The theme is both personal and psychological, as well as socially engaging. It touches upon our personal experience and inner world as well as the common social challenges we all face. The growing social problems of contemporary society, ethnic prejudice, propaganda, war and aggression, inevitably take a toll on our existence. Strong feelings on the verge such as love and hate are with us every day. Individual choice inevitably intersects with collective necessity. We live in a world where humans are created to be part of a community, yet communication and coexistence are turning into a challenge. The dynamics of modern times change not only ourselves, but also the way we connect and interact with each other. The project brings together contemporary artists living and working in different social, cultural and geographical environments to explore the theme of coexistence as a reality, as a compromise, as a matter of choice or necessity. Both partner pairs and individually working artists will meet in the artistic space of the festival, each of whom may face the challenge whether to create collaborative works born of dialogue and shared experience, or to choose independent expression as a way of stating a position within the common theme. The project does not seek utopian answers, but rather to outline issues, ideas, dreams, contradictions, tensions and invisible boundaries that we cross every day with the people around us, with the political and social realities, with the ideas we accept or reject, with the social and ecological environment that surrounds us. The theme of coexistence will be addressed not only as the physical existence alongside the other, but also as an inner effort to understand, accept, confront or adapt.
The invitation for this project is an Invitation to co-experience - not homogeneity and fusion, but differences and respect of boundaries. For experience is not a state but a process - fragile, changing, sometimes conflict, but always human.
Participants: Marija Avramovic (Serbia/ France), Sam Twidale (United Kingdom/ France), Lora Dimova (Bulgaria/ Finland), Aleksi Laisi (Finland), Natasa Galecic (Serbia), Zlatin Orlov (Bulgaria), Angelika Radeva (Bulgaria), Adelina Boneva (Bulgaria), Nikola Tsvetanov (Bulgaria), Dimitar Traychev (Bulgaria), Maria zafirkova (Bulgaria), Daniel Mirchev (Bulgaria), Ivajlo Danailov (Bulgaria), Deyan Tsvyatkov (Bulgaria).