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SELECTED WORKS/PROJECTS

 

 

 

1.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT DIE WITH US

part 1

LAST DAY IS THIS

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“The revolution will not die with us”, the first sequence of an accumulatieve performance series by Marie Civikov and Voin de Voin, will take place this Friday at the Ruse Art Gallery. The work is a first result of the investigation of the parallel past of their deceased ancestors. Both active members of the anarchist and anti-fascist movement of Bulgaria and throughout Europe at that time.

2.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT DIE WITH US

part 2

ROBOTIC THOUGHT

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The Revolution Will Not Die With Us - part 2 - Robotic thought
Sofia City Art Gallery 13 dec. 2017 
Shifting of the layers curated by Vladiya Mihaylova.

Voin de Voin and Marie Civikov unite forces. Both have a past in and connection to Bulgaria. Voin was born and raised in Bulgaria where also part of Civikov's family history lies, born and raised with a Bulgarian father in the Netherlands. Their ancestors were figures with revolutionary ideas and activists in the same decade short hundred years ago, operating in different parts of the country (Plovdiv, Ruse and Sofia). In their series of performances Voin and Civikov explore common ideas of those who started fighting “evil”, or in particular, against fascism at its very early presence on the Balkans. They used and collected data and archival material from various sources and institutions. However, many dossiers are erased and destroyed. How do they fulfill the this gap, how is history re-told and how do they identify with that particular cause that is in fact put at stake and set to play at its new ground of perspective of politicizing the body as an active tool of protest. The work is a journey of discovering, becoming as well as it aims to create new reflections on how we deal with the present. "With different destinies and activities we merge the fates of these two revolutionaries, our ancestors: Panayot Civikov, locked up for his writings and participation in the anarchist movement, and Anna Voynova tortured in prison for her political views, from which she subsequently died at a young age. What would have happened if they knew each other? But now we did-no coincidence. There might be a chance they did. Personalizing our deceased family members, we incline to create a fiction-documentary intervention using archival material shaping the character of this performance as an action to uncover the past and to access the invisible status of a possibly repeating history.

The project is built upon a relationship between performer,

 therapist (psycho-drama)and audience as living proof of psycho-dramatic potential of the performance and formation of new family constellations.

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Performance session
with music by Parsifal

Terapist: Martina Ivanova Staneva-Аntonova and audience members.
photos by Geo Kalev

at DNK Sofia

8.

FEAR NO FEAR

 Ametacalyps

 In this exhibition at Sariev Contemporary, ἀ-μετά-καλύπτ, i takes on the speculations surrounding the tetrad of consecutive “blood moons” (full lunar eclipses) in 2014 and 2015 and the Apocalypse as foretold by the ancient prophets, building on commonly held notions, languages, visual and narrative clichés to introduce the theory of the advent of the post-apocalyptic Mental Age. asking the question if the Apocalypse already happened and might we have failed to register it? In a postmodern, post-nuclear, post-human, post-Internet era, I find myself, as an alive being, entrapped in various codes, psychic dilution and ‘catastrophobia’. Is the Apocalypse a phenomenon that only occurs in people’s minds?I look to finds evidence for our post-apocalyptic existence in the object’s loss of essence, which he believes results from [psychic] repression. Describing the phenomenon, i use the psychological term displacement, which denotes the unconscious transfer of intense emotion for one object to another – a process that has its own logic and patterns of thinking. Simultaneously thrilling and disturbing, it is often an unconscious disguise of anxieties related to aggressive and/or sexual impulses. “Thus the experience of reality becomes more of an escape route than a way of dealing with fears; a space where values generated by outside factors (such as governments, technologies, capital or natural disasters) are appropriated.It is by denying “space” its meaning as a distillation of essence and presence ,I invent and introduce such notions as “the inner imaginary”, “escape boulevard”, “the melting of the sexes’ ice caps”, “psychology of nature”, “new eco system”, “global warming as an element of creation”, “the atom as a demonic concentration”, “reproduction and mutation”, “the opportunity to humanize through the oral tradition”, and poses questions about the possibility of relating: “Perhaps love is only possible after the physical death of the body?Building on these borders, my idea of the “advent of the Mental Era”, which i see as an inner state arising from a new desire for the preservation of life – a desire for a life of the soul. The Mental Era’s goal is to abandon all representative images and work with the nonimage/non-object, which are born out of the future imaginary.

3.

ἀ-μετά-καλύπτω

Title: #ow do you see it Year:2016 Brief description of the work: The exhibition looking into the phenomenon of how languages evolves and mutated via social media platforms and the use of digital applications. It s limitations becoming evident by the necessity to define the borders of the visible,that grows together with the gap between consumption of an image and perpetual representations of reality. Experiences in the present are valued by their shares with its followers. In order to classify and group the images we post , we use different means to order and unite them in virtual nests-for example the idea of hash tagging. To take a picture, is a personal attempt to mesmerise the present,certainly attached with its own sentiment and emotion. It is a photograph because it bares no words to itself. But it is not how it functions in virtual paradise. We are asked to prescribe our emotion, interpretation, vision, to give a name to feeling and put it to rest in common pot of accumulating memories.The image is at rest. At peace? Sleeping forever between its siblings? The individual is now masked, hidden, with no real face, with emotion in viral limbo…lost. With how do you picture this…i am trying to reverse this process of naming your pictures and classifying the emotion, but rather use the principle of writing , and create new kind of written sequences, challenging the eye to imagine the missing image, perhaps an attempt to create poetry. In the dark digital age the vice of the eye is the continues appetite of the monster that swallow and processes images rapidly, uncompromising and rises the bar to highly addictive. Do we need more images, just like weapons? Can images become words?How do you picture it when there is no image, like peace?

4.

#ow do you see it

 The exhibition takes part in the contemporary debate on aesthetic and political (im)possibilities to continue the Internet project as an avant-garde initiative, only that its done by going back. The exhibition feels like starting where we expect the end of the story and takes us back to the mythological, spiritualistic and existential questions about the origins. From the cup-of-coffee icon, collaged using Photoshop in one of the photographs, back to the idea of the Digital God and the emptiness of creation, the works shown in it represent “icons” in an everyday temple/gallery. They “speak” simultaneously about the human and the divine creation, about the ability of the God-Man to create worlds. In the space of the gallery everything seems interconnected through numerous signs, associations, intertwining of topics and images. In the presented works in various media – photographs, visual and sound installations, paintings, each of which implemented in different materials such as rubber, stone, neon, plastic, etc., the artist consistently shows the duality of digital environment, its simultaneously material and virtual presence. The painting is an image (QR code) which the viewers may scan with their phones, the photographs show contemporary Adam and Eve as appliqué figures compiled using simple Photoshop commands in an artificial and rather unreal environment, part of the installations and images are generated through data and codes. Voin de Voin’s approach is simultaneously aesthetic and performative. The images appear and disappear, ooze, flicker, and in the process become both close and distant, thus opening up room for emptiness, creating a void. The artist’s body itself, turned into an odd, queer image, occasionally emerges and vanishes in the individual works. As the very title of the exhibition (Disconnecting Intergod) suggests, its message refers to the providing, or rather understanding the ability of constantly returning to ourselves and our own bodies; in other words, our option is to disconnect. In fact, the artist is interested not in the connection between things, but in the almost – connection between those seemingly touching hands of the Man and the God.

5.

Disconnecting Intergod



February 10, 2012 – March 11, 2012
Opening: February 10, 2012 (Friday) at 19:00 h
19:30 – 20:00 o’clock – performance by Ivanka Voinova

Sariev Gallery presents the first solo exhibition of Voin de Voin in Bulgaria. 
The point of departure for the exhibition “33° north - 33° east” is the artist’s journey to the "Promised Land" in Israel, where the fact that his age (33) is the same as that of Jesus at his earthy life, spurred him to visit the 3 main sites in the country where the Transfiguration of Christ may have taken place.

The most probable theory for the artist is that this event took place on Mount Hermon, the highest point of the country, situated on the rose line meridian at 33° N, 33° E.

The topic of transfiguration along with transformation, change, mutation, displacement, psycho-geography is crucial in Voin de Voin’s previous pieces and constantly emerges in his current work.

In his present exhibition “33° north - 33° east” at Sariev Gallery Voin de Voin contemplates transfiguration as fulfilling a mission and “entering a new light” and he analyses it through figuration, geometry, vision, meditation, authentic writing, points of contemplation and rites of passage. Sculpture, objects, series of photography, 3D images and a performance by the artist’s mother Ivanka Voinova will be presented at the exhibition. Text to the works by Andrew Fremont-Smith (NY)

6.

33° NORTH - 33° EAST

 AT Vienna contemporary art fair, Focus Bulgaria Brief description of the work: I take the traditional idea of the children game Twister, and cross-words, mixed together in a live performance. It s protest,speech, manifest or self inflicted trap?I invited the audience to recite random quotes from The Capital by Marx,using myself a a figure of labour and tool of exploitation,whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value.My reference and transgression explored the idea of the body as a living currency,delivering labour that in the context of a game(twister),continuously is trying to articulate,mesmerise ,create gestures,that are constantly ruined and failed by the impossibility of the task at play. The scenery aims to represent an economy of the exhausted,repeating,self consuming production models,that translated to the body only leaves you with a a singular hope-to find freedom in new possibilities.Say yes to no!

7.

Twister

9.

PSY CARDS

The projects is consisted by set of cards, that are both intended to be experienced as an exhibition, but also as a seance.

10.

Telepathic scenarios

In that one to one experiment, I propose a connection with the viewer, that is related to the neuro reactive centres in the brain, that allows us to control and create a vision and later interpretation of what is seen in front of us.

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