Nature Morte is a multimedia project that plants the philosophical question firmly into the ground - on a part of the country’s highly restricted critical infrastructure. In an attempt to find different approaches to reach the excavation and its visualization, open data from satellite and geological surveys and measurements were used, through which the digital topography of the mines has been built.

The visuals obtained from satellite images can be called operational, as a continuation of the “operational image” coined by the German director Harun Farocki, denoting “images that do not represent an object, but are part of an operation”. And most briefly, the current operation can be described as a philosophy on the ground, tracing the operation of the mining-geological activity and the inevitably accompanying administration, proposing the subsequent uprooting and displacement of the anthropocentric view.

The operational gaze, which has long since left the lens of the kino-eye, gives us precise coordinates of the event, locates the catastrophe, and marks the traces on the visible surface. Although the cosmic time of geoformation - the million-year superimposition of layers that proceeds in relative calm, where separate elements barely interact, there are also short periods of ruptures recorded in the layers. The excavation of rocks, clay, minerals, stones and ash unfolds the earth’s bowels, from where traces of long-sunken worlds are made visible. This is where our operational activity on the critical infrastructure of the Maritza-Iztok mines begins.

Copies of the accompanying book can be purchased at The Kopy Shop

Other Showings

As part of the exhibition “to slip, to slide, to glitch”, 03.06-12.07.24 | Galerie Futura Berlin, Germany

Screening of NATURE MORTE at VideoArt Garden, 14-17.09.23 | Timisoara, Romania

Critique

“Towards a geosophy of the catastrophe” Filip Stoilov | “St.Kliment Ohridski University” Culture Center

“Kintsugi. Dealing with trauma in the summer of 2023”” Boyana Djikova | “St.Kliment Ohridski University” Culture Center

“Observing the Geotraumatic Lines of Flight On Terrain”” Hristo Kaloyanov | report for the conference “CULTURE, INFRASTRUCTURE, MOBILITY” hosted by Leibniz Institute and Culture Center of Sofia University

Coverage

Bulgarian National Television, Bulgarian National Radio, Bloomberg TV, Bulgarian Telegraph Agency, Impressio, Boy Scout Magazine, Artnews Cafe

The exhibition was realised with the support of the Goethe-Institut Bulgaria and additional support from the “Singer-Zahariev” Foundation.