This year the StreetArt Festival in Staro Zhelezare is exceptional.
NATO summit in Staro Zhelezare on the 75th anniversary of the birth of the alliance.
This summer, the official NATO celebration take place in the village of Staro Zhelezare!
The year 2024 is unique, it will go down in history as the triple anniversary of NATO - NATURAL AUTHENTIC TOMATOES ORGANISATION - 75 years of the establishment of the Alliance, 25 years of Poland's accession to NATO, 20 years of Bulgaria's accession, 10 years of the Staro Zhelezare StreetArt Festival!
Katarzyna and Ventzislav Piriankov together with their students, young artists from Poland create murals on village walls showing the theme of the great NATO summit, referring to the great NATO summit in Washington, which took place just before the summit in Staro Zhelezare. Both after the summit in Washington and after the summit in Staro Zhelezare, Declarations are created. The Staro Zhelezare Declaration is an important complement and commentary to the official NATO declaration from Washington.
To celebrate these anniversaries, we decided to name this year's festival in honor of NATO, but in a way that would also refer to the rural reality, to the current geopolitical context - Natural Authentic Tomatoes Organization. The theme is also emphasized by a paraphrased iconic Beatles song - "TOMATOES FIELDS FOREVER".
The poetic, dream-like atmosphere, reflecting the native Bulgarian beauty of nature and the local soul associated with it, is mixed with a dose of nostalgia, longing for unfulfilled personal dreams, and difficult social and economic conditions.
The solution that remains, as always, is the invaluable ability to enjoy the moment, small things, symbolic values, and available local wealth, such as beautiful, sweet, rose tomatoes, wonderful sunny weather, neighbors whom you can meet every morning in the center of the village, or in the afternoons on the benches in front of their houses.
This wealth, in the literal and direct sense, deserves protection, the professional defense of NATO, i.e. NATURAL AUTHENTIC TOMATOES ORGANISATION. Especially since, as everyone knows and experiences first-hand, Bulgaria, as a relatively economically weak country and dependent on foreign economic giants, is losing its tomatoes! It is a fact that in the country of tomatoes, growing tomatoes is less and less possible, and the possibility of finding this miracle of nature on the market or in a store is becoming even less real!
So we submit a petition to NATO - your members are in great danger!
We are already talking to NATO representatives in Poznań.
Let the Bulgarian tomato continue to be present on every table
Let it be real, juicy, sweet, melting in your mouth,
And not only as a memory accompanied by nostalgic sounds in tomato fields.
Thus!
This summer we paint the best locally! We are still painting the inhabitants, those who are not yet placed on the village walls. They will appear in the visual atmosphere of the famous Beatles video, but also, what is very important, in the company of important world personalities. Our festival is always current, so important people from this world will appear. Who knows who it will be, as always, improvising and acting on the fly is our best tip. There are already heads of this world like Biden, Trump, Putin, Duda, Radev, Zhelensky and Netanjahu at the Hippie party, proclaiming peaceful slogans MAKE LOVE NOT WAR, signing FLOWER POWER. Khrushchev with corn and Truman with turkey, after signing NATO and the Warsaw Pact, are greeted by village children with tomatoes. The presidents who were shot have red marks not from blood but from tomatoes thrown at them.
Certainly, the issue of security in the current world system is a priority.
We will see what the inhabitants of Staro Zhelezare and artists from Poland think about it.
