2016 - 2017
Commissioned by The University of Texas at Austin. Presented in Omnibus Filing, an exhibition at the Visual Arts Center, UT Austin. Curated by James Sham and Dr Brian Korgel.
This is a mausoleum for a single bumblebee queen.
Praxilla, named after the fifth century BCE Greek poet Praxilla of Sicyon, is an American bumblebee, Bombus pensylvanicus, item #00146801 in the entomology collection of UT Austin. She is inside a glass enclosure made by Adam Kennedy and Shallaco McDonald at the scientific glass laboratories of the UT Chemistry Department.
A piece of aerogel accompanies Praxilla in her glass vessel. Aerogel is an extremely porous material that is almost as light and airy as a piece of sky. It is 99.8 per cent air and was used in NASA’s 2006 Comet Sample Return Mission, on the Stardust Spacecraft, to capture interstellar dust and comet particles from Comet Wild 2.
Dr Shalene Jha, an evolutionary biologist at the Department of Integrated Biology, UT Austin, presents the scientific knowledge related to Praxilla in a single channel video.
A second video, on the opposite wall of the mausoleum, shows a recitation of the only surviving three-line fragment from Hymn to Adonis by Praxilla of Sicyon, interspersed with translation and commentaries of the text by Dr Stephen White, Professor of Classics and Philosophy at UT Austin. My voice echoes the recitation lead by Evelyn Richardson, PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago.
The mausoleum includes fresco paintings, 24 cupcakes in a container with pain-killers and poisonous dry pigments, disposable rubber gloves used by the installers of the exhibition, and a close-up photograph of Praxilla taken by Alex Wild, a curator of the entomological collection at UT Austin.
Materials: Bumblebee queen, aerogel, glass enclosure, fresco, cupcakes, painkillers, dry pigments, close up photograph of bumblebee queen, interviews, two single channel videos. Location: Department of Integrated Biology, UT Austin.
2017
Commissioned by The University of Texas at Austin. Presented in Omnibus Filing, an exhibition at the Visual Arts Center, UT Austin. Curated by James Sham and Brian Korgel.
In this video, my disembodied beard interviews Dr Andrea Alu, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UT Austin. The subject is Dr Alu’s research on invisibility and metamaterials - materials engineered to have properties that are not found in nature.
Dr Alu has been exploring metamaterials that can make objects partially invisible, and most recently has focused his research on creating a circulator of acoustic waves that challenges the theoretical symmetry of the physical laws under time reversal transformation.
Interestingly, the Jewel Scarab Beetle, Chrysina gloriosa, photographed reflecting Monet’s Water Lilies at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, can make itself effectively invisible without the help of metamaterials by bending circularly polarized light. The photograph was taken during a discussion I had with Parish Brady, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Integrative Biology at UT Austin, about Brady’s research on invisibility as related to circularly polarized light.
Materials: Single channel video 10 minutes, digital print 14in x 17in.
2004 - ongoing
I organize and lead running tours of places that are unfamiliar to me. At first they seem to follow the short tours described in Eyewitness guides, or local tourist brochures, but they soon change pace and direction. The tours are designed to break through the authoritarian voice of a well-informed tour guide and create a space where the participants are inspired to contribute their special knowledge of the sites.
People who take such a tour quickly realize that they know as much about the place - if not more - than the tour leader. Sometimes these events end up being tours of the relationships formed among participants during the short time of the tour.
Locations: Vilnius (2004), Ohio (2005), Dubai (2010)
2006 - 2007
Commissioned by The Philosophy of Water Project at the Environmental Education, Science and Technology Building, University of North Texas, Denton. Supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Curated by Diana Block.
A collaboration with Dr Irene Klaver, Professor of Environmental Philosophy and Cultural Studies, and Dr James Kennedy, Regent Professor of Biological Sciences and Ecotoxicology, at UNT Denton.
“Don’t fight forces. Use them”
- Buckminster Fuller
The Institute for Higher Listening is a moving platform for the exchange of ideas. It takes a different form every time it changes location. It uses methods of propaganda, advertising and scientific research to magnify the crossing points of biological evolution, human history, and entropy.
I established a temporary office at the Environmental Education, Science and Technology Building (EESAT) during a three-month residency at the University of North Texas in Denton. This allowed me to have close interactions with scientists focusing on all aspects of water - water toxicologists, hydro-geologists, biologists and philosophers of water.
I joined Dr James Kennedy and his team of graduate students in their field studies between the runways at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. The focus of their study was the benthic invertebrates populating the creeks between the runways.
Benthic invertebrates spend all, or part, of their life cycle in or on the bottom sediments of rivers, streams, and lakes. They are very efficient eaters of dead organisms and detritus that accumulate in such ecosystems.
The Denton scientists have discovered that certain species of tiny crustaceans living in the creeks have started making use of stray golf balls from a nearby golf course - turning the rotting balls into ‘pre- fabricated’ environments for habitation.
My office functioned, in the words of curator Regine Basha, “as a receiver, or an antenna, ambiguously slipped within the nexus of various scientific specialties”.*
*Regine Basha, ‘Observation, Absorption, Notation, Action’, in Daniel Bozhkov Recent Works, 2006, p60.
2016 - 2017
Commissioned by Критика и Хуманистика, (Critique and Humanistic Publishing House, Sofia, Bulgaria). Published as an insert in Sociological Problems, 2016 issue 4-5.
This map is part of a drawing and writing project I made in collaboration with Michael Joyce, one of the fathers of hypertext fiction. The project is based on his 2015 novel Foucault, in Winter, in the Linnaeus Garden – a polylingual, operatic fantasy comprised of invented letters based on Foucault’s work, especially Madness and Civilization.
The map we created shows existing rivers, mountains and human settlements. They overlap with images from conversations that Michael and I had at several locations, from New Hamburg and Nyack, New York, to Marcel Broodthaers’ exhibition at MoMA.
I traveled to Sweden, Spain, Germany, Bulgaria and Texas, to visit locations mentioned in the novel, as well as ones not mentioned but relevant to our discussions about Foucault. The sites include Carl Linnaeus Botanical Garden at Uppsala University, Sweden; Albrecht Dürer’s studio in Nuremberg; Hieronymus Bosch’s Fifth Centenary Exhibition at the Prado, Madrid (Foucault writes in Madness and Civilization about Bosch’s painting Ship of Fools); and Harry Ransom Center Manuscript Collection at The University of Texas at Austin.
Michael Joyce and I wrote an essay to accompany the map, as a parallel, Deleuzian fold, which aims to further unravel our connection to each other, (we first met through this project), and traces our relationship to Michel Foucault’s unsettling and provocative endeavor.
Materials & Actions: Hand-drawn map made in collaboration with Michael Joyce. Digital print on paper, 36in x 48in, travel to visit and spend time at the sites mentioned in Michael Joyce’s 2015 novel Foucault, in Winter, in the Linnaeus Garden.
2015
Site-specific project commissioned by No Longer Empty for the exhibition When You Cut into the Present the Future Leaks Out. Curated by Regine Basha
The Old Bronx Borough Courthouse in the Melrose section of the South Bronx is next door to the infamous 42nd Police Precinct where the controversial movie Fort Apache in the Bronx was filmed in 1981. Fort Apache was portrayed, not as a police station, but as a fort in hostile territory, where the police are given free rein because they are supposedly dealing with savages. Paul Newman played the leading role of Police Officer Murphy, while other ethnic and social stereotypes presented life in the South Bronx as the decline and fall of civilization.
In this piece, a black curtain covered a fresco painting - an image of Paul Newman painted from a still from Fort Apache in the Bronx. The fresco could only be seen during a three-minute unveiling ceremony, which was performed upon request by viewers. The docents who did the unveiling, opened and closed the curtain within three minutes, while the mournful trumpet played Fort Apache Tender from a boom box, a composition for solo trumpet, written and recorded by Steven Bernstein.
Materials & Actions: Fresco painting on courthouse wall, square black curtain, wall clock, Fort Apache Tender – a solo trumpet piece composed and performed by Steven Bernstein, recorded and mixed by Greg Talenfeld at OK Records Studio, Nyack, NY.
Location: The Old Bronx Borough Courthouse, East 161st Street, Bronx, New York, NY.
2010
Commissioned by Queens Museum, New York. Curated by Hitomi Iwasaki.
Glass bricks, books, and antiquated office furniture make up Republik of Perpetual Reconstitution and Rebuild, in which visitors walk through a dystopian labyrinth of metal lockers, and piles of Moby Dick coloring books, to arrive at a cast of Michelangelo’s La Pieta in a glass enclosure. A sign encourages them to reach through a hole in the enclosure and touch the life-size sculpture.
I found inspiration for this piece in the history of the Queens Museum and its physical site. The New York City building was originally constructed for the 1939 World’s Fair. Decades later the city hosted the 1964 World’s Fair at the same location. The organizers pulled off an ambitious plan in the Sixties when they managed to persuade The Vatican to allow the original La Pieta to leave St Peter’s and make the trip across the Atlantic for the first time ever. A plaster cast of La Pieta was shipped across the ocean in advance of the original in order to troubleshoot any problems along the way. The trip went smoothly and the plaster cast has been at the Queens Museum ever since.
I worked with participants in the museum’s program called ‘New New Yorkers’ - the museum’s educational outreach initiative for recent immigrants to Queens. Participants made individual installations inside the lockers. The project evolved over the time of the exhibition and became a hub for unlikely encounters between visitors and participants; encounters between different histories, cultures, memories, and futures.
Recomposing Pieta: A Composition for Viola, House Painters, and Well-Tempered Juke Box was performed during the exhibition. Georgia Sagri and I switched roles to reenact the positions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ in La Pieta. Sam Quintal played Cello Suite #6 in D by Johann Sebastian Bach on the viola. Richard Simmons and Emil Bakalli painted the walls of the gallery surrounding the sculpture.
Viewers at the performance were invited to fill in the pages of the Moby Dick coloring books.
Materials & Actions: Plaster cast of Michelangelo’s La Pieta, semitransparent glass brick enclosure, 10,000 Moby Dick coloring books, metal lockers, obsolete museum furniture. Performance with Georgia Sagri, Richard Simmons, Emil Bakalli, and Sam Quintal.
2012
Commissioned by Billboard International. Curated by Joshua Schwartz.
This is a roadside billboard showing an appropriated image of a man saving a bear.
It shows Adam Warwick, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist, saving a 375lb black bear from drowning near Alligator Point, some 40 miles south of Tallahassee.
I blurred the image out of focus, and had it printed and displayed as a banner on the way to Oświecim, the small Polish town bearing the weight of the atrocities at the nearby Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp.
Materials: Banner 8ft x 20ft. Location: Half way between Oświecim’s market square and the Auschwitz concentration camp, Oświecim, Poland.
2010
Commissioned by The Bluecoat and 6th Liverpool Biennial. Curated by Sara-Jayne Parsons.
I think of my site-specific works as situation retrievals, created after periods of research and engagement with a particular location. I am interested in unusual coincidences that reveal hidden strains of meaning.
I worked in a similar archaeological fashion in Liverpool, in 2009 and 2010, examining my memories of the city that I had first visited in 1986, on board a Bulgarian cargo ship. At that time I knew the city as the home of The Beatles, an historic trading port and a place where left-wing politicians stood up to the policies of Margaret Thatcher.
The main structure of my installation was a replica of the dressing room of Liverpool Football Club. When I visited Anfield Stadium, I was struck by how humble and austere the space was considering Liverpool’s status as a top Premier League team.
At the Bluecoat dressing room, the YouTube video of a sneezing panda cub played repeatedly on several monitors, a viral video that was viewed by more than 60 million people worldwide. And a larger more dominant screen showed a music video that I made to present the half-forgotten, but still controversial, history of Militant Tendency – a Trotskyist group within the British Labour Party that played a crucial role in the Liverpool City Council’s struggle against the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher between 1983 and 1987.
I interviewed several of the former Militant Tendency councilors, and then painted a series of frescoes inside the cells of the recently-closed Somerset County Jail in Skowhegan, Maine, recounting chapters of Militant’s story.
Materials: Full scale replica of Liverpool Football Club dressing room, benches, massage table, football players’ shirts, music video projection, YouTube video, soft toys, fresco.
Location: The Bluecoat, Liverpool and Somerset County Jail, Skowhegan, Maine.
2007
Commissioned by Art House Austin, with the support of a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts, and Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. Curated by Regine Basha.
The research and production of this project involved collaborating with professionals from various fields: a Texas rancher who has developed methods for rainwater harvesting, engineers, plumbers, musicians, scientists including water-toxicologists and hydro-geologists, and philosophers.
A number of Austin choirs gathered at Sunken Gardens in Austin to listen to and sing different arrangements of Wade in the Water, an African-American spiritual and coded escape song used by slaves on the Underground Railroad. This song and others like it included messages and warnings hidden in its words. Wade in the Water told escaping slaves to get off the trail and into the water to make sure the slave-catchers’ dogs could not sniff out and follow their scent.
Sunken Gardens is part of a network of springs in Austin, which includes Barton Springs and Old Mill Springs. At Barton Springs there is a natural swimming pool, framed by century-old pecan trees and offering a constant water temperature of 68°F. It is also the home of an endangered species of salamander, Eurycea sosorum. Thanks to the work of local groups such as Save our Springs, which protested plans for commercial development in the Barton Springs area in the 1990s, this so- called ‘soul of Austin’ is now a public park and protected home of the Barton Springs salamander.
Materials & Actions: Gathering of choirs to listen and sing, one at a time, Wade in the Water, single channel video, 12 minutes 50 seconds.
Location: Sunken Gardens, Barton Springs, Austin, Texas.
2013
Published in the Winter 2013 issue of BOMB magazine for BOMB Specific. Commissioned by Monica de la Torre and Sabine Russ.
The text on the cover of Newsweek magazine for June 1 2009 was altered four times to create the poem:
EVERYTHING.
EVERYTHING YOU KNOW. EVERYTHING YOU THINK ABOUT. EVERYTHING IS WRONG.
Materials: Four digital alterations of Newsweek magazine cover from June 1 2009.
2005
Commissioned by Art in General, New York, and Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Center, Krakow, Poland. Curated by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy and Maria Anna Potocka.
The Institute for Higher Listening is a moving platform for the exchange of ideas. It takes a different form every time it changes location. It uses methods of propaganda, advertising and scientific research to magnify the crossing points of biological evolution, human history, and entropy.
The first institute was in Krakow, Poland. It took the form of a bird-watching cabin on the roof of the Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Center. I collaborated with Dr Kazimierz Walasz, one of Poland’s foremost ornithologists, to organize the environment for bird observing.
‘Don’t fight forces, use them’ Buckminster Fuller
At The Institute for Higher Listening, I worked with Professor Pyotr Bozik, of the Department of Industrial Design at Krakow’s Art Academy, to create the Solar Wok, while watching birds living in the adjacent 300-year-old horse chestnut tree.
The Solar Wok is a vacuum-formed transparent lid that turns 1.5 liters of water into a lens, and a traditional Chinese wok into a solar cooking device. I did a series of performances at tourist sites using the New Orator Kiosk in order to introduce the Solar Wok to citizens and tourists.
Materials & Actions: Bird observation cabin, design of Solar Wok, New Orator Kiosk, wok demonstrations, sketchbooks, photographs.
Location: The roof of Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Center, and Rynok Glowny, Krakow’s main square.
2017
Commissioned by The University of Texas at Austin. Presented in Omnibus Filing, an exhibition at the Visual Arts Center, UT Austin. Curated by James Sham and Brian Korgel.
This project presents the Hamilton Beach Sandwich Maker, designed to make a fast-food breakfast sandwich at home in five minutes, as the source of inspiration for other, perhaps better, ideas. Two scientists at UT Austin and one artist proposed alternative uses for the sandwich maker, which were exchanged for an artwork. I created the artworks following their description, and also presented them in the gallery.
Tim Siegler, for instance, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Korgel Group Nanomaterials Lab, proposed transforming the sandwich maker into the Invisible Ink Low Temperature Sensor, which he exchanged for a painting. He asked me to paint the phrase THE FUTURE LOOKS STRONG in the team colors of the Milwaukee Bucks.
And Vikas Reddy, also a postdoctoral research fellow at the Nanomaterials Lab, reworked the sandwich maker into the Hamilton Beach Dosa Cooker. He exchanged his idea for a portrait of himself painted by the artist.
I devised the Self-gliding Doorstop, which used the sandwich maker to keep the lab door open for 10 minutes so that the official sign concerning ‘concealed weapons in the lab’ is obscured under certain conditions. The proposal was exchanged for the promise of a walk at a busy time.
A telescope was stationed across the gallery to allow viewers to see the work better from a distance.
Materials: Four Hamilton Beach Sandwich Makers, three proposals for alternative uses, three paintings exchanged for the proposals, four blank posters, telescope.
Location: Korgel Group Nanomaterials Lab, UT Austin.
2017
Commissioned by the journal Public, sponsored by the Canadian Council for the Arts. Curated by Serkan Özkaya.
For the last 10 years my studio has been at Edward Hopper’s childhood home in Nyack, New York. It is an ideal place for my practice of a post-studio artist with a studio.
This photo diptych is an example of the work made using Edward Hopper’s house as an observation deck and a location for research.
This diptych was for the October 2017 issue of the Canadian magazine Public, a project curated by the artist Serkan Özkaya and dedicated to Marcel Duchamp.
Materials: Digital photo diptych.
2016
Commissioned by the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, SAR of the People’s Republic of China
I collaborated with Lam Tsz Ching, Kaiaroonsuth Chonticha and Wong Ho Ching to paint replicas of Edward Hopper paintings. Each of us started a painting then switched places after three hours to work on a different painting. This involved changing painting stations, brushes, palettes, and in the process learning quite a lot from each other.
Once the paintings were finished, we carried them in a formal procession through the corridors of the old Kaitak building, (which used to be the British Royal Air Force Officers’ Mess), accompanied by two bagpipers from the Hong Kong St Andrew’s Bagpipe Band, and deposited them in the hole we had dug earlier in the grounds.
This project is a deposit of ideas, of ways of interaction, and of physical objects. Edward Hopper never had anything to do with Hong Kong, but now he does - in the same way that a lot of Hong Kong history has been imposed from outside, but is also driven by local people responding to aggressive strangers from far away.
For now the moisture and temperatures of the tropics, plant roots and worms are continuing the work started by the painters. In a few years the Hong Kong Heritage Museum might get interested to sponsor an archaeological dig, an excavation and restoration of the paintings.
The alternative is for this ground deposit to survive as a story, or become a rumor that slowly takes the form of a legend, or dissipates and completely disappears from memory and history.
Materials & Actions: Four replicas of Edward Hopper paintings, painted collaboratively, the digging of a 6ft x 4ft x 6ft hole, ceremonial procession with bagpipers, ground deposit.
Location: Kaitak, the former British Royal Air Force Officers’ Mess, Hong Kong, PRC, which is now Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Fine Art’s studio building.
2007
Commissioned by UNT Art Gallery, University of North Texas, Denton. Supported by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Curated by Diana Block and Regine Basha.
Of all the wonders in the world, water is unquestionably the most essential, arguably the most spectacular and often the most enigmatic. Where water flows life is possible.
The research and production of this project involved collaborating with professionals from different fields: scientists, including water-toxicologists and hydro-geologists, a Texas rancher who has developed methods for rainwater harvesting, engineers and plumbers.
I studied methods for collecting rainwater used by early settlers in Texas with Richard Heinichen at Tank Town, his rain-harvesting facility at Dripping Springs, outside Austin, Texas. I invited Richard to come to Denton (300 miles north) to install one of his signature rainwater collection systems.
A decommissioned dump truck carried a load of topsoil to the site, dropped it on the ground and remained suspended in the act. A garden of native Texas plants was planted in the mound of soil. I worked with rainwater collectors and gardeners Rodney Love, Eric Goodlet, Jason Gaspar and Matt Lippe to sculpt a rainwater pond using highway rubble.
Materials: Rainwater collection system, dump truck, pond, plants native to Texas, frescoes, garden labels, highway rubble waste.
Location: University grounds in front of UNT Art Gallery, University of North Texas, Denton.
Advanced Nanotechnology for Beginners
2016 - 2017
Commissioned by The University of Texas at Austin. Presented in Omnibus Filing, an exhibition at the Visual Arts Center, UT Austin. Curated by James Sham and Brian Korgel.
The Institute for Higher Listening is a moving platform for the exchange of ideas. It takes a different form every time it changes location. It uses methods of propaganda, advertising and scientific research to magnify the crossing points of biological evolution, human history, and entropy.
For Institute: Location Five, I built a loft and lived in the ‘unused’ top six feet of space of Dr Brian Korgel’s office on the top floor of the Norman Hackerman Building, which also houses the Korgel Group Nanomaterials Lab.
For the duration of the project, Dr Korgel and I conducted a number of 30-minute sessions at which he explained to me different advanced nanotechnology concepts, such as entropy or quantum particles.
I listened carefully, tried to understand to the best of my abilities, then rested, and later responded at the level of my understanding by interacting with different objects and spaces inside the building.
Special thanks to Julia Cassel, a performance art student who helped me create the movements and interactions captured in the video.
Materials & Actions: Loft construction with bed and worktable, nanotechnology lessons, drawings, interactions with objects in the building, single channel video 12 minutes
Location: Norman Hackerman Building, The University of Texas at Austin
2001-2007
Did Bulgarians discover the elixir of life, or did the elixir find them?
In the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian Nobel Prizewinner Elie Metchniko observed unusually high numbers of centenarians among Bulgarian people. In his book The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies (1907), he discusses the potential life-lengthening properties of lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus bulgaricus, which is one of the strains of lacto-bacteria that transform fresh milk into yogurt). Metchniko attributed the longevity of Bulgarian peasants to their yogurt consumption. He proceeded to follow their example himself and encouraged others to eat yogurt daily - for which he was much ridiculed.
Fermented milk products still constitute a large part of the traditional Bulgarian diet. It is possible that the longevity of yogurt-eating Bulgarians is due to unique properties of Lactobacillus bulgaricus. But could those properties have beneficially affected a population’s genes, and made longevity inheritable? Now that genes can be modified, couldn’t yogurt made by bacteria reinforced with Bulgarian human DNA be used to prolong life? To look for such an elixir soon after sequencing the Human Genome seems not only timely, but possibly within reach.
I am Bulgarian and come from a family with recorded longevity. The most recent example is my grandfather Dimcho Manev who died at the age of 97, and yogurt was his staple food.
This genetic-transfer project involves observing methods of genetic manipulation in the lab and then making yogurt with Lactobacillus bulgaricus into which the artist’s DNA has been introduced. The theoretical possibility of a convergent evolution between Bulgarians and Lactobacillus bulgaricus, protecting people from disease, is not totally far-fetched. In parts of the world where malaria is prevalent, for example, people carrying the genetic sickle cell trait are partially protected from the malarial parasite. A small genetic change in hemoglobin both causes sickle cell anemia and protects against malaria.
Materials & Actions: Lactobacillus bulgaricus, DNA of the artist, yogurt in plastic containers. A genetic transfer project in collaboration with Dr Isabelle Riviere, PhD, and Dr Michel Sadelain MD, PhD.
Location: Department of Human Genetics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY.
2008
Commissioned by Skulpturen Park Berlin_Zentrum. Curated by Matthias Einhoff, Philip Horst, Markus Lohmann, Harry Sachs and Daniel Sieple.
On August 26, 1978, Sigmund Jähn became the first German to fly into space. He flew on board Soyuz 31 to the Soviet space station Salyut 6, as a participant in the Interkosmos Space Program. Remarkable for the times, when both East and West Germany distinguished their heroes as clearly belonging to their respective states, Sigmund Jähn, of East Germany, was declared, somewhat presciently, as the ‘first German cosmonaut’.
To mark the 30th anniversary of the space flight, I renamed a section of Berlin’s Skulpturenpark, Sigmund Jähn Park, and set up the Sigmund Jähn Döner Kebab Stand for seven days, 20 hours, and 49 minutes - the duration of Sigmund Jähn’s flight. During business hours (noon-6pm daily), delicious Turkish döners were cut and served from the spinning spit.
Skulpturenpark, in Berlin Zentrum, is a large vacant lot left by the demolition of the Berlin Wall, which used to run through it. The wall’s route through the city is traced by two lines of cobble stones.
The project involved installing the döner wagon, a life-size sculpture of Sigmund Jähn, and a hand-painted billboard, which presented the Interkosmos Space Program and its internationalist and futuristic aspirations. A live feed surveillance camera, focused on the food stand from an adjacent building’s top floor, eerily transmitted the scene back to a black and white monitor at the van. A 23-minute radio jingle composed by Yotam Haber, in collaboration with me, played from a radio in the döner wagon.
The project intertwined conversations from the past with the present. On one hand, it addressed the question of articulating a national identity as it relates to the category of the ‘alien’. On the other, it focused on the role space programs play in the ‘nostalgia for the future’ experienced today. If the focus of the surveillance camera was any indication, it also celebrated the döner (invented in Berlin’s Kreuzberg), as well as the potential multicultural interface of post-division Germany – or is it post-German division?
Materials & Actions: Life-size sculpture of Sigmund Jähn, operating döner kebab stand, billboard, TV monitor, live broadcast.
Location: Berlin, Germany.
2000
Dressed as Darth Vader, I scooped up sea water with a Brita filter pitcher, let it pass through the filter, poured the purified water into a clean bottle, then poured it back into the sea; repeated many times.
A 30-second video of the action was broadcast on the local TV station in Burgas, Bulgaria, among the usual TV commercials.
Materials & Action: Performance in the Black Sea, at Burgas, Bulgaria, TV broadcast, C-Print mounted on aluminum, 50in x 35in, edition of five.
2007
Commissioned by 6 Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. Curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro and Ticio Escobar.
At the edges of the Iguacu Falls tourist zone, which is shared by Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, there is a small village of 54 families (354 inhabitants) called Yryapu. The people belong to the nation of Mb’ya Guarani. Their main livelihood is making traditional craft souvenirs - wooden sculptures and baskets - which they sell to tourists at the Iguacu Falls, or to souvenir shops in the nearest Argentinian town, Puerto Yguazu.
I started the Maramo Trade Post project as a site for communication and exchange, inspired by living in the Tres Fronteras area with its cross-border attitudes to commercial, linguistic and cultural developments. I took intensive Guarani lessons in Paraguay, lived and worked in Brazil, and settled in Argentina to open Maramo Trade Post at the Guarani village of Yryapu. I traded drawings for basket-weaving lessons and learned how to carve animalitos - the little wooden figures the Guarani used to carry as hunting amulets and now sell as souvenirs to tourists.
Today Guarani people sustain themselves not by hunting, but by making and selling their baskets and animalitos. Traditional crafts are functioning as an art of extreme necessity. They allow the Guarani not only to physically survive, but to still work with and own the symbols of their own culture.
Materials & Actions: Apprenticeship in carving wood figurines and weaving baskets in Guarani village of Yryapu, Guarani language lessons, traditional Guarani house built inside an industrial harbor warehouse in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Location: Tres Fronteras region of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.
2005
Commissioned by the 9th International Istanbul Biennial, 2005. Curated by Charles Esche and Vasif Kortun.
A version presented at 9th Baltic Triennale of Contemporary Art, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2005. Curated by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Raimundas Malašauskas, and Alexis Vaillant.
Eau d’Ernest is a perfume that evokes the spirit of the writer Ernest Hemingway, who through his books and public persona came to embody the myth of American individuality and virile courage. He is an emblematic person from a time when America smelled good. The Eau d’Ernest fragrance is an exuberant combination of bold masculinity, capturing the exhilaration of bull fights and safari, with some vulnerable and tragic notes,
In 2003 I stayed at the Buyuk Londra Hotel in Istanbul, the very hotel Hemingway had stayed at in 1922 when he was covering the Greco-Turkish War for the Toronto Daily Star. Hemingway’s first dispatch stated: ‘Constantinople is noisy, hot, hilly, dirty and beautiful ... packed with uniforms and rumors.’ It’s easy to feel Hemingway’s presence still hovering around the hotel bar.
I developed the fragrance Eau d’Ernest with Ulrich Lang of Ulrich Lang Fragrances, New York, and the perfumer Virginia Bonofiglio. Dark, brooding notes of burnt woods and sensual musks evoke an earthy masculinity, while top notes of crisp citrus and aromatic herbals add youthful athleticism. We concocted several possible formulae, which I then took to the 25th Annual Hemingway Look-Alike Contest in Key West, Florida. I asked many of the ‘Hemingways’ gathered there to choose the fragrance they felt most captured their hero.
The favored fragrance oil was made in New York and transported to Istanbul where Pinkar Cosmetics mixed it with alcohol to manufacture 100ml bottles of eau de toilette. I collaborated with master label-maker Ismail Ince on the design of the label for Eau d’Ernest, based on a passport photo of the young Hemingway.
And in partnership with the Turkish communication design company, Dream Design Factory, a promotional campaign with television adverts and a poster was created. A short form of the advert was screened on CNN Türk, during the Istanbul Biennial in June 2005.
Knock-off copies of Eau d’Ernest soon started turning up for sale on the streets of Istanbul. The photo of a young Hemingway look-alike was used for the label, collapsing the realities of the copycat black market economy and a culture obsessed with celebrity and doppelgangers.
I smuggled some of the ‘pirated’ bottles into Vilnius, Lithuania, and launched an advertising campaign with large street posters to ‘boycott’ the new fragrance.
Materials & Actions: One thousand 100ml bottles of eau de toilette for men, two hundred 100ml bottles of knockoff copies of the fragrance, participation in the 2005 Hemingway Look-Alike Competition in Key West, Florida, TV advert for CNBC and CNN Türk.
Location: Key West, Florida, and Istanbul, Turkey.
2002 - 2003
Learn How to Fly Over a Very Large Larry began as a crop sign I made with the help of Kathryn Chan in a hay field, in East Madison, Maine. Using string and a piece of plywood to compress the field’s plants, I created an impression of the talk-show host Larry King that measured 300 by 250 feet. I then took flying lessons over the site, since that was the only way to view the work in its entirety.
A press release describing the crop sign was issued to the media to coincide with the release of the movie Signs in which Mel Gibson plays a farmer whose corn field is struck with mysterious crop circles. Every major television network, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC covered the story of the Maine crop sign portrait.
CNN’s Larry King, who hosted the first worldwide phone-in talk show - Larry King Live - is known around the world. In an interview with actor Mathew Perry on August 22, 2002, Larry King called the crop sign: ‘The largest tribute I have ever received.’ He also removed his trademark suspenders during the interview in order to make a gift of them to Perry. In the crop sign, his suspenders are 40 feet wide.
In the installation at Andrew Kreps Gallery, a large 15ft-long sofa serves as an observation deck for the media parts of the project. But something is up with this living room. Depending on which part of the couch you sit on, it renders your body too big, too small, or just right, since it was built in perspective, as if moving towards a vanishing point. The carpet and TV stand are similarly in perspective.
With the help of Steve Liakos, the owner of the field, and Grace Jaqua, a local 911 emergency phone operator and self-taught naturalist, I made a botanical survey of the site, and was able to identify seven different plant species living inside the Larry King sign: Timothy Grass, Red Clover, Pearly Everlasting, Queen Ann’s Lace, Bull Thistle, Milkweed and Vetch.
Materials & Actions: Crop sign in the likeness of the CNN talk-show host Larry King, flight lessons over the site, media coverage, botanical survey.
Installation at Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, New York: Sofa built in perspective, coffee table, pink carpet, TV stand with five monitors, five DVDs show the making of the crop sign and assorted media coverage, eight botanical specimens in 36 x 24in frames. Paintings: Field, 124 x 246in, house paint on canvas, Take Suspenders Off, 34 x 48in, egg tempera and oil on linen, Grace, 26 x 32in, egg tempera and oil on linen.
2003
Commissioned by the 8th Istanbul Biennial for Without You I am Nothing, a satellite project curated by Regine Basha.
I visited Istanbul with my mother Zlatka Bozhkova in May 2003. As we wandered through the city, she frequently recognized Turkish words spoken by people on the street. I made a small phrasebook of all the Turkish words and expressions she knew. My mother’s knowledge of Turkish is a sign of the linguistic deposits in the Balkans, left over from the 500 years of Turkish occupation, during which Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire.
Later that year, I was invited to participate in Without You I am Nothing, a satellite project to the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, curated by Regine Basha.
I worked as an apprentice to the bakers Sami and Aydin Eryilmaz, at Ahmet Ogullari bakery in Beyoglu. I learned how to make simits, sesame pretzels, that are the most popular snack on the streets of Istanbul. They are sold, hot out of the oven, on practically every street corner from red-and-gold carts.
At the bakery, I collaborated with the bakers to make nine new shapes of simit. The shapes were pictograms of the Turkish words my mother had recognized: ‘cloth,’ ‘eye’, ‘gift, ‘two dogs’, ‘tail’, ‘curtain’, ‘tree’, ‘fountain’ and ‘chain’.
I sold the simits on the streets of Istanbul from a rented kiosk, in paper bags designed to tell the story of the project, written in three languages - Turkish, Bulgarian and English.
The new shapes of simit sold well on the streets of Istanbul, particularly ‘cloth’, ‘tail’ and ‘gift’.
Materials & Actions: Apprenticeship at the Ahmet Ogullari simit bakery in Istanbul, Turkey. Nine new shapes of baked simits, printed paper bags, daily production and street sale of simits on Istiklal Cadessi, in the Beyoglu section of Istanbul. Twelve photographs, single channel video, 5 min 20 sec.
2016
Commissioned by the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.
Like many new immigrant artists, I first found work at a commercial painting studio soon after arriving in the US in the early 1990s. At Evergreen Painting Studios in New York City, I joined a team of academically-trained painters from Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, China and Ethiopia, who could turn their hand to just about anything - from painting roses over the walls of a kitsch boutique to recreating the streets and canals of Venice.
In fact I first got to ‘know’ Venice by painting the massive murals of the city that now adorn the walls and ceilings of The Venetian Las Vegas. Although the palette the Evergreen artists used to paint the elaborate architecture and canal scenes was double-checked by Italian restoration consultants, the real Venice struck me, at first, as dingy, small scale, unimpressive and crumbling by comparison when I finally had the chance to visit Italy, years later. I also realized that the mural scenes at The Venetian are an invented mash-up of the real city - the ceiling at the Doges Palace has been stretched and St Mark’s Square has been turned into a canal.
This project was the first time I had the chance to see the murals in situ at The Venetian. I rented a luxury suite at the hotel, and in collaboration with a group of graduate students from the University of Nevada, made a large paper cast of the entire room.
We covered every surface with plastic sheeting, then with heavy duty paper. We projected Images from the murals that I had worked on 20 years earlier onto the paper and painted them with grey latex paint. On top we painted our shadows in brick red, reminiscent of the traditional sanguine chalk used by Renaissance painters.
This ‘cave painting’ on the 14th floor of The Venetian became a contemporary mash-up of Baroque kitsch and hotel bedroom interior. The paper cast was removed intact and shown at The Cube gallery in downtown Las Vegas.
Materials & Actions: Plastic sheeting, 70 yards of paper, latex paint, wooden lattice, projection of paintings, tracing silhouettes and shadows.
Location: The Venetian Las Vegas, resort hotel casino, The Cube gallery in downtown Las Vegas.
2000 - 2004
I didn’t grow up with Wal-Mart. The megastores were first opened in Europe in 1997 after I had moved to the US. So when I encountered the store, and learned about their People Greeters, I was intrigued.
In the summer of 2000, I applied for a job, took a training course and was hired as a People Greeter at the Wal-Mart store in Skowhegan, Maine. In between shifts I painted a fresco on the walls of the store’s Layaway Department, once regional headquarters gave the manager permission to accept my offer. Familiar scenes of downtown Skowhegan - churches, local bars, people celebrating, and simply living their daily lives - were interspersed with images of Wal-Mart merchandise and members of my family performing domestic chores and playing.
A year later, the fresco was half obscured by stacks of Wal-Mart merchandise: Lay-Z-Boy armchairs, Duracell battery packs and artificial trees. I continued working as a Greeter, retouching scratched areas of the fresco whenever there was time.
In 2003, I consulted the Italian restorer Renato Giangualano, who was visiting Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, about the condition of the fresco. Giangualano had just completed the restoration of Giandomenico Tiepolo’s frescoes in the Basilica dei Santi Faustino e Giovita in Brescia.
In our restoration report, Giangualano concluded that the scratches and scoring on the fresco surface were important abrasions. The scratches were the exact areas where the reality of Wal-Mart was slicing back into the project, and they needed to be preserved. The substantial ‘damage’ showed how the store was efficiently producing visible traces of its own accelerated archaeology.
In 2004, Wal-Mart headquarters ordered a change in the livery colors of their stores worldwide, from gray with dark blue to beige and tan. The fresco at the Layaway Department of the Wal-Mart store in Skowhegan had to be removed since it did not fit into the new color scheme.
Materials & Actions: 12 fresco panels, total dimensions 15x7 feet, video, work as a Wal-Mart People Greeter.
Location: Wal-Mart, Skowhegan, Maine.