Artist Talk | 7 May, 18:00 | Krasimira Butseva, Valentin Kalinov, Lilia Topouzova, Vasil Vladimirov | The Making of The Neighbours: The Artist Studio as a Transitory Archive or How to Visualize Silenced Histories?

• Read Tanja Wagensohn's report about this event and the related workshop on 6 May here

The Leibniz ScienceCampus is delighted to welcome Krasimira Butseva, Valentin Kalinov, Lilia Topouzova and Vasil Vladimirov to a public talk, presenting the decade-long creative and academic process which resulted in The Neighbours, the art exhibit selected to officially represent Bulgaria at the 2024 Venice Biennale.

The Neighbours is a multimedia installation about how we remember, carry and forget trauma. The exhibition excavates the silenced and faded memories of survivors of state violence from Bulgaria's socialist era (1945–1989). The project was created by Krasimira Butseva, Dr Lilia Topouzova and Julian Chehirian, and is the result of 20 years of historical and artistic research. Vasil Vladimirov is the project curator in the context of Bulgaria’s official participation in the 60th Venice Biennale. The Commissioner is Dr Nadezhda Dzhakova. Also involved is the clinical psychologist and philosopher Dr Valentin Kalinov.

The installation, rooted in extensive scholarly research and over 40 interviews with survivors of political violence conducted by the artists, partially recreates the survivors’ homes in which the meetings and conversations with them unfolded. Staged within these private spaces are fragments from the interviews, field recordings and videos from two former camp sites—Lovech and Belene. These ethnographic and historical investigations trace both the lived experience of violence and the deep scars left by arrests and imprisonment. The project presents the consequences of the deliberate silencing of decades of state violence and the absence of its memory in contemporary public consciousness.

During the lecture, we will explore the range of creative possibilities available to bring to light silenced histories. Is it possible for an artistic practice, transformed into an exhibition, to serve as a sanctuary for bearing witness? In attempting to answer this question, we will also query the potential of our interdisciplinary work to enact a space for collective healing. We propose that the project's significance lies not only in its artistic merit but also in its role as a medium for remembrance. It embodies a crucial act of resistance against erasure and serves as a testament to the resilience survivors. Through this work, our collective hopes to contribute to an ongoing global dialogue on human rights, memory, and the necessity of confronting and acknowledging both past and present injustices.

In cooperation with: The Center for Commemorative Culture (Zentrum Erinnerungskultur), Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS Regensburg), Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies (GS OSES UR)

Selected reports on The Neighbours in the international press

• The Guardian/Observer's Laura Cumming called the Bulgarian pavilion "the greatest revelation" of the Biennale and selected it as one of the must-see exhibitions, "the most delicate and elegiac expression of a terrible history."
• Caroline Roux for Gallerie, 6 standout pavilions at the 2024 Venice Biennale, including Bulgaria's the Neighbours.
• Edward Behrens for Appolo Magazine's Must-See Pavillions, see the Bulgarian one where "the silence has been broken."
• Pablo Lario for Artforum urges visitors to see " Bulgaria’s impassioned excavation of the psychological afterlives of political imprisonment."
• Oliver Basciano for ArtReview, "the pavilion is a lesson to today’s problems beyond Bulgaria: it is easy erase a group of people, bringing them back is harder."
• Aimee Dawson's curated selections of the 2024 Venice Art Biennale for Stirworld, Bulgaria's disquieting installation.
• The Art Newspaper's Must-See Pavillion Around Town Venice Biennale 2024.

Interviews and articles about the Neighbours Bulgarian Pavillion before it opened:

• Kate Connoly for the Guardian.
• Alison Hugill interview for Berlin Art Link.