Participants 2007
Participants 2005
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XFilm Festival
Presenter: Katia Damianova, Ultrafuturo, Sofia, Bulgaria
Video selection:Krassimir Terziev, xFilm festival, Sofia, Bulgaria
Video programme High Sensitivity 10-Band World Receiver
Expose:
The video selection presents 5 artists of the youngest generation in Bulgarian contemporary art.
The selected 5 videos vary in their form and genre from straight reportage and documentary format to short music video and more experimental sets. There is only a tiny red line that all works have in common – the artists share a sustained interest in reality, in facts and phenomena from the immediate surroundings or from the global media. With the exception of one title (5/5) all works are based in production, there is no sophisticated editing or image manipulation. Most of the works (except Alone) are narrative based. It might be said now at the end of the transition period the country has gone through in the last 17 years, that the rapidly-changing reality has offered much more inspiration for the artists than any formal experimentation with the medium or the aesthetics. In fact it is visible in most of the works that artists do not care so much about the originality of the form or the aesthetics. They borrow freely from languages of mean-stream media or leave the footage as it is being recorded. The focus is more on how meaning is constructed and what are the systems that mediate our perception and experience. The subjects that the works deal with vary from internal introspection to portraits of individuals or sociological portraits of migrant communities, to further more complex studies of information flows and the construction of identity.
In order to briefly introduce the individual artists approaches, we can start with Leda Ekimova who introduces us with objects that, once being displaced out of the system of signs become vehicles of emotional auras.
Jelko Terziev's 5/5 is a very special study on the ways information is disseminated in our highly medialised society, and how meaning is constructed from the rapid circulation of messages.
Anton Terziev and Katia Damianova are a rear example of the art-scene in Sofia of artists dealing with direct action in public space or in front of a camera.
Programme timeline
Leda Ekimova - Alone 2003, DV, 3:17 min., colour, stereo
Jelko Terziev – 5/5 2005, BetaSP, 10 min., colour, stereo
Anton Terziev/ Katia Damianova - How to Swallow the History, 2006, DV, 4:20 min., colour, stereo
Katia Damianova - European Tongue 2005, performance doc., 3 min. colour, stereo
Nikolay Zanev – undercurrent 2006, DV, 74 sec., colour, stereo
Krassimir Terziev, xFilm festival, Sofia, Bulgaria
Visual artist and organizer on contemporary arts and media culture. Lives and works in Sofia, BG, where he had graduated MA in Arts Academy in Sofia (1997). In 1998-2004 he has been chair (founding member) of interSpace Media Art Center.
Being trained as a painter, he also produces photographs, installations, computer mediated works, but the moving image has proven to be his most effective and expressive idiom. His work has been shown on television (P.A.R.K.4DTV, Amsterdam), at group shows (“The Projection Project” MuHKA, Antwerp, BE; “Cinema like never before” Generali Foundation, Vienna, AT; “New Video, New Europe” TATE Modern London & St. Lois MOCA, Renaissance Society , Chicago, US; “Blood: Lines & Connections” Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, “The Last European Show” Museum of Contemporary Arts Belgrade; 9th. Cairo International Biennale); media art festivals (“VISIONS DU REEL”, Nyon Documentary Film Festival 2006, Nyon, Impakt 2004, Uthreht; videopositive 1999, Liverpool; kontext:europe 2001 Vienna & Lyon) as well as at solo shows (“Remote Resemblances” Goethe-Institut Sofia; “Excuse me, Which City is This?”, ICA-Sofia; “On The BG Track”, Belgrade Cultural Centre; “Everything seems Alright”, The Kitchen, NY).
From 2004 he is co-director of XFILM festival for Experimental Film, Video & New Media, Sofia.
Since 1988 he has been involved in the organization of a large number of events, projects, lectures, presentations and workshops on media art and culture, as part of the interSpace Media Art Centre team. He was artist-in-residence in Stuttgart, Vienna, Manchester, New York, Eindhoven, Tornio and Sofia. He has received a number of grants and awards on national and international level.
Contact: krassi@xfilmfestival.net
tel. +359.898.619.060
Xfilm festival
The aim of the festival is to promote and distribute European and international new media, experimental audiovisual and cinematographic productions and experimental film. The format of the festival provides opportunities for the presentation and discussion of innovative approaches, models and scenarios for the development of a creative meeting point for the media, culture and society.
The festival is an activity of the GMT+2 Foundation and is co-organized by Art Fest.
For the XFilmFestival see: http://www.xfilmfestival.net/
Katia Damianova, Ultrafuturo, Sofia, Bulgaria
Katia Damianova is an artist living and working in Sofia, Bulgaria. She makes photographs, films, performances, actions and bio art projects and combinations of all these.
In 2004 together with the Russian artist Oleg Mavromatti, Boryana Rossa and Anton Terziev took a part in the establishment of UTRAFUTURO - an international group of artists that works in the intersection of technology, ethics and human/machine identity.
Katia works on the field of investigation of “the other”, “the different”,” the changing world”,”art and politics”, in contemporary technologically and biologically advanced cultures.
Contact: kalifornia@abv.bg, kdamianova@gmail.com
See also: http://ultrafuturo.cult.bg
http://roboriada.org/ultrafuturo/
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