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»The Construction of mass utopia was the dream of the twentieth century. It was the driving ideological force of industrial modernization in both its capitalist and socialist forms. The dream was itself an immense material power that transformed the natural world, investing industrially produced objects and built environments with collective, political desire.« (From the Preface)
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This book presents the city of Sofia from the second half of the 20th century. This period is marked not only by the end of World War 2 but by the change of political power in Bulgaria. Through this book, the author intends to give more information about moments of the development of the capital, it's it's influence over material and spiritual culture and he relates all of this to the citizens of Sofia in the reviewed decades. Sofia is very old city, although it's citizens don't realize it, but its modernization and geographical growth begun after the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878. After 1944 Sofia has shown rapid development and population growth - for 300 000 to over 1 million citizens for a period lasting over 40 years. The houses have been replaced by modern buildings, the city districts have been expanded, the city has turned into a center of industry and slowly, but steady, Sofia has turned for average Balkan city to a capital with European influence.
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It is by now a tradition that the intellectual efforts of the participants at the Early Fall School in Semiotics (EFSS), organized annually by the Southeast Center for Semiotic Studies (SEECSS) at the New Bulgarian University, result in a collection of selected papers. The present volume in English and French is an outcome of the XIIth edition of the EFSS on "Semiotics, Image and Narration", held in 2006 in the town of Sozopol. It is formally divided into two parts, containing texts by 'guest lecturers' from our partner Universities in Finland, Italy and USA, as well as by 'local participants' - professors and students at the New Bulgarian University. From parchments to paper and from print to the internet, "the story of humankind has been written, and will be written upon its virtual walls" (Albertson, 1997). In the new millennium we are ever more surrounded by bulletin boards and computer networks, from advertisement banners to cyberspace. Nowadays humankind learns by watching rather than by reading or being lectured to. In order to be considered literate in the information age, the new literate person needs to be media literate as well as being proficient in literature and arithmetic.
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Includes full papers presented in the esearch conference on constructions, economy of constructions, architecture, urbanism and territorial development, 9th edition. Individual abstracts available for each article.
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Includes abstracts of the papers presented in the research conference on constructions, economy of constructions, architecture, urbanism and territorial development, editions 1-4.
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Includes abstracts of the papers presented in the esearch conference on constructions, economy of constructions, architecture, urbanism and territorial development, 5th edition.
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Includes abstracts of the papers presented in the research conference on constructions, economy of constructions, architecture, urbanism and territorial development, 9th edition.
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Includes abstracts of the papers presented in the research conference on constructions, economy of constructions, architecture, urbanism and territorial development, 10th edition.
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Includes abstracts of the papers presented in the research conference on constructions, economy of constructions, architecture, urbanism and territorial development, 11th edition.
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Includes abstracts of the papers presented in the research conference on constructions, economy of constructions, architecture, urbanism and territorial development, 12th edition.
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Includes abstracts of the papers presented in the research conference on constructions, economy of constructions, architecture, urbanism and territorial development, 13th edition.
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"Sava Slavchev's essays are balanced, elegant and erudite, completely devoid of unnecessary categorical timelines. Here's what I wrote to the author as soon as I read his book: "This is your form, the enjoyment of freedom in the way you use it is evident. I wanted the end of the essay in the part on literature and culture to be bolder and accusing, even sinister, to gain a place in the mind of the reader. Luckily there is nothing like that! The cultural man is known in the way he protects the culture, and I am a barbarian and realized myself as such while I was reading. But this awareness does not hurt me, no - it inspires me! " - Peter Delchev
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This text is a monographic study of live action role-playing games (commonly called larp games): a type of games played live, in physical space, and through the immediate, active interaction between players. The study explores two directions, elaborated in its two parts, each with its own specific focus, goals, and scope. The first part focuses on games in culture; the second, on games as culture. The first part presents the various types of role-playing games, their functions in cultures, and the cultural traditions inherited by them. The second part contains a detailed analysis of a local gaming culture—the Bulgarian one—through its constituting aspects of form (the game), processes (playing), and actors (players). The first part places role-playing games within the scope of anthropology and examines them through the comparative perspective typical of cultural anthropology. We deduce and substantiate six functions of larp games from a theoretical and philosophical standpoint. The ritual function breaks the quotidian rhythm of life, changes the commonplace structures and relationships, engenders a markedly “other” (albeit temporary) reality, which imposes uncommon types of behavior. The narrative function is an aspect of players’ subjective perceptions, of their direct involvement in the story, simultaneously creating it and experiencing it in an unmediated manner. The escapist function is portrayed, not only as a possible “escape from reality, ” but also as a romanticist criticism of modern reality. The educational function considers the uses of games for the practical acquisition and accumulation of knowledge and skills, but also for exploring ideologies, suggesting or provoking particular values, and shaping worldviews. The therapeutic function focuses on the notion of ‘catharsis, ’ as a healthy psychological and emotional release for both individual players and the group/community as a whole. The expressive function defines playing as a method for individual and collective expression, a medium with the potential to make art forms. We explore the evolution and varieties of the genre larp game as it has been interpreted and enacted on various regional playing scenes: in North America, Great Britain, France, Germany, Scandinavia. We examine the principles of avant-garde Nordic larp as a specific design ideology insistent on authentic experience, artistic storytelling, and topicality in the games it constructs. We describe the major traits of the Eastern European larp scenes, with an emphasis on the unique Russian larp culture. The second part defines Bulgarian larp culture through five groups off actors: 1) genesis and main trends; 2) basic structures and interactions established on a meta-gaming level; 3) values and norms shared by the players; 4) actual or latent conflicts and crises; 5) impact of other forms of games or other larp cultures. At first, we analyze the game as a jointly generated reality, consisting of various layers and levels: the material environment of objects and the language describing it; the individual perception and performance of a role; social structures and interactions. Next, we examine playing as a communication process: playing with meaning, the cultural “languages” of interaction, and the participants’ subjective interpretations of game events, expressed through stories. Finally, we present the social structuring of the Bulgarian larp scene as a community of clans and analyze the unique social world of larp players. The conclusion highlights certain significant sociocultural trends in the contemporary world, reflected in the culture of role-playing games: modern people’s propensity for ‘playing’ with reality, creating and inhabiting alternative worlds; the ever growing need to engage with the world actively and experience it fully, the increasing importance of direct personal experience; the specific attitude towards artistic content and art as a whole, the everyday need for artistic expression.
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The Didactic Wall by the artist Mladen Miljanović is a subversive educational installation that focuses on the issue of migrants, refugees, displaced persons and apatrids, and the difficulties they face when moving towards their desired geographic objective. This is an engaged set of illustrations that address directly those who, in an “illegal” way, are trying to cross national borders to get to their “land of dreams”. The Didactic Wall is a kind of an instruction on how to overcome natural and artificial barriers an “illegal” person on the move may possibly come across. [...]
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The photography exhibition “The Family of Man”, which was opened in 1955 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is a world-famous phenomenon. It presents not just high-value works and extremely interesting exhibition solutions, but above all the politics of the United States of America during the Cold War. The paper focuses attention on the “socialist response” that remains far less well known to the general public – the exhibition “On the Happiness of People”, which took place in 1968 in East Berlin. The curators’ idea was to show the peaceful and settled life in socialist countries. In the exposition, like in the American model, not only the images but also the related texts are of great importance
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In an attempt for the image to be equal, even leading in the book, and not a supporting element – decorative-descriptive in relation to the text, the artist’s book appears. As a subject of study in Bulgarian schools, it was included for the first time in the “Illustration” specialty at the “Ilia Petrov” National School of Fine Arts. The article reveals what opportunities and challenges the leader of the discipline faces when working with the tightest coupling between text and image
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The article examines plays based on biblical stories, which have remained outside the canon of Bulgarian drama. The selected texts are from the period between the two world wars. Dance and music are visual and acoustic signs in conveying the characters’ emotional experiences. They become a system for signifying the relationship between man and God, body and soul, a way of communication between visible and invisible, the presence of religious mysticism. Dance and music are part of the modern understanding of t he technique of synthesis in modern Bulgarian drama.
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The article explores the image of potential and future performances embedded in the dramatic text and the metamorphoses and transformations that it undergoes on its transition from page to stage. The focus is on a single but very important aspect – the reading of the dramatic text revealed in the director’s explication, i.e. the process of transferring the dramatic text to another written text, which defines the forthcoming performance. Subject of analysis is Krasimir Spasov’s directorial explication for his production of The Dance of Death by August Strindberg at the National Theatre in 1991 and, in particular, the relationship between the two texts
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One of the interesting new phenomena on the theatre stage, which has appeared thanks to technological innovations, is the projection of written text. It is being examined from an artistic point of view with examples from the works of distinguished contemporary theatre figures. The most popular and pragmatic application of the projection of the written text is in the form of theatre surtitles for translation, but often artists make use of its artistic potentiality as an active metacommentary on the scenic action
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