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


SITES + SUBJECTS
Performance Art Festival

June 16 - 19, 2011

After a successfull launch in 2010 this year?s edition of SITES + SUBJECTS brings together artists from various disciplines in the Center for Contemporary Art - The Ancient Bath as well as in particular venues and in the public space of Plovdiv. Artists from Bulgaria, Serbia, Great Britain, Austria and Germany come together to create a unique atmosphere of creative expression on the crossings of contemporary dance, minimal and electronic music, public interventions and new media arts. The conceptual framework of the festival is characterized by it?s productive openess, with singular performance projects that carry the potential to merge one into another. Simultaneously the distinction of producer and audience is widely trascended through the inclusive approach of most of the artistic projects. Thus SITES + SUBJECTS creates a temporary space of communion through social interaction.
For the first time this year the festival offers a series of collateral events, inviting professionals, curators and art historians to talk about the genre of performance art from different angles.


Program

Thursday, June 16
7 PM opening of the festival
7.15 PM performance / Petit Buffet (Berlin): "Reality Cheque"
8 PM performance / Ansgar Wilken (Berlin): "Pasolini for Chello and Pedal"
9 PM performance / Zabuna (Beograd): "Bring your Noise!"
performance / Krasimir Dobrev (Sliven): "The Big Melancholy"
All events take place in the Center for Contemporary Art Plovdiv - The Ancient Bath.

Friday, June 17
5 PM performance / The Great Learning: Paragraph 1 & 3 & 4
Evangelic church Plovdiv, Lady Strangford Str. 21, Plovdiv
8.30 PM lecture / Ruen Ruenov (Sofia): A Hisory of Performance Art in Bulgaria. The 1990?s
artnewscaf?, Otec Paisy Str. 38, Plovdiv
9 PM exhibition opening / "Revelation": Mariola Groener, Ben Cottrell
Sariev gallery, Otec Paisy Str. 40, Plovdiv

Saturday, June 18
2 PM lecture / Eirini Papakonstantinou (Thessaloniki): "Curating Performance"
artnewscaf?, Otec Paisy Str. 38, Plovdiv
4 PM workshop & concert / Sebastian Lexer (London): "piano+"
Academy of Music, Dance and Arts Plovdiv, Concert hall
7 PM performance / WILHELM GROENER (Berlin, Vienna): "Politics of Imagination: Preparation Oracle"
Center for Contemporary Art Plovdiv - The Ancient Bath

Sunday, June 19
2 PM lecture / Peter Stamer (Vienna): "The Village. On collaboration"
Public space, tba.
4 PM performance / The Great Learning, Paragraph 2 & 6 & 7
Center for Contemporary Art Plovdiv - The Ancient Bath

The project is kindly supported by Goethe-Institute Bulgaria; Robert Bosch Foundation; Foundation America for Bulgaria; Austrian Embassy Sofia.

ATLANTIS '11
Art Today Association at the Venice Biennale 2011

Exhibition: 1 – 5 June 2011, 10 am – 6 pm
Panel discussions: 2 – 3 June 2011, 7 pm
Opening: 1 June 2011, 7 pm
Palazzo Zenobio, Collegio Armeno Moorat-Raphael, Dorsoduro 2596, Venezia

The ATLANTIS network connects seven European cities from Berlin to Yerevan through cultural exchange and cooperation between seven institutions working in the field of contemporary art.
During the preview days of the 54th Venice Biennial the ATLANTIS network will be presented through the exhibition ATLANTIS '11 and a series of panel discussions all focusing on the theme of “Power and contemporary art”.
The ATLANTIS '11 event is organized as part of the HEICO project - Heritage, Identity and Communication in European Contemporary Art Practices, which aims to promote the cultural reflection of the identity in the countries involved in the partnership. The further development of the of the Atlantis project is planed as series of workshops and conferences hosted by the participating countries as well as through artists exchange residency programs in Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Yerevan (Armenia), Tbilisi (Georgia), Bratislava (Slovak Republic) and Chisinau (Moldova).
From 1 to 5 June, the ATLANTIS '11 exhibition at the Collegio Armeno Moorat-Raphael, Palazzo Zenobio, will work as a platform for presentation and discussion of projects originating in these countries. As partners in the ATLANTIS network, the guest curators Emil Mirazchiev and Jakob Racek invited the artists collective R.E.P. (Kiev) to produce a work especially for this occasion. The artists will show the video documentation of their performance "A place, where we won?t be again (Tresene)". The performance recreates the story of the Bulgarian (non)presence at the Venice Biennial as folklore, sang by the traditional Bulgarian folk singer Sonya Georgieva.
Art Today Association, Plovdiv, Bulgaria, invited The Bulgarian Pavilion (www.bulgarianpavilion.org) initiative to be presented in Venice. It proposes an alternative for Bulgaria’s sporadical presence in The Venice Biennial by creating a critical platform for diverse artistic activities. The project envisages the pavilion as a symbolic, ephemeral or movable structure and questions the historical relationship between art and power, national representation and international art.
Please join the panel discussion "Good Governance? Bad Curating!" on 2 June with the initiators of The Bulgarian Pavilion - Dessislava Dimova, Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva, Vera Mlechevska and Vessela Nozharova.
Art Today Association is a non-governmental organization founded in 1997. The association is running the Center for Contemporary Art Plovdiv, situated in an Ancient Turkish Bath - a unique monument of culture from the 16th century with a specific interior. Its mission is to present, promote and document alternative and experimental forms of contemporary art; to host artists and curators in residence; to prepare periodical and unique print materials; to implement training programs, workshops and seminars for students and young art professionals; to build an informational multimedia data base presenting contemporary authors.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.This press release 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.

Art Today Association
Center for Contemporary Art – Plovdiv, Ancient Bath

ART POSITIVE 2011
ELASTICITY

13.05 - 10.06.2011
working hour: Tuesday - Sunday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Participants
Ana Salasar, Antonia Kostova, Desislava Dimcheva, Emil Mirazchiev, Konstantin Banderov, Tsonka Valcheva - Michel, Adriana Genadieva, Kolio Karamfilov, Krasimir Dobrev, Lora Parmakova, Martina Vacheva, Nadia Genova, Petar Kochevski, Ramgel Gidikov, Roumen Zekov, Sevdalina Kochevska, Velizar Dimchev,
Viktoria Filipova, Yavor Petrushianev.

Idea: Mariya Andreeva

May 13 - 6.15 PM - performance Ana Salasar
6.30 PM - performance Javor Petrushianev and Break Art

supported by

art project
RE_LOCATE

IIlg?n Seymen, G?k?e S?vari, Mehmet Dere, Selda Asal, Suat ???t, Zeyno Pek?nl?, HaZaVuZu (G?nes Terkol, Sukru Ozgur Erkok, Zeynep Beler)

May 10 - 15, 2011

public presentation
May 10, 2011 - 6 PM
Center for Contemporary Art - The Ancient Bath

"Illuminations: A Theory of Writing
presentation by Gita Hashemi (Toronto/Canada)
May 11, 2011 - 6 PM
Academy of Music, Dance and Arts – Concert hall

"Cut the Flow"
public intervention by HaZaVuZu Istanbul
May 13, 2011 - 5 PM
meeting point: Dzhumaya square

Taking place in 5 destinations (Istanbul, Plovdiv, Athens, Skopje, Prishtina) RE_LOCATE aims to address the historical fact of compulsory population exchanges in the Balkan region, which took place between two world wars and after, changing borders and possibilities to create new bonds through artistic dialogue. The shared history within the chosen regions; Istanbul (Turkey), Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Athens (Greece), Skopje (Macedonia) and Prishtina (Kosovo) provides a basis to establish a mutual platform to research both about common history and develop a cultural understanding on various levels.
The conceptual framework of RE_LOCATE was developed by Apartment Project Istanbul and is divided into two parts: in the first phase the artsits undertake a collective exercise by travelling by bus and train through the Balkans. An experimental workshop involving different ideas emanating from the collective, different experiences brought on by being together and sharing, various narratives using different materials and drawings, photographs, videos, texts and talks produced in places visited. The second phase of the project will be hosted by Apartment Project in Istanbul in July 2011 with resident artists from countries visited: Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia and Kosovo. Finally an exhibition will be realized in Istanbul as a collateral event of the 12th Istanbul Biennial in September and October 2011. Thus RE_LOCATE project endeavors to establish a cultural network on contemporary arts and series of art events to facilitate awareness in the region.

Gita Hashemi
Artist, curator and writer, Gita Hashemi works with a diverse range of creative/critical strategies including media, installation, performance, intervention and publishing. She has worked extensively in collaborative, networked and participatory contexts using different media including digital text, still and moving image, sound and code. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany, Palestine, Argentina, Thailand, Italy, Poland, Spain and Armenia.
www.gitaha.net

Project partners: Apartment Project Istanbul, Art Today Association Plovdiv, Nova Melanchoia Athens, Line Initiative Skopje, Stacion - Centre for Contemporary Art Prishtina

Supported by European Comission - Program Culture

Art Today Association presents
concert-performance
STROMORCHESTER (Cologne, Munich)
Surprise Symphony

Sunday, April 17, 2011 - 7.30 PM
Roman Stadium, Dzhumaja Square, Plovdiv

Not to awake, but to surprise the audience, this was the real purpose of Joseph Haydn?s Symphony No. 94 G-Dur, composed during his stay in London in the year 1791.
220 years later and amplified by 220 volts the 1st German Stromorchester suprises with it?s "Symphony with the Symphony-with-the-drumbeat". To pay tribute to Joseph Haydn as THE master of his genre means also to acknowledge a composer, who was driven by the idea of constant innovation. And this drive would certainly be an electrified one, if Haydn would have been born only a little later.
The consistent development of the classical symphony orchestra on an electronic basis is the leitmotif of the German Stromorchester. The musicians perform on electrically powered devices in the strength of an 'A' orchestra, to stay within classical categories. 127 devices are synchronized and tuned in groups of 7 players. Each unit is treated and used as a musical instrument.
Stromorchester: Rochus Aust, Markus Aust, Fosco Perinti, Florian Zwissler, Heinz Friedl
www.rochusaust.de

The concert takes place in frame of the "German Street Festival 2011" in Plovdiv. The musical program includes concerts of Doreen Kutzke (Berlin) and Duo Stumpf (Cologne).

Main institutional partners: German Embassy Sofia, German Honorary Consulate Plovdiv, Municipality Plovdiv, Robert Bosch Foundation, Kunststiftung NRW, Lufthansa Technik