Albena Baeva is an artist who explores the possibilities to build interactive installations using technology and various tools developed on the basis of open-source software. The artist has displayed her works at numerous festivals, solo and group exhibitions in different cities around the country, as well as in Hungary, Austria, Finland, Italy, Cyprus, and elsewhere.

In her exhibition Archaeologies she presents two installations that are connected with different images in cinema and video archives: In the first one, she uses a collection of semi-burnt film reels found in the abandoned cinema in the village of Devetaki; the other is based on the filmed performance “Brocken Fall (Organic)” 1971 created by the mysterious artist Bas Jan Ader, known as a representative of the so called romantic conceptualism. As part of the installations are included several instruments which help create a connection between the spectators and the images.  The frames of the films can be rearranged in varying order since they are linked to the keys of a children’s piano, and by their own movements the spectators can connect to the action in the performance of Bas Jan Ader. The artist explores the issue of memory by associating it with the personal experience. Her works turn the abstract and remote archive of art and the cinema industry into a close and immediate memory.

The installations come as a continuation of the activities of Albena Baeva who worked in 2013 on the ARTeFACT dance performance, nominated for the IKAR award, as well as on Mariy Rosen’s production The Eyes of the Others (2013) performed at the National Theatre. In 2011 the artist won the Essl Prize, and this year she was among the nominees for the BAZA Award. Albena is co-founder of Runabout project, which is a platform for a series of interactive performances. Together with Petya Boyukova and musicians they create new instruments from different hardware and software components at hand, which they use to explore the interaction between sounds and images in the real environment of the performance.

The Meeting Point Platform for young artists and contemporary art and the Sculpture Program of Vaska Emanouilova Gallery are supported by Societe Generale Expressbank WE SUCCEED TOGETHER.