Futuristic Utopia. IL VILLAGGIO DEL SOLE. Staro Zhelezare 2019 / Старо Железаре 2019

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

8.07-30.08.2019 – Festival dates

27.07, 18:00 – Opening event: “Long Live The Brave New Rural World!” happening

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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.

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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!