdiv - Tobacco storages, abandoned houses in Old Town, Cinema Kosmos.


A project funded by: European Commission
This project reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use, which may be made of the information contained therein.

Project partners in Bulgaria: Goethe Institute Bulgaria, Municipality Plovdiv, Robert Bosch Foundation, Foundation Plovdiv 2019.

Media partners: BNT Plovdiv, Katra FM, Darik Radio. Darik news.

URBAN DREAMS is a series of public events organized by the Art Today Association, Plovdiv/Bulgaria in the frame of HEICO, in partnership with the Heinrich-Boell-Foundation Brandenburg/Germany, SPACES/Slovak Republic, the Art&Cultural Studies Laboratory/Armenia, GeoAIR Association/Georgia and the KSAK-Center for Contemporary Art, Chisinau/Moldova.

The event is part of the initiative "Plovdiv - Candidate for European Capital of Culture 2019»

26.10 - 26.11.2012
Working hours: 11:30 – 18:30.
Closed on Monday

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

Facade Video Festival 2012, Plovdiv
Art Today Association - Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv, The Ancient Bath is pleased to invite you to the third edition of the annual Facade Video Festival, which will take place from 12 until 16 September, 2012, at the Lapidarium and other selected locations in the Old Town of Plovdiv.

Facade is one of the annual projects of Art Today Association - Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv. The festival organizers seek to promote and support the development of video art in Bulgaria as their aims are to explore the interaction between the urban environment, the city residents and the video as a medium.
The festival was established in 2010 and traditionally within its conducting films are projected on the walls of the Old Town of Plovdiv. Despite its short history, the Festival has enjoyed great popularity among video artists worldwide. Out of the 270 applications, the international jury selected 84 video works by 67 artists from 22 countries.
The festival will be inaugurated on 12th September at 20.00 at the Lapidarium next to the Balabanov House. The program will be accompanied by the audio-visual performance "Facet" by Petko Tanchev and Atanas Dinchev.

The winner of the Facade Prize (one-month residency at the multimedia lab of the Art Today Association in 2013) will be selected by the jury:

Ren? Beekman (artist and curator, Netherlands / Bulgaria)
Baptist Coelho (video artist, India, winner of the Facade Prize 2011)
Sevdalina Kochevska (video artist, Bulgaria)
Nadia Genova (artist, Bulgaria)
Emil Mirazchiev (artist, director of the Facade Video Festival)

The festival is organized with the support of the Municipality of Plovdiv, Goethe Institute Bulgaria, Plovdiv 2019 Foundation and media cooperation BNT, BNT Plovdiv, Katra FM, Darik Radio, Radio Plovdiv, Maritsa newspaper.
The event is part of the initiative "Plovdiv - Candidate for European Capital of Culture 2019»

The program, the catalogue and more information on:
http://facade.arttoday.org/en/2012

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


The 18th edition of the Week of Contemporary Art - Plovdiv presents

In Fifteen Minutes Everyone Will Be In The Future (An Opera)

Center of Contemporary Art Plovdiv, The Ancient Bath, 08.09. –05.10. 2012
Opening: 07.09. 2012, 19.00 with a performance by Venelin Shurelov

Discussion: The role of art for formulating social and political visions for the future with Galina Dimitrova-Dimova, Dessislava Dimova, Toril Johanessen, Venelin Shurelov and Boriana Ventzislavova
08.09.2012 at 11 a.m., The Ancient Bath, Plovdiv

Curators: Galina Dimitrova-Dimova and Dessislava Dimova

Artists: Pierre Bismuth and Aaron Schuster, Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkacova, Chto Delat, Lily Reynaud-Dewar, Natalya Dyu, Emre Huner, Toril Johanessen, Jesse Jones, Basim Magdy, Michelle Naismith, Venelin Shurelov, Ned Sublette (ASCAP), Lawrence Weiner (BMI)(ARS)and The Persuasions, Borjana Ventzislavova

In the world post 89, and after the failure of modernist future oriented political and artistic projects, the future became the symbol of the past’s oppressive ideologies. Art could not herald the future anymore and could only speak from a position of critique of the present. Today we are witnessing political and social developments that urge us to formulate an idea of a different tomorrow again. Artists seek to reconstruct the relationship between art and future in new terms.

Coming from a generation that lived on the threshold of the communist future we know that keeping a contact with tomorrow is not necessarily a huge programmatic task. In socialist pop culture, contacts with the future were made regularly in order to sustain the belief in its actuality. The Russian children TV series “Guests from the future” (1985) and the Hungarian animated series “The Mezga Family” (1968-1978) for example adapted the once avant-garde ideas to the reality of contemporary life and proposed encounters between present and future.

How can art speak about the future today? Where does art today position itself between its historical roles of a distanced critique of society and an engaged actor on the political scene?

In order to find a form that addresses simultaneously the banality of the image of the future we have inherited from our near past and the ideological burden of its promises, the exhibition takes inspiration from the flamboyancy and drama of the opera. Opera has the ambiguous status of historically developing forms both as popular art and an elitist genre. By staging mostly time based works which play with the appeal of the “total” art of opera and the pedagogic potential of theatre, we hope to explore the possibilities of the exhibition to create a Brechtian distancing effect, an interruption, a space where to get hold of the future.

Last but not least, the Latin origin of the word “opera” meaning “work”, reminds us that establishing a connection with our future is a continuous collective labour to which we hope this exhibition contributes.

The title of the exhibition is taken from the work of Pierre Bismuth and Aaron Schuster, “Famous” (2009).



The exhibition is supported by the Municipality of Plovdiv, Goethe Institute Bulgaria, The Austrian Embassy, Sofia, Office for Contemporary Art, Norway, Credo Bonum Foundation, Sofia and Art Affairs and Documents Foundation, Sofia and B?ckerstra?e 4 - plattform f?r junge kunst, Vienna. The event is part of the initiative "Plovdiv - candidate for European Capital of Culture 2019”.