Interview Directory 

IN FOCUS/ART

Name: Vasil Vladimirov, curator

Name: Krasimira Butseva, Lilia Topouzova, Julian Chehirian, artists

Current project: "The Neighbors", 60th international art exhibition La Biennale di Venezia

“Everybody has a neighbor, everybody is a neighbor, everybody can be a neighbor.“

What is behind the title of the exhibition The Neighbours - what does it refer to?

Everybody has a neighbor, everybody is a neighbor, everybody can be a neighbor. By calling our exhibition The Neighbours, we approach the trauma of the past as a shared and a collective history. Neighbours can be both those who suffered in camps and prisons and those who carried out the violence. To be a Neighbour, to have a Neighbour, to see your Neighbours, to avoid them, to close your eyes to what is happening to them, or to want to hear them, to knock on their door and ask if they are okay, if they need anything: these are the connective threads of our exhibition but also of shared lived experiences that extend beyond our project.

The Neighbours inscribes into the thematic framework of 60th Venice Art Biennale explains Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere as outlined by curator Adriano Pedrosa, the stories Bulgaria’s “domestic foreigners or “foreigners within” - those who disagreed with the political system of the day (state socialism 1945-1989), who were outside of public and social life, who remained “foreigners” even to their family and friends. The Bulgarian project serves as a site for reflection about the experiences of political repression from our recent past while critically examining its enduring impact in the present, highlighting the vital role of art in reckoning with the complex realities of our world.

“A spoon, a smuggled letter, a self-published book, the pages of a declassified secret police file."

Can you describe for the reader the background to individual encounters with those affected? Which ones do you particularly remember?

Instead of describing individual encounters, we would like to comment on the collective ethos of the research that lays out the theoretical framework of the exhibit. The Neighbours begins in the homes of the survivors. This is where our meetings with them took place and where we conducted our interviews over the course of two decades. All interviewees viewed repression as a continued experience, one that outlasted their release from a camp or a prison. The trauma of forced confinement remained at the center of their lives until the very end. As we sat together with survivors in their homes, listening to their words, we observed that their domestic spaces had turned into sites of memory. The plastic tablecloth on the kitchen table, some sweets and drinks, perhaps breadsticks, sometimes wine and cigarettes, and always a strong coffee. The radio or TV humming in the background, photographs showcased in cabinet windows, chairs and couches adorned with colorful fabric, a calendar hanging on the wall. Alongside these markers of time and domesticity stood the less obvious ones—artefacts of the camp and prison past. Some were put in view for our benefit, but others were on permanent display: a spoon, a smuggled letter, a self-published book, the pages of a declassified secret police file. Here, within these private walls, the symbols of repression reside and wither. But it is also within these walls that we bore witness to the diverse ways in which survivors have sought to position themselves and stage their memories in the absence of a comprehensive effort to address their experiences in Bulgarian public life.

We divided their narratives into three categories that constitute three ways of remembering the lived-experience of camps and prisons. 1) accounts of people who had already spoken publicly: they had mastery of their narrative and approached the interview as a professional commitment. 2) First-time testimonies by survivors who had never publicly narrated their experiences. The reasons for their silence varied: for some it was fear, a fear that dominated our conversations. Others had no apparent motives; it was as if they had simply never been asked to speak. 3) The wordless laments of people who wanted to go on the record but could not speak: those who perished, those whose memories had been lost, the details of their experiences permanently silenced, but they desired to contribute their stories anyway.

The three spaces of The Neighbours-a living room, a bedroom, and a kitchen- recreate different parts of the survivors' homes, embodying the three modes of remembering.

Living Room

The living room is usually a space used for welcoming guests, a space of animated conversation and collective activities: it is here that we have placed the most comprehensive audio narratives of traumatic memory. In this space, we hear survivors from the first category: those who have narrated their experiences publicly - to their families, in their own and others' books, in documentary films, for journalistic reports, at memorial gatherings at the sites of the former camps.

Bedrooom

The bedroom is a personal a space, inhabited by the family or the individual, a place where people store their intimate belongings and softly share private thoughts. It is a quiet space. In this room, we hear the first-time testimonies by survivors who had never publicly narrated their experiences. In our interviews, they recall their trauma - often accompanied by a stream of details, as they revisit it for the first time. Their hitherto silence had been both a coincidence and a choice - one for personal preservation, left as a reflex from the regime itself, or to protect their loved ones.

Kitchen

Although the kitchen is a space that can carry collective experiences, it is also a space where the homeowner remains alone with their thoughts. It can be a space of silence. In this room, we have placed fragments of audio recordings of people who wanted to go on the record but could not speak. Here, the voices of survivors have vanished, replaced by sounds of someone's presence and non-verbal excerpts. The memory of the camp is a present absence.

Why do you think the Bulgarian government supported your project in particular?

We can’t comment on the Bulgarian government’s decision to support our project. We welcome to opportunity to meaningfully collaborate with the Ministry of Culture to realize our exhibit.

“We hope that our project prompts a broader reflection on the impact that authoritarian politics, past and present, have on communities, individuals, histories, and memories–and the possibility for art to impact social change.“

What significance do you think your project has, especially in our current times?

We believe a project like ours remains significant at all times because it centers the lived experience of survivors unable to forget and unwilling to relegate their experiences to historical oblivion. In so doing, we hope that our project prompts a broader reflection on the impact that authoritarian politics, past and present, have on communities, individuals, histories, and memories–and the possibility for art to impact social change.

Delighted, overwhelmed, excited, terrified, grateful but above all, committed to upholding the integrity of our project and representing Bulgaria at the 60th Biennale di Venezia.