We already wait for the summer, for the 5th edition of Staro
Zhelezare StreetArt Festival.
It looks to
be really exceptional! See you in summer!
We come on
5th July.
Main event
- 27July at 6pm
This year’s
edition is about Utopia, Dreams, Imagination, Carnival and Rituals which all
have the power to reach much further than logic, and further than any social
system in which we are entangled or trapped.
A slightly
awkward utopia, a plan without any plan to build something good, a dream about
a better world, a better future. Any realistic plan is excluded. Everyone is
conscious of the consequences when utopia is being put into reality. The dream
of a better future is drifting without a rudder, drifting with all its power as
far as it can, before it is completely erased tomorrow or the day after
tomorrow. It dreams about a great revolution, about a riot. It still has the
audacity to rise up sometimes, break out with a shout, or even shamelessly
manifest something.
The
shamelessly pitiful utopia is no longer limited by shame. And this opens the
door to unlimited carnival IMAGINATION ...
5 STARO
ZHELEZARE STREETART FESTIVAL 2019
Artists, curators
and producers: Katarzyna
& Ventzislav Piriankov
Artists (Students of Ventzi School of Art, and the University of Art in Poznan): Anna Kossyk, Agnieszka Grzemska, Antoni Horowski, Julia Kłodzińska, Sophia Gorączniak, Stanisław Korycki, Lidia Fizek, Lubosław Pirjankow.
Asz.Teatr from Poznan with Anna Szymczak, Klaudia Solarek, Gniewomir Solarek, Tadeusz Sławomir Lisiecki
27.07, 18:00 – Opening event: “Long Live The Brave New
Rural World!” happening
.
RURAL FUTURISM IS COMING!
A combination of spirituality and activism, of conservatism and openness, of
provincialism and cosmopolitanism
2019 is special year for Staro
Zhelezare as it is the fifth edition of the Staro Zhelezare Street Art
Festival. This year's themes are utopia, dreams of a better future and longing
for the past, which have, in fact, been the core of our artistic activity in
the village. From stagnation, defiance is born, supported by the FUTURISTIC
MANIFESTO OF A BEAUTIFUL FUTURE, defiance against the dictatorship of time,
physiology and biology, and against the ruthless beasts of the economy,
geography, demography and politics.
As far back as 2014 the Festival opening acts' theme was
“Lost Memories, Found Dreams”. Since then the “Village of Personalities” has
developed character and power, and has become a recognizable 'personality' on
the map of Bulgaria worth seeing. Contemporary art, murals and personal stories
have become an inseparable part of the local heritage. Today Staro Zhelezare is
Bulgaria's most artistic village, but it doesn’t end there. What's more
important – in accordance with this place's rebellious tradition – is defiance
against the hardships caused by the village's steep decline due to the elderly
dying off, young people migrating, and an absence of regeneration.
An active spirit is strong within the inhabitants who
remember their village's prosperous times when it was called Little Moscow and
visited by Fidel Castro, Indira Gandhi, and Todor Zhivkov. Having seen the population drop from 3000
inhabitants at that time to under 300 today, the village is but an after-image
or shadow, a mere memory of its glorious past. At the time of the regime
transformation, the process of its erasure began – from physical existence as
well as from the Bulgarians’ consciousness. For someone not acquainted with
Bulgaria it's an abstract and unknown spot, a typical place in the
middle-of-nowhere.
Along comes the miraculously absurd to the rescue. What
we as artists and our drawing school students imagined was created. The
imagined was so probable that one wanted to ask 'why not?'. As a Czech
animation master once said: “Fiction is something which exists for sure. Art of
this kind is supposed to make the imagined real because it seems so feasible.
It's upside down absurd reality, it shows that something else is possible, that
art has no boundaries.”
From a village at the end of the world, Staro Zhelezare
has become the center of the world where all people come to meet, even if only
on the houses' walls – all people regardless of their position, status,
nationality, worldview or other cultural criteria. Queen Elizabeth II, Winston
Churchill and Angela Merkel have no problem with visiting the 'peasants' in
Staro Zhelezare on a whim. There are plenty of personages painted – coming to
Staro Zhelezare one gets the impression that it's full of people and full of
life. This impression becomes more and more real every year, as the number of
tourists increases and a growing number of urbanites choose to spend their
weekends in a village house and garden.
The first guest-house has opened. Local seniors – women who are active members
of a folk band and specialists in the Bulgarian slow food movement – are the
media's darlings. There was good reason for their participation in the 2017
“Country Avant-garde” art demonstration proclaiming a Manifesto stating that
the real avant-garde is born in the village. There is a reason why the world’s
first village department of the New York MoMA was created here in 2018.
This year we want to approach dreams of Utopia and a
beautiful future from yet another angle. Utopian visions will circulate and
create The Sun Village – in the footsteps of Tomasso Campanela's utopian 'City
of the Sun'. They are futuristic on the one hand and quite nostalgic on the
other. The absurdity lies in Staro Zhelezare's circumstances being exactly the
opposite of the accelerating world at the turn of 19th and 20th century when the first avant-garde Futurist
Manifesto was created. The challenge at hand is all the more interesting, as in stagnation defiance is born, supported by the FUTURISTIC
MANIFESTO OF A BEAUTIFUL FUTURE; defiance against the dictatorship of time,
physiology and biology, and against the ruthless beasts of the economy,
geography, demography and politics. The Sun Village allows life to be as close
to nature as possible and allows for the temptation to disturb the passage of time.
Looking into the future doesn't mean we reject the
past. On the contrary, tradition is being actively cultivated here – this year
the Staro Zhelezare Street Art Festival is being held for the 5th time and the House of Tradition is celebrating
its 10th anniversary. Tradition and modernity in art
and culture actively coexist here. For this reason we should let our imagination
run wild and connect the past and the future in the present time thus
reflecting the local quality. The past is particularly present here, most
likely due to the villagers' age. We realized how strongly it is entrenched in
the present when some of the local characters depicted in the murals passed
away, and the seed of an archive of sorts was created - an archive painted on
the village walls.
Our artistic instinct is telling us to preserve what is
most valuable, even if it only means traces, after-images, shadows of memories,
feelings, life experiences and achievements. We want to save them from oblivion
and evil forces. Recently there was an attempt at their physical destruction –
one night over ten of the portraits, including portraits of Indira Gandhi and
Fidel Castro, the most symbolic for the local people, were defaced with red
paint. Today red traces can still be seen through the restored portraits as a
witness to history and a symbol of spiritual strength and endurance.
The symbolic place where we want to hide and preserve
these values is the Pyramid, situated in a spot considered by the Thracians as
a place of power possessing special energetic characteristics. The Pyramid
itself is in the shape of a regular tetrahedron and is a symbol of growth, willpower,
courage and independence. Its form is conducive to organizing and storing
energy reserves. It is the diamond of Staro Zhelezare, covered with metal
sheets and light reflecting mirrors at the top. It is a reference to one of the
most renowned Polish artists, Tadeusz Kantor and his artistic
wrappings. Having experienced the trauma of war, he wanted to protect the most
important values by wrapping their symbols. The Pyramid also relates to the
Bulgarian artist Christo Javashev who, by covering macro objects, makes them
more visible.
The Staro Zhelezare Pyramid is then a place of power,
where we can entrust our thoughts, emotions, reflections, and where we can hang
a Martynica on a nearby tree. Maybe the Bulgarian Kukeri will come to drive
away the evil spirits and secure happiness and prosperity for the people and
the land with their ritual dancing and singing. Pyramid, diamond, talisman...
Utopia and asylum where people can find relief and peace. The structure is
embedded in an atmosphere of poetry and mysticism and also alludes to rural
chapels created by the Swiss architect of silence, Peter Zumthor.
It's here, around the Pyramid, where on the 27th of July
the opening event will take the form of a happening, in which, among others,
actors from the Poznanian Asz.Teatr will participate.
Of course, following utopian dreams is also going to take
the form of painting murals. Not unlike Kantor's 'The Dead Class', current
characters play their younger selves and time doesn't conform to its
traditional order. Elderly ladies sit behind school desks or on a school bus,
but also (as we can actually see everyday) use baby carriages to transport
watermelons, milk and potatoes. They also sit alone on a swing or a bench in a
playground, hold balloons or fly kites.
The recently deceased Zygmund Bauman, who described the
character of contemporary society and the world as 'liquid modernity', urged
his readers to create cultural utopias, which aren't ready-made political
projects but open experiments in search of the limits of our abilities. As
understood in this way, utopia is – as Paul Ricoeur would put it – 'the avant
garde of a man heading towards the world and maturity', and 'by changing one's
imagination, one changes their existence'.
The peculiarity of humanity turns
out to hold invaluable potential when it comes to constructing the last resort
for preserving certain forms of life and for creating a beloved utopia.
A slightly clumsy utopia, a plan to
build the good, a dream of a better world with no plan... A realistic plan is
out of the question, as everybody knows that putting utopia into practice in
real life has adverse results. Dreams of a better future should flow without
direction but with full force until they are eradicated in the near future,
perhaps tomorrow. As they flow they gently hop, dreaming of a big jump, of a
massive spurt, of a revolution. Sometimes it dares to rise up shouting and
sometimes even to manifest something shamelessly.
Since it's doomed to fail anyway,
why shouldn't we open the door to an unrestrained carnival imagination where
the stereotypical becomes surreal and the ordinary becomes extraordinary? As in
Švankmajer's animations, reality isn't either the sacred or the profane but it
is magical. People walk or sit while searching for the meaning of the world and
their own existence. One can find something mystical even in the banal.
.
MANIFESTO OF A BEAUTIFUL FUTURE
We demand never-ending fun and
laughter
Long live beauty and youth until old age
We want a carousel in the playground
Tear down the offices and build Disneyland!
We demand wind so we can fly kites!
We want our burnt down school to be rebuild so we can learn again
We want children to run around the village, shout and laugh
Let's grab sabers, scythes and rakes!
Let's fight for the modern village revolution!
Let's kill the beasts of the economy, geography, demographics and politics!
Let's kill the dictatorship of time, physiology and biology!
Time is dead, long live the ball!
Growing tomatoes is magic!
A cucumber is more important than an iPhone!
Swap a laptop for a live hen!
We demand a czar who will create a brave new Staro Zhelezare!
Where storks, hens and cats live, we will live happily forever!
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