Проект на СЪПРОТАТ и Константин Георгиев
ВИЗУАЛНА-ПЪРФОРМАТИВНА РАЗХОДКА ИЗ КВ. КЮЛУЖЦИТЕ
28 ОКТОМВРИ 2025
The project “Dancing on the Knife’s Edge at the Heart of the City” explores cities not only as places to live but also as central industrial and transportation hubs. Sometimes these functions exist side by side, and the boundaries between them provoke a range of responses. The project observes some of the ways these zones of contact have been domesticated and aestheticized in a neighborhood in Sofia.
The audio walk directs eyes and minds toward old and new questions about urban space. Please bring a phone with internet access and headphones. After each walk, there will be a short conversation and discussion.
Driven by an interest in how people interact with the environment and with art in an interactive context, the project’s authors aim to challenge thinking beyond the framework of “artwork” and more toward communities and spaces, such as the Kyulutsite neighborhood.
“The difficult part was finding the location — the city has many neglected spaces that spark the imagination. We don’t look at it like urban planners or architects, but through an imaginative lens, characteristic of our work, which aims for fully conscious inhabitation of the space and appreciation of all its features as a kind of artwork,” shares Michaela from SAPROMAT. Through this perspective, together with Konstantin, they treat this space as a border zone where human relations are clearly navigated and regulated — though often people are unaware of this.
For Konstantin Georgiev, the audio material reveals his personal relationship with the neighborhood, for example through a game of attention focus and interaction with the moving environment. Walking itself is not a linear path from point A to B — it provokes interaction with the objects along the way. Time is also an important element — something you see now while walking may be gone at another moment. Michaela, Boris, and Kossyo hope that this walk remains accessible online so that the possibility to rediscover the route exists even after 15 years. This “locking of perception in time” is important to them, as well as the comparison with other times and with the perceptions of others.
You can find the link to the audio recording here and take a walk in the designated area of the Kyulutsite neighborhood.
Konstantin Georgiev is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Rice University (Houston, Texas), working on a project exploring imagination and the urban and natural environment through the history of a former scientific institute in eastern Siberia. He collaborates with visual artists on various projects, most recently on the photobook “Natural Index” by Martin Atanasov. Together with Alexander Popov, Konstantin is co-founder of “Kosmotechnika” – a collective exploring intersections between science fiction, the social sciences, and the humanities.
SAPROMAT is an artistic collective founded by Michaela Dobreva and Boris Dalchev, working in the field of site-specific interactive art. Their projects span multiple media including sculpture, installation, performance, and spatial design. “Vision”, SAPROMAT’s debut performance, was nominated for the 2021 IKAR National Awards in the Dance and Performance category. Their immersive performance “Invisible Cities” was nominated for an IKAR 2022 in the Scenography and Costumes category.
The visual notes by Martin Atanasov serve as a reflection and visual interpretation of what was seen and heard — his personal walk along the route and his contact with the urban environment and the collectively created structures and objects within it.
“The images visually archive the place on that day and in that moment when I walked the route. Perhaps some of these things no longer even exist there — and that’s exactly the point.”
Снимки: Мартин Атанасов