Of Toilets and Other Symbols – The Installation “Entropa” and Its Reception in Bulgaria
Of Toilets and Other Symbols – The Installation “Entropa” and Its Reception in Bulgaria

Summary/Abstract: On 12 January 2009, with the beginning of the EU presidency of the Czech government, the large installation “Entropa” by the Czech artist David Cherny was unveiled in the huge entrance hall of the building of the EU Commission in Brussels. It depicted the 27 EU member states in an ironic symbolic form in order to find out if the EU countries were capable of laughing about their prejudices. Bulgaria was represented by “Turkish toilets” interconnected with pipes. It was the most negative sculpture and provoked a major political scandal. The article analyses the press reports and above all the diverse and controversial reactions in several Bulgarian Internet forums to the sculpture and its meanings as well as the reactions of the government. The commentators discuss the “Turkish toilets” on three levels: as real material objects, as symbols and as political objects, and they thereby reveal deep-seated feelings and attitudes as well as frictions and controversies in the present Bulgarian society.

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