Introduction to the Spiral Panic

an audiovisual immersive installation by Metheor

concept: Boyan Manchev and Ani Vaseva
video: Ivan Nikolov, Ani Vaseva and Boyan Manchev
sound: Angel Simitchiev

27 and 28 October 2021, 18:30 – 21:30, Structura Gallery

“Maelström. Introduction to the Spiral Panic” is the first event in a series by Metheor titled “Theatre of the Elements”. This installation has been realized by Metheor with the support of the National Culture Fund and is part of Tempus Fugit, a joint project of Goethe-Institut and Institut Français in Bulgaria within the framework of the Franco-German Cultural Fund.

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It’s as if we’ve never gotten out of the state of spiral panic. The spiral is a paradoxical symbol – it is a figure of sustained motion, of the breaking of the tautology of the circle, of development and change as well as of destabilization, of the loss of centre and base, of giddiness, vertigo, falling into a bottomless chasm.

The terrifying and fascinating image of the gigantic Maelström described in Edgar Allen Poe’s famous short story, “A Descent into the Maelström” (1841), represents the spiral of the vortex at its maximum intensity. The gigantic spiral whirlpool, the vortex in which the ocean plunges into the abyss, is at once a decentering of every structure and appearance of the unimaginable monstrous structure of Chaos. In the spiral acceleration of the vortex, centripetal motion becomes indistinguishable from centrifugal motion, rising from falling, structure from chaos.

Maelström: Chaos – Structure.

Ignoring the clichéd allegories that exploit the spiral-vortex, the installation examines the figural potential that breaks through the swirling surface despite them. It focuses on the point of refraction, of inversion of the spiral’s motion – the inversion of the order of the meanings that swirl with the spiral.

The vortex allows no distance: Maelström wants the body of the observer.

Boyan Manchev

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May 2012, Sofia

The World of S stages imagined/virtual and actual archive as a work of art, combining document and fiction, in order to create a work of art transcending the perceived as natural limits of what is to be imagined as The Real. 

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installation and comic-strip
idea and performance: Ani Vaseva, Ivana Nencheva, Natalia Todorova
photography: Ivan Donchev
comic strip: Yassen Zgurovski
comic strip text: Ani Vaseva

The installation was presented at Tanzquartier Wien in the frame of SCORES No3: uneasy going and in Sofiaundergound Festival, 2011.

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exhibition with the collection of Sofia City Gallery, part of The Other Eye, a curatorial project of Maria Vassileva
curators: Ani Vaseva, Boryana Rossa, Monika Vakarelova
photographs from the exhibition: Georgi Sharov

Sofia City Gallery, April – June 2013.

“The Other Eye” is a series of exhibitions by the idea of Maria Vassileva, where non-art historians and non-curators are invited to work with the Sofia City Art Gallery museum collection. The project aims to look beyond traditional interpretations of history and, possibly, “unearth” somewhat forgotten works, and also trace new links connecting the latter.
The Other Eye project is designed to fight precisely the inertia in viewing and interpreting. It includes in the dialogue with museum exhibits people who exercise their imaginations in other cultural fields or who are not burdened with narrow specialized knowledge. We rely on their fresh gaze to offer us surprising discoveries and to build new contexts for familiar works.
Ani Vaseva, Boryana Rossa and Monika Vakarelova juxtapose different views and perceptions about the collection which, albeit conflicting at first sight, find multiple points of intersection. Their gaze moves between the drama of the bleak reality and the timelessness of the reality that-may-have-been, between expectation and action, between the existent and the non-existent; it explores the storage rooms and tries to discover works with a “dual foundation” (as Ani Vaseva puts it). The world of art is made up of many worlds – as, in fact, is life itself. Ani, Boryana and Monika mark a territory of their own over the decades and offer it to us as one of the many possible routes through time and space.
The exhibition features approximately one hundred works by artists from different eras and trends from the late 19th century to the present day, performed in various techniques – painting, graphics, sculpture, photography, video, object. Among the authors are Georgi Danchov, Ivan Mrkvicka, Andrey Nikolov, Tsanko Lavrenov, Pencho Balkanski, Veselin Staikov, Binka Vazova, Stefan Gatsev, Georgi Baev, Lika Yanko, Vassil Simittchiev, Stanislav Pamukchiev, Margarita Pueva, Edmond Demirdjian, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Ivan Moudov, Stefaniia Batoeva and others.

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