It seems as if the 90s were yesterday, yet now they are our past. The exhibition The 90s. The Beginning of the Myth sees them today through the eyes of the museum, the Vaska Emanouilova Gallery, not forgetting that the ‘heroes’ of that time left the then official institutions to discover horizons in the West, to look for new faces and models, to re-shape society, to fight for freedom, to fulfil the mission of educators in media, art, technology, design, fashion, music, lifestyle, and to loudly dream of change. The country opened up to the world amidst severe social re-organizations, political changes, privatization, economic crises and inflation, poverty, and daily aggression.

As it addresses that time of contrast, of creation and dissolution, The 90s.The Beginning of the Myth looks for its “romantic” heroes in the field of popular culture; those cosmopolitan events and phenomena which have expanded the concepts and habits outside the institutions. Places like the now legendary Kravai in Sofia, which in the late 1980s was the meeting venue for punks, metalheads and rebels, and the music and the “forbidden” things in terms of conduct, information and dress code united them by being their symbols of freedom and independence. Same as Coca Cola and Levi’s jeans before 1989, some of the products of popular culture during the 90s were in fact instruments of globalization. Today they stand at the dawn of lifestyle, embodying part of the strive for integration and representing a way to differentiate from the faded wanting world of (post)socialist products; but also marking the beginning of creative culture together with the foundations of modern urban living.

The exhibition represents a specific “staging” of that period, where you can remember and have a new look at the magazine of the “new generation” Egoist – the most widespread culture publication in the 90s, as well as the Spartacus mix-club, the Kalnoto punk bar, the magazines Ah, Maria, Vitamin B, and the rare publication KAMIKAZE GAZETTE. They are presented In the gallery through video-interviews with some of their creators and participants; photographs, illustrations, texts and music; visual archives, an audio recording of the reading of Egoist by the writer Stefan Ivanov, through the voice of the actress Elena Dimitrova, etc.

The 90s. The Beginning of the Myth is an exhibition that stages the archives of that time without institutionalizing them or taming them locked inside museum display cases. It is a look at the museum itself through the eyes of the 90s. As such, it includes the special visual interpretation of Vaska Emanouilova’s sculptures by the photographer Alexander Nishkov.

PROGRAMME

4 June, 5 pm to 7 pm: Discussion about the Vitamin B Magazine

11 June, 5 pm to 7 pm: Discussion about the Ah, Maria Magazine

15 June – 16 June, 10 pm to 7 am: DADA Night at Vaska Emanouilova Gallery

(Presentation of the Dadaist issue of the Literary Newspaper)

18 June, 5 pm to 7 pm: Discussion about the KAMIKADZE GAZETTE

25 June, 5 pm to 7 pm: Discussion about the Egoist Magazine

The first part of the project The 90s. The Beginning of the Myth. in 2015 was accomplished in cooperation with Dessislava Dimova and the Art – Affairs and Documents Foundation, and with the support of the Cultural Innovations Fund, Sofia Development Association. All video materials in the project have been created by Bureau Artrecord. We are opening with ABSOLUT VODKA!