"In his video Monu-mental from 2011, artist and visual anthropologist Krassimir Terziev observes a public space that is popular among Sofia’s youth, namely, the Monument to the Soviet Army. Throughout his artistic research, Terziev investigates the role of urban space in cultural and socio-economic practices, as well as the presence and absence of memory in the spatial praxis of the city’s inhabitants, i.e. how people use and appropriate public space. Monu-mental shows us how the dilapidated monument has become a fixture in the urban structure of the city, where its residents have colonised the site in habitual ways and, by doing so, turn them into personalised memories. Terziev combines the rather opaque visual scenes with added audio samples taken from drama films, implanting an ambience of tension into his work. Despite the undeniable physical presence of the monument, its ideological aura has been emasculated, its inscriptions of power rescinded, and thus, rendered absent. This juxtaposition of presence and absence, of dramatic sonic codes and mundane imagery, creates an atmosphere of suspense; this is a site where anything can happen."
excerpt from Rypson, Sebastian & Bromander, Marie. Monumental Controversy, in: Modern Matter, 2012
Credits:
Project by Krassimir Terziev
camera: Kalin Serapionov
video and audio editing: Krassimir Terziev
audio-mastering: Alexander Yanev
thanks to Kalin Serapionov
produced for the exhibition Spare Time. Utopias on the verge of the Commonness at National Gallery for Foreign Art, Sofia, curator: Boris Danailov