Samuil Stoyanov

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"The Art of Urban Intervention" is dealing with the possibilities of art in public space related to the transformation processes in communities and neighbourhoods. Engagement and participation are crucial items. Analysing what needs to be done and discovering what can be done in a local environment and together with the inhabitants will be the challenge of the project.

The public space is open for many influences. Different actors have strong interests, many others have no chance to voice their interests or to make their opinions heard or to play an active part in the shaping of their community, of their urban surroundings. Based on the observation that at the moment Europe is seeing strong tendencies of desolidarization, art and cultural practices can play the strong role of a social catalyst to allow for articulation, representation and another sense of community and belonging.

Six Art organisations continuously dealing with issues of public space from Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Italy and the Netherlands have joined forces in a network in order to have access to the knowhow and the sub networks of the associated partners in the course of the planned activities and to jointly question one crucial issue in the context of contemporary visual arts in public space: What are art's possibilities of action in the social and built space of a community of people?

In seeking collaborations outside of the art field, with NGOs, with planning units, with city officials, with neighbourhoods and communities, art is also a testing ground for possibilities of alternative place-making. Learning from each other will show how collaborations between different fields and disciplines can be put to work - namely art, social activism, urban planning, architecture, anthropology - with the knowledge of lay people and local institutions in neighbourhoods.

An emphasis will be placed upon equal access and equal opportunities in participation and cooperation, in particular with regard to minorities or marginalized groups. Issues of class and gender will be addressed from an emancipatory and critical perspective.

With the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union

The Art of Urban Intervention web page: www.aoui.mur.at

ICA-Sofia

For ICA-Sofia the involvement in the Art of Urban Intervention project is a continuation of the Visual Seminar project that was organized between 2003 and 2006. The Visual Seminar (in partnership with relations, a project initiated by the Federal Foundation for Culture of Germany) was a collective, multidisciplinary project to investigate and interfere into the new urban visual environment of the city of Sofia.

For the AOUI project the ICA-Sofia is engaged with the issues of gentrification (visual and otherwise); with exploring the stages of the introduction of neo-capitalism and the construction of a new urban class of consumers through visual and other material markers in our city and society; with the shifting role of the artists and intellectual in the public debate; with exploring the urban specifics of the existence of (usually) invisible and underprivileged minorities.

Samuil Stoyanov's interventions:

April - 1 May 2011

Labor (Clean Up that which Bothers You)
Artists: Samuil Stoyanov (BG)
Location: City of Dobritch, Bulgaria

Video-documentation of a performance on the occasion of May 1st / Labor Day, Dobritch.

On Labor day Samuil Stoyanov made his video-documentation of a performance in the park in front of the City Art gallery of Dobritch. The date was selected internationally with the aim to focus on the meaning of the action. Although the Labor Day holy day is rather dedicated to the right of rest of the workers, the artist worked for two hours while demonstrating his position that art happens everywhere in the space between the art work and the audience. In his view, the viewer often needs to make an effort on his / her own in order to experience the "meeting".

Part of the "material" for the performance is the carved stone sculpture in front of the city art gallery which is an interesting and contradictory object in itself. Neither the author, nor the title, nor the legal owner of this sculpture is known. All these murky circumstances and lack of specifics make of this sculpture a rather liberated artistic work while creating a perfect context for the realization of a new art work.

This action, which consisted of the artist cleaning up and thus re-activating the previously invisible art work for the space of the city, is part of the cycle of urban interventions which Samuil Stoyanov undertook in the framework of his participation in the international art project Art of Urban Intervention within the section organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art-Sofia.

This action is dedicated to the artist's grandmother Efrosina Todorova Martinova.

March - April 2011
Gold
Artists: Samuil Stoyanov (BG)
Location: Public space in the city of Dobritch, Bulgaria

Action on poster stands, gold spray paint, stencils.

February - April 2011
Temporary Alteration
Artists: Samuil Stoyanov (BG)
Location: Public space in the city of Dobritch, Bulgaria

Installation, 40 garbage bags, 40 fastening bands, street lamps; city of Dobritch.

It is part of the cycle of urban interventions which Samuil Stoyanov undertook in the framework of his participation in the international art project The Art of Urban Intervention within the section organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art-Sofia.

The main idea of the “Temporary Alteration” project is to create a short-term change in the public space of the city while concentrating on the ability of art to instigate change by the use of minimal means. This kind of change creates a different context which is urging the audience and the inhabitants of the city to consider a new view on the urban environment as well as a variety of intellectual and emotional interpretations.

The project consists of slipping on (from bottom to top) black plastic garbage bags on to the globe-shaped street lamps on the square in front of the City Art Gallery of Dobritch. The bags are fastened at the top around the lamp post. These are 7 lamp posts with altogether 18 globe-shaped lighting bodies. The intervention is creating a peculiar dimmed atmosphere; the lamps will emit specific yellowish light coming through the black plastic material of the bags.

February 2011
20 Billion Stars
Artists: Samuil Stoyanov (BG)
Location: Public Space in the city of Dobritch, Bulgaria

Action, photographic documentation. The red ceramic stars are pushed into the still soft concrete during the construction work on the new surface of the central square of the city of Dobritch.