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February 21, 2007 – March 3, 2007
After the International Elias Canetti Society showed the “Shrinking Cities” exhibition in December 2006 in Ruse, a Bulgarian city battered in recent decades by the dismantling of industry and by environmental disasters, the exhibition moved to the capital, Sofia. There 15 contributions were on view, including works by Antje Ehmann, Michael Baute, Harun Farocki, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Laura Horelli, Kathrin Wildner, Savva Miturich, Sergei Miturich und John Davies. Ivo Ivanov's "Sofia, Bulgaria" and Kamen Stojanov's "Places where the world breaks away" were also shown.
Curators of the exhibition in Sofia: Vladiya Michailova and Timo Köster; with Yovo Panchev and Studio Dahaus. Design Flyer: Alina Hoyer, Berlin.
The Exhibition was supported by: Deutsche Botschaft Sofia, Goethe Institut Bulgarien, Robert Bosch Stiftung.
The exhibition was accompanied by three presentations with subsequent discussion:
Feb. 23, 7 p.m.: “Hot Visual Cit(y/ies)”, Lachezar Bojadjiev; Feb. 28, 7 p.m.: “Biopolitics and Urban Space”, Momchil Christov and Ana Antova; March 2, 7 p.m.: “Patterns of Abandonment”, Veronika Tzekova.
http://dauhaus.org/
Ruse ///
December 14, 2006 – January 14, 2007
Opening: Thursday, December 14, 6 p.m.
Art Gallery Ruse
Borisova Street 39
7000 Ruse, Bulgaria
Phone +359.82.828699
The International Elias Canetti Society in collaboration with the Ruse Art Gallery presented the Shrinking Cities Exhibition in Ruse. The exhibition comprised chronologies and cross-sectional views that introduce the phenomenon of urban shrinking and the four investigated regions, Ivanovo, Halle/Leipzig, Manchester/Liverpool, and Detroit; it also included cultural studies and artistic contributions that, from extremely varied perspectives, trace and depict various facets of processes of shrinking.
In a workshop, schoolchildren addressed their city, Ruse, in paint. The themes were “Ruse – my city” and “Ruse – my dream”. The drawings were also on view in the context of the exhibition, as is “Places where the world breaks away”, a work by the Bulgarian artist Kamen Stojanov.
Ruse, a city in northeastern Bulgaria, is especially subjected to the negative effects of urban change. At the end of the 1980s, the city had almost 200,000 residents; today there are officially still 150,000, whereby the real figure is probably substantially fewer. The reasons for this process of shrinking are, above all, the devastating environmental pollution caused in the 1980s by a chemical plant in the Romanian border city of Giurgiu, the post-socialist deindustrialization in Ruse and the region, and the intense process of centralization within Bulgaria. The exhibition aims to promote discussion of the phenomenon of the shrinking city in the region, but also to show that urban shrinking is a global phenomenon and not per se restricted to post-socialist societies.
The exhibition receives financial support from the German Foreign Office and the Robert Bosch Foundation.
Head Curator: Phlipp Oswalt; Co-Curator for Ruse: Timo Köster; translation: Strahil Karapchanski, curatorial assistence: Füsun Türetken.