April 24^th – 26^th, 2025

Serdica Ancient Cultural and Communication Complex

(Largo Zone, underground level)  

 

Immersive Installation by Sapromat Association

Below the Center of Gravity

Opening: April 24^th, 2025

| 6:30 p.m.  ☰

 

Sapromat Association: Michaela Dobreva and Boris Dalchev
Curator Viktoria Draganova
Curator “Literary Talks”: Todora Radeva
Original text: Konstantin Georgiev
Cinematographer: Stefan Vrachev

“Archaeology of Memory” explores the relationship between individual memories and the collective historical layers that are layered onto the urban fabric. In this context, the artistic project “Below the Center of Gravity” by the Sapromat Collective (Mihaela Dobreva and Boris Dalchev) fits, transforming the space of the Largo in Sofia, creating an opportunity to rediscover ourselves and our history in the midst of one of the city's landmark sites.

Around the Largo underpass today are located some of the most important institutions in the country, and the space has over the centuries been a focal point of several empires – Roman, Ottoman and most recently Soviet. It carries a symbolic and historical charge, as well as a sense of significance at every moment of our existence individually and as a community. But it is here that the day-to-day routine intervenes – caught up in tasks and chasing the clock, we pass in a rush through a maze of subways and arcades.
 
The artists capture this divergence at the very intersection on the central glass dome in the Largo that has become, for the duration of the festival, a tableau vivant (from the French “living picture”). Projections of anonymous silhouettes move gently and silently across it, and the footsteps of random city passers-by echo clearly in them. In the underpass itself, there are several pedestals on which, instead of valuable archaeological excavations, we find several pairs of worn old shoes. All of them are accompanied by narratives that overlay moments in the daily lives of their allegedly fictitious owners with important historical twists, from protests to political instability.
 
As we immerse ourselves in the installation, we become increasingly aware of the space as a symbolic centre of possible and impossible encounters between the inhabitants of the city during its different eras of existence. But there is also a pressing need to feel our place, position and choices echoing in others. Looking up again at the dome and sensing the fragility of the situation, the question inevitably arises: how much does each of these steps weigh on our present?

━ Viktoria Draganova

The event is organized with the financial support of the National Culture Fund.