WE WELCOME YOU TO THREE DAYS OF INFORMAL PRACTICE SHARING IN SOFIA FROM 16 TO 18 JULY! ACTIVITIES WILL TAKE PLACE AT THE ART SPACE SWIMMING POOL (10 TSAR OSVOBODITEL BLVD., 5TH FLOOR) AND ACROSS DIFFERENT LOCATIONS IN SOFIA THROUGH A SERIES OF PRESENTATIONS, WALKS, DISCUSSIONS, AND COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS.
SPONTANEOUS CITIES IS PART OF THE THIRD EDITION OF THE NINE ELEPHANTS FESTIVAL AND BRINGS TOGETHER ARTISTS, CURATORS, RESEARCHERS, ARCHITECTS, AND CULTURAL PRACTITIONERS TO EXCHANGE APPROACHES TO WORKING WITH CITIES, PUBLIC SPACE, COMMUNITIES, AND URBAN ECOLOGIES. THE PROGRAMME IS OPEN TO EVERYONE INTERESTED IN ARTISTIC AND INTERDISCIPLINARY URBAN PRACTICES.
DUE TO LIMITED CAPACITY, ADVANCE REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED.
Thursday, 16 July
* All presentations are at Swimming Pool.
09:30–10:30 Registration
10:30–12:00 Introduction to the forum and discussion with Viktoria Draganova (artistic director of Nine Elephants), Georgi Stanishev (architect), Ivo Anev (economist) and Viktor Damov (urbanist)
12:00–13:00 Panel I – Memory, Identity & Urban Narratives
12:00–12:20 Nehal El-Hadi
Her presentation examines how studying the social lives of public urban spaces can inform critical interventions into planning practices, surveillance societies, and speculative urban futures, offering a critical perspective on urban development and public space.
12:20–12:40 Friederike Steinert
Her presentation reconstructs an imagined autobiography through online images and representations of Sofia, reflecting on identity, algorithms, and digital narratives.
Discussion
13:00–14:00 Lunch (self organized by the participants)
14:00–15:00 Panel II – Community Infrastructures & Urban Ecologies
14:00–14:20 Ashique Mohammad
A visual presentation documenting how the ongoing Flamingo Revolution in Tirana has transformed the city’s main boulevard into a self-organized public commons, reclaiming urban space through collective action.
14:20–14:40 Aleksandar Pilyov
Drawing Phenomena, an ongoing visual research project on architectural heritage and urban ruins in Sofia and beyond. Through drawing, photography, and layered material studies, the work explores buildings as carriers of memory, identity, and urban transformation.
Discussion & Short break
15:00–16:00 Panel III – Learning from Place
15:00–15:20 Anton Tsanev
His presentation follows the making of “Energy Box,” a site-specific installation set around a spontaneous youth meeting point and an energy-drink store in Ruse, marked by a 3D-printed Persian column bearing symbols of power (horse and bull) and consumption (a box). It reads the work’s white, unfinished surface — left open for passersby to mark — as a record of the habits and generations that quietly shape a public place.
15:20–15:40 Ekaterina Leondieva
The presentation explores the spatial and social dynamics of traditional Japanese festivals (matsuri). Revisiting past research using psychogeography, it reflects on different ways of engaging with festivals through situation, memory and space.
15:40–16:00 Galina Dimitrova & Daniil Komitski (TBC)
The project reconsiders earth as a valuable resource rather than construction waste, presenting sustainable building techniques alongside artistic interpretations.
Discussion
16:00-17:00 Sightseeing
18:00 Spontaneous Capitals: Sofia-Budapest – opening of exhibition at Liszt Institute Sofia (part of Nine Elephants Festival)
Friday, 17 July
* Presentations in the morning at Swimming Pool. All starting and end points of the walks are at Swimming Pool.
10:00–11:00 Present the day & choose your programme – Lea Novák & Szonja Urbán • girls can scan • Rachel Rea • Wenlin Tan
11:00–12:30 Walks I
Walk A Lea Novák & Szonja Urbán — Metro Here, Metro There
Participatory walk exploring the metro as infrastructure, social space, and a lens through which to understand the layered city.
Walk B girls can scan — Tripping on Modernist Monuments
The walk explores the socialist heritage of Sofia and Budapest through monuments and urban artefacts, questioning memory, politics, and public space.
12:30–14:00 Walks II
Walk A Rachel Rea
Drawing on Unseen Worlds, the workshop invites participants to explore Sofia’s ecological networks through observation, photography, microscopy, and collective mapping.
Walk B Wenlin Tan
Listening with Water invites participants to explore Sofia through embodied listening. Drawing on water as a way of listening and being, we will move between moments of solitary reflection, paired accompaniment, and collective attention. Through walking, pauses, and shared presence, we accompany the city, allowing Sofia to gradually reveal herself through relationship rather than observation.
14:00–15:00 Lunch (self organized by the participants)
15:00–15:30 Follow-up discussion
15:30–17:00 Panel I: Cultural Ecosystems & Everyday Participation
15:35–15:55 Mihaela Ion
Her presentation reflects on the role of independent cultural organisations in Romania and their contribution to building sustainable local cultural ecosystems.
16:00–16:20 Fanni Nánay (online)
In Fragments of Everyday, she presents three projects that use storytelling, movement, and collective action to explore how everyday urban spaces can foster temporary communities and new forms of participation.
Discussion
18:00-22:00 Living Grounds at Robov Dol Park ((part of Nine Elephants Festival)
Saturday, 18 July
* Presentations in the morning at Swimming Pool. All starting and end points of the walks are at Swimming Pool.
10:00–11:00 Present the day & choose your programme – Kalina Nedelcheva • Nevena Delić • Lenka Kuricová, Yana Akimova
11:00–12:30 Walks I
Walk A Kalina Nedelcheva
Listening Between Systems: An Urban Walk is a guided discussion and multidisciplinary walk through Sofia. The program combines Deep Listening meditation, sound improvisation, and historical reflection to explore democracy, memory, and collective imagination.
Walk B Nevena Delić
Štrajtkultur: a picnic and conversation on land practices, (non)property, and radical democracy. We will activate political imagination through a guided discussion, imagining land use through its relationality, beyond property relations, and recognizing antagonism, the basic principle of radical democracy, as a creative force that shapes our everyday environment.
12:30–14:00 Walks II
Walk A Lenka Kuricová
The participatory workshop introduces Museum Without Walls:Open-Air Museology Lab, an emerging research and curatorial platform that explores how Japanese open-air museums and landscape-based cultural institutions can inspire new approaches to public space, placemaking, and the New European Bauhaus. Together, we will investigate how carefully designed environments foster care, connection, and collective life, while opening opportunities to contribute to the emerging Museum Without Walls platform and a future international research network.
Walk B Yana Akimova
The walk invites participants to discover hidden urban narratives through observation, conversation, and shared experience. Sofia of the Dead: A psycho-geographical walk through Sofia’s Central Cemetery. The project seeks an experimental format of collaborative self-guided walking and mapping. After dispersing to explore the cemetery individually, the group will reunite and attempt the collective creation of a ‚map‘, thereby uniting the spontaneous trajectories, findings and impressions of our drifts. Materials and ideas for mapping will be provided but participants are also strongly encouraged to bring in their own ideas.
14:00–15:00 Lunch & follow-up discussions – end of the Spontaneous Cities Forum
On Saturday, we’ll wrap up a bit earlier to give you the opportunity to participate in either of the Opera Ecologica workshops: Sonic Seeds or Shared Grounds. If you would like to take part, please register in advance using this link, as spaces are limited.
17:00 -22:00 OPERA ECOLOGICA (part of Nine Elephants Festival)
Sunday, 19 July
19:00–21:00 Triptych for Fondovi Zhilishta (part of Nine Elephants Festival)
We warmly invite you to join us for the closing event of the Nine Elephants Festival, featuring an urban intervention by Vasilena Gankovska and New Choir, led by Pavel Naydenov, in Fondovi Zhilishta.
Nine Elephants and the forum is financially supported by the National Culture Fund.