Project „SREDA“ was initiated by the Art Related Foundation as an interdisciplinary collaboration between creative organizations whose goal is the development of art in the public space of the city of Sofia. The project explored how art in public space can provoke engagement of city dwellers with their surroundings. For this purpose, the participating artists entered into a dialogue with the environment in which they created and with its young inhabitants.
In 2022 the project oversaw creative activities for teenagers with the aim of developing their sense of belonging and participation in the construction of the urban environment and at the same time introducing them to contemporary artistic practices. One of the goals of the project was to develop communities or groups that, working together with the artists, will reconfigure their perception regarding the urban space and its functions.
Art Related Foundation invited the artists Jazoo Yang with her project Untamed Architecture, Julien Fargetton with his project FUTURA and Katya Cheng with the site specific installation Resonant Lightbox. They adapted their current projects to the environment of Sofia with the idea of activating its inhabitants and spaces.
The project united the efforts of the Art Related Foundation, whose goal is the discovery, creation and dissemination of new cultural forms by nurturing interdisciplinary collaborations, the Resonator Foundation – a center for shared innovation, Vitus – a center for individual and family psychological counseling and the artistic collective AIDE AIDE.
Curator: Margarita Kudrina
Participants: Jazoo Yang, Julien Fargetton, Katya Cheng, Georgi Tomov Georgiev and the children of the city of Sofia, Bulgaria
The project was implemented with the support of the Oborishte Minicipality and the financial assistance of the National Culture Fund.
For the purpose of Sofia Art Week 2019, professionals in the field of social sciences, law, art and architecture came together to illustrate the state of copyright laws in Europe and in particular in Bulgaria.
The project consists of two parts. The first one took place in Resonator, a hub for shared innovation, which aims to promote the cooperation between different creative spheres. Using 3D printing technology and with the help of our audience, we printed a sculpture, the 3D model of which we created with the help of photogrammetric software. In course of 5 days we discussed the copyrights associated with the use of online images; the role of the 3D printer in digital production; the state of digitization of artworks. We conducted a series of lectures and talks, which helped us tackles the issues surrounding the case. With Blagoy Blagoev, we discussed the paradox of openness and how it manifests itself in different spheres of public life - tendencies towards openness are observed, for example in politics (»open government«), in science (»open science«), organizations (»open innovation«), and in the arts and media (»open content«). Dimi Dimitrov focused on issues related to the digitization of cultural heritage, focusing on examples that have led to changes in copyright law. Lidia Atanasova presented different practices in digital production and how it unites digital technologies.
The second part of the project took place in the public space of Sofia. Contemporary artists Ivan Moudov (Bulgaria) and Julien Fargetton (France) developed of public artworks in the urban environment.
Within the framework of All Rights Reversed, the audience was be able to get free consultations from Wikimedia, Digital Republic representatives and up-to-date information on the Creative Europe Program - MEDIA sub-program and Culture sub-program.
Curator: Margarita Kudrina
Participants: Lidia Atanasova, Blagoy Blagoev, Dimitar Dimitrov, Ivan Moudov, Julien Fargetton, Gavrail Poterov, Maria Vassileva
Partners: Wikimedia, Art Related Foundation, Creative Europe Desk - Bulgaria, B2N, Resonator, Digital Republic
Photo Credit: Kai Mueller
Exhibition title: Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995, 2018
Artist: Maria Vedder
Artwork: PAL oder Never the Same Color
installation with 25 Monitors
5:40 min.
Music: Uwe Wiesemann, Gerhard Zillingen
Camera: Stephan Simon
Editing: Martina Kaimeter
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
The exhibition shines a spotlight on a historical moment and a body of work in the history of media art that has been largely overlooked since its inception. PAL oder Never the Same Color consists of twenty-five monitors arranged in a grid, with one TV set removed from the matrix and set aside. The monitors construct a wall in a manner reminiscent of bricks or pixels composing an image. Looped on the monitors is historic television footage designed to test color, including a host who presents herself in PAL and then NTSC to illustrate the difference.My work here involved the restoration, digitalization and production of Maria Vedder’s artwork and international logistics connected to its transport from Berlin to New York. Along with video professionals and skilled analog technicians we managed to bring this piece back to life at the Sculpture Center.
Photo: Sculpture Center New York
Exhibition title: This Is The Day, 2018
Artist: Phil Collins
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Delete Beach, 2016 HD video; color, sound; installation view; MAC; photograph Simon Mills
Ceremony, 2017 HD video; color, sound, 60min; installation view; MAC photograph Simon Mills
The Meaning of Style, 2011. 16mm film transferred to HD digital video; color, sound; 4 min. 50 sec
The exhibition presented across all three of the MAC’s galleries brought together a series of recent projects by Phil Collins including Delete Beach and Ceremony.
Photos: Shady Lane Productions
Hamburg/Berlin/Halle 2017-2018
The three shows “Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest” hosted thirteen artworks, including eight new commissions; a three-part project by Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin. The travelling exhibition was realized by Centrum für Naturkunde at the Universität Hamburg, where it was on in the fall of 2017. In 2018, adapted iterations were presented from April 27 until August 26, 2018 at the project partner, Tieranatomisches Theater at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and from October 19 until December 14, 2018 at the Zentralmagazin Naturwissenschaftlicher Sammlungen of the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in Halle/Saale. The exhibition cycle is a cooperation with the Schering Stiftung and the Goethe Institut. The project is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. The exhibitions displayed contemporary artworks as well as zoological and botanical objects to investigate the changes in the tropical regions that Wallace once traveled to and to shed light on the ecological issues faced by today’s fauna and flora of Amazon, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
Video Artists:
Maria Thereza Alves, Ari Bayuaji, Bik Van der Pol, Radjawali Irendra/Akademi Drone Indonesia, Armin Linke with Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi, Barbara Marcel, PetaBencana.id, SHIMURAbros, autonoma/Paulo Tavares
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Project homepage: www.reassemblingnature.org
Photos: Michael Pfisterer
The Momentum Gallery, 2018
The Focus Kazakhstan Berlin exhibition “BREAD & ROSES” examines the work of four generations of Kazakh women artists, created from 1945 to the present. The exhibition with over 20 artists, and its related artist residency program, offers a fresh perspective on both modern and contemporary Kazakh art and culture.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Photo: The Momentum Gallery
Exhibition title: Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995, 2017
Artist: Maria Vedder
Artwork: PAL oder Never the Same Color, 1988
installation with 25 Monitors
5:40 min.
Music: Uwe Wiesemann, Gerhard Zillingen
Camera: Stephan Simon
Editing: Martina Kaimeter
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
The exhibition shines a spotlight on a historical moment and a body of work in the history of media art.inferior system, remains the norm in the United States. PAL oder Never the Same Color consists of twenty-five monitors arranged in a grid, with one TV set removed from the matrix and set aside. The monitors construct a wall in a manner reminiscent of bricks or pixels composing an image. Looped on the monitors is historic television footage designed to test color, including a host who presents herself in PAL and then NTSC to illustrate the difference. My work here involved management of restoration, digitalization and production of Maria Vedder’s piece and international logistics. Together with video professionals and skilled analog technicians, we managed to bring this piece back to life at MIT. The artwork was received with great interest and was later on show again as a part of an exhibition at the Sculpture Center in New York.
Photo: MIT List Visual Arts Center Cambridge/Boston
Lieberose Schloss
ROHKUNSTBAU’s 13th edition took place at the Lieberose castle showing works of art devoted to the topic of the Foreigner. The exhibition’s goal was to create a positive understanding of otherness and underlined the creative aspects that exist when dealing with differences that govern our world.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Photo: ROHKUNSTBAU XXIII
Exhibition title: Innocent of Black and White, 2018
Astists: Mwangi Hutter
Mwangi Hutter’s solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen provided an insight into the artist's extensive work and placed three video installations in direct dialogue with large-format paintings in black and white.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Photos: Mwangi Hutter
Exhibition title: Iron Lady: Symonds, Pearmain, Lebon, 2017
Symonds Pearmain is a collaboration between Designer Anthony Symonds and Stylist Max Pearmain. At their exhibition at Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi the duo presented a re-imagined and expanded catwalk presentation of Haute Militaire and an editorial project, both premiered at Gallery Weekend Berlin.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Photo: Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery
Artist: Lindsey Seers
Artwork: Every Thought There Ever Was, 2018, moving image installation
The touring exhibition draws on philosophical ideas and scientific research. This ambitious project by UK based artist Lindsay Seers considers historical representations of schizophrenia and contemporary insights into the condition achieved using virtual reality.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Photo: Focal Point Gallery
Exhibition title: Hybrid Matter
Artists: Andreas Greiner
Artwork: The Molecular Ordering of Computational Plants, 2018 multi-channel sound-installation with bioluminescent algae
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
This was Greiner’s first solo exhibition at the Dittrich & Schlechtriem gallery, which took place during the Gallery Weekend Berlin. The Berlin based artist realized works that reflect how humans manipulate and redesign nature through genetic engineering, speculating on the future of humanity’s genetic code. Together with an audio specialist and Tylor Friedman, who produced the text and music, we worked on planning the audio equipment for the centerpiece of the exhibition - a sound installation called The Molecular Ordering of Computational Plants.
Photo: Jens Ziehe
Exhibition title: Living Sci-Fi under the red stars
Artist: Guan Xiao
Artwork: Dengue Dengue Dengue, 2017; 3-channel installation, HD video, color, sound
Beijing-based artist Guan Xiao looks at rapidly changing urban environments as they are transformed through the speed and influx of economic development and technology. I was involved in the management of the production of her 3-channel video installation.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Photo: Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler
Limerick 2018
The 39th EVA International program was developed in reference to the ‘Golden Vein’, a 19th century descriptor for the bountiful pastures of the Limerick / Tipperary region in the mid-West of Ireland (more commonly known as ‘Golden Vale’). The reference belongs to the historical perspective of seeing the land as a resource to be tapped, exploited, and commercialized through industrialized agricultural production and global trade. Working close with the EVA team and various technicians we planned and provided equipment for some of the artworks exhibited, including John Gerrard’s monumental piece Solar Reserve and Laurent Grasso’s Soleil Double.
Photo: Deirdre Power
Exhibition title: Timescape, 2016
Artist: Darren Almond
In Darren Almond’s exhibition at MUDAM Luxembourg one could witness all facets of his practice – photographs, sculptures, video installation, along with textual works and paintings. The show combines motifs, which concern the inscription of the individual in the world and in the universe.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Photo: Aurélien Mole / Mudam Luxembourg
Kerpen 2018
Six video works by different artists, each lasting six weeks a year were shown in the projection room of Haus Mödrath.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Exhibition title: Stateless, 2017
Artist: Shimon Atties
The video installation Stateless configured for the raw spaces of Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig, a reconverted power station, consists of a panoramic screen suspended in the former boiler room.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Photo: Kunstkraftwerk, Leipzig
Schau fenster, Berlin 2017
The exhibition organized by ARCH+ and hosted by Schau Fenster offered a discursive view of the challenges that global urbanization and housing crisis entail. On focus were artistic positions and experimental architectural approaches that discuss concrete utopias.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Photo: David von Becker
Exhibition title: Photo Kinetics. Movement, Body and Light in the Collections
Artist: Andrea Geyer
Artwork: Truly Spun Never, 2016. three-channel video installation, HD, color, sound, loop, 17 min.
The group exhibition highlighted works spanning a period from the nineteenth century to the present day and encompassed a wide variety of media: kinetic objects, performances and films shown in combination with photograms, photographs, lithographs and drawings.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Photo: Museum der Moderne
Schwules Museum, Berlin 2018
Exhibition title: Radical – Lesbian – Feminist
The exhibition highlighted the political relevance of the HAW (Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin) Women’s Group and LAZ (Lesbisches Aktionszentrum). It pointed out how the projects and activities from the past still influence our lives today.
Project Manager: Margarita Kudrina
Photo: Schwules Museum
The film project Le Cinema Olfactif was curated by Margarita and launched in 2014.
It represented an ongoing creative collaboration between Soho House and FOLIE À PLUSIEURS that brought together the mediums of film and perfumery to create a new form of sensory engagement. A scent was created by a perfumer out of a personal response to moments in a film. This scent was then incorporated into the viewer experience during the film screening and became a part of an archive of scents under the FOLIE À PLUSIEURS olfactive collection.
The project encourages viewers to extract more from a cinematic experience, and explores a gamut of emotional responses that can be evoked in an environment where visual, audio and scent come together to tell a story.
https://www.folie.space/
Folie À Plusieurs Gallery Collection was developed by the creative director Kaya Sorhaindo. The collection was curated by Margarita and represented a series of stand alone scents by artists. These scents would arise out of an unrestricted collaboration between the contributing artist and a perfumer.
Each Folie À Plusieurs scent would begin with the contributor proposing a concept for the creation of an artwork. This artwork would drive the inspiration for the scent, and shape the creative conversations between the artist and the perfumer. The artwork and scent are inseparable - the scent becomes a drifting aura of the object, and the object a permanent memory of the scent.
Artists: David LaChapelle, Alfreado Jaar, Marco Brambilla
The project was an ongoing digital journal and olfactive study by Folie à Plusieurs that archived the thoughts, reflections and madness of many individuals across a wide range of creative disciplines.
The visual entries of our contributors were translated into an artwork that is revealed through the medium of scent and added to Folie À Plusieurs Olfactive Library. These sensory artifacts were part of an exhibition Margarita developed in a collaboration with Aether gallery in Sofia.
Eleven scents were created exclusively for Folie À Plusieurs Olfactive Library during Margarita’s curatorial practice within the project. These included:
This is the Hunt by artist Nissa Nishikawa & perfumer Antoine Lie
Random Thoughts by Olaf Breuning & perfumer Antoine Lie
New Born by artist Voin de Voin & perfumer Jerome Di Marino
Microcosm by artist Yeka Haski & perfumer Jean Jacque
True Colors by designers Craig and Karl & perfumer Jean Jacque
Pattern Hours musical duo 1000 Names & perfumer Antoine Lie
Cheveux Roux artist Methew Murphy & perfumer Antoine Lie
Pulling Down from the Ephemeral by dancer Brooke Stamp & perfumer Jerome Di Marino
Under the Silent Ground designer by Philipp Webber & perfumer by Sylvie Fisher
What if? by artist Lee Eliot Hazel & perfumer by Jean Jacque
Nostalgia by artist Maripol & perfumer Jerome Di Marino
