11 June 2022 | 18:30 – 20:00

Beyond. On the Boundaries of Arts
Discussion with the participation of Olga Tokarczuk

Moderator: Kamelia Spassova
Participants: Alexander Popov, Boyan Manchev, Vladiya Mihailova

As part of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s visit to “Literary Talks June”, we will place her work in the broad framework of translation and the transition between the arts. Tokarczuk’s novels, short stories and critical essays are not afraid to think of contemporaneity with its critical zones, as well as to find a language, delicate and plastic, with which to name our traumas and anxieties, our complaints and desires.

The starting point of the conversation with Olga Tokarczuk, the philosopher Boyan Manchev, the art historian Vladiya Mihaylova and the computer linguist Alexander Popov is the question of the internal and external boundaries of the arts. What can a novel, a poem, a painting, a photograph, a theatrical performance, a film, a dance tell us? But that means wondering what a certain artwork cannot capture? Could the internal limits of literature be overcome by a leap to another art form, and what is the nature of this leap: translation, metamorphosis or ekphrasis? Where are the external boundaries of the arts outlined and when does the transition to other realms of philosophy, science, political debate or the virtual realm of social networks, happen? What are the spaces of the different art forms – libraries, museums, galleries, theaters, cinemas? And do we have the social imagination to invent new places?

How are the means of one art used in another art form? How do scientific facts become the basis of works of art, but also how has science fiction already invented the world in which we live together with the scenarios of what is to come.
Ultimately, the works gravitate around an invisible field in which they want to name what is unparalleled, unrepresentable and unimaginable. Clearly, we wonder where this “beyond” borders is located.