OTETS PAISIY ST.

The project links together the six locations from the Dark Side of the Night itinerary. While the stories do not follow any particular order, each is related and dependent on the others, and on the instinct of the public to discover and understand them. “The dark side of the soul” is an expression first ascribed to Juan de Yepes y Álvarez (John of the Cross), designating the temporary experience of spiritual desolation in mysticism, a time in which God is concealed and faith seems to waver. Called the “Sahara of the heart” by Richard J. Foster, this is a period when Man “measures his indignity in a downward movement” before measuring “his greatness in a movement up towards Light”. Which is why it is not a negative experience. John of the Cross differentiates between two types of night: one of the senses, and the other of the mind.

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SITUATED WITHIN A LANDSCAPE OF HUMAN INTERACTION THOSE ACTIVITIES THAT LEAD TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF STRUCTURES NECESSARY TO DEAL WITH OR CO-EXIST WITH THE FORCES OF NATURE, WATER IN MILK EXISTS ATTEMPTS TO PRESENT VARIOUS CHARACTERS AT A POINT OF DISJUNCTIVE BUT SIMULTANEOUS REALITIES. IF THE CONCISE PLACEMENT OF STONES LEADS TO A STRUCTURE (A TRUISM POSED BY MIES VAN DER ROHE) THEN PERHAPS A CONCISE PLACEMENT OF PERSONS CAN LEAD TO A STRUCTURE NOT BASED UPON PARALLEL HIERARCHIES. THE ACTIVITIES OF THE PLAYERS FIT WITHIN THE GENRE OF ADULT FILMS. IN FACT, THE PLAYERS ARE ADULTS

The artist exorcises the demons of a Volkswagen Golf Mk1 and drives in it to Plovdiv, where he parks it in Otets Paisiy St. A video running in the parked car starts with a scene in which Stoyanov is pushing the thirty-three-year-old VW towards Sofia’s Central Cemetery, where he has its evil spirits exorcised, turning it into an object of art.

Otets Paisiy St., begins at: Sariev Contemporary Gallery, ends at: Djumaya Mosque.

A walk through town is like the writing of history – you can get from point “A” to point “B” by taking different paths… They say that Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, used to say: “There’s more than one way to skin a cat”. Was he right? Who and how is skinning cats today? Could there be a history without violating the facts? Which history is more valid and HOW – the history by Otets Paisiy (Paisius of Hilendar) or the History of The Country? On the other hand, Goya says: “The Sleep of Monsters produces Reason”… Or no – my bad! It wasn’t like that! Whatever… We are sure that a walk through Plovdiv, even at night (when, according to Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, all cats are gray), will verify both thesis and hypothesis.

Knyaz Alexander I St., begins at: Djumaya Mosque, ends at: Central Square.

A walk through town is like the writing of history – you can get from point “A” to point “B” by taking different paths… They say that Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, used to say: “There’s more than one way to skin a cat”. Was he right? Who and how is skinning cats today? Could there be a history without violating the facts? Which history is more valid and HOW – the history by Otets Paisiy (Paisius of Hilendar) or the History of The Country? On the other hand, Goya says: “The Sleep of Monsters produces Reason”… Or no – my bad! It wasn’t like that! Whatever… We are sure that a walk through Plovdiv, even at night (when, according to Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, all cats are gray), will verify both thesis and hypothesis.