THE GHOST OF CULTURE

The National Palace of Culture in Sofia opened its doors in 1981 in celebration of Bulgaria’s 1300th anniversary. The palace was initiated at the suggestion of Lyudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of the communist leader Todor Zhivkov. Instead of the planned twelve years of completion it was built in the remarkable four years in order to fulfill the desirable deadline. More steel was used than building the Eiffel tower. Numerous artists were commissioned to produce artworks aiming to last for centuries: murals, sculptures, mosaics and paintings representing the cultural and historical heritage of the State.

The film “The Ghost of Culture” drifts between the utopian idea of a universal palace of Culture where different art forms/disciplines emerge in order to meet the needs of a larger audience. The film uses archive footage from the construction site dating back to 1977 combined with the actual opening of the palace. Buzzling actions and movement of people draw a picture of prosperity and national Socialist pride, in large.

The year is 2023 — The National Palace of Culture aka NDK — a ghost building – semiprivate semi public, where entering becomes an obstacle. The second part of the film exposes the power structure dynamics at present, when it becomes apparent that hierarchical and authoritarian principles are still in place and they serve as an active tool and treatment to both citizens and workers by the ones in supreme positions.

The documentary style of the camera captures the present state of affairs and digs into the complex narrative or redirection, or the inability to access or unmask. The movie leaves us with the shadow of both – the benefit and the doubt, of what is there to be uncovered?

Questions remain: What is the meaning /or purpose of this monument-building such as NDK nowadays, becoming a ghost itself, reminiscent of the past looking at the present?

What does it represent and who does it serve? How important is Culture in the current status quo?

director: Voin de Voin (BLG)
camera operator: Rayna Teneva
drone footage: Dimitar Yankov
video editor: Michaela Lakova
music: “Chaotic Sunrise” by Violetov General
archive footage: “National Palace of Culture celebrates 40 years”
Култура.БГ/Culture.BG, aired on 12.04.2021, Bulgarian National Television (BNT)
“Symbols of NDK”, aired on 25.02.2022, Bulgarian National Television
Commissioned by Humboldt Forum and
Financially supported by Singer-Zahariev Foundation
singer-zahariev.eu

Voin de Voin (born 1978) lives and works in Sofia. He completed his master’s degree at Das Arts – Institute of the Advance Research in the Performing Arts and his bachelor’s degree at Gerrit Rietveld Academy and also obtained a diploma from SNDO- School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam.

Since 2016 he has been running the independent art space Æther in Sofia together with Marie Civikov, with an outpost in The Hague – Æther Haga. Æther is a partner of Schloss Solitude Academy, Stuttgart, the Eastern European Networks extension and exchange program between 2018 and 2021. He also organizes and curates SAW Sofia Art Week, which has been held annually since 2016. Together with Dutch curator and educator Lisette Smith, he founded a platform for alternative education, School of Kindness, since 2020.

Voin de Voin works in various fields of visual arts, from performance to installation, incorporating his research on collective rituals and human behavior, gender studies, ancestral knowledge, psychogeography, sociology, and parapsychology. He celebrates art as activism. His work has been shown in institutional and non-institutional spaces, art fairs, performance venues, festivals, museums, public spaces, and nature around the world.

In 2023, his anti-war activities in Bulgaria confronted various civil society constructs such as marriage, prison, and media censorship. He also participated in a group exhibition in Munich organized by the Rosa Stern Art Collective, participated in the parallel program of the Kochi Biennale in India and had an exhibition at the Clearing Gallery in New York, the Macedonian Opera and Ballet in Skopje and others.