| |
 |
  |
|
|
| the house |
 |
| old houses are stubborn. usually, they like to keep to themselves what’s happening behind closed doors and heavy brick walls day after day, they prefer to keep silent, are good listeners and thus our most intimate friends. when a house tells its story, when walls become storytellers and inhabitants become supernumeraries, it’s always worthwhile to be quiet and listen. because stories of this kind are rare. |
|
it’s definitely not striking and seen from the street it’s hardly spectacular, just another normal residential building. at first glance, it’s one of many houses in the tzar-ivan-assen street in the artists’ district of sofia. three storeys, a small marketing company, owner-occupied flats, a greengrocer on the ground floor. a restoration would definitely do it good because the façade already visibly starts to crumble. it loses its colour and leaves the building even more unspectacular, destined to drown in the scenery of the street. the looks of passers-by only rest on its façade for a short time, they quickly turn away again. at first glance, the house doesn’t expose anything. built sometime during the 1930s, the house has already lived through a lot of things and that’s the only thing you can tell. everything else is mere speculation, bounces off its poker face, stays outside.
neli mitewa and her colleagues of the brain store project had been searching for 2 years, looking at more than 200 houses in and around sofia until they finally found it: their new home. they chose the second storey of 22, tzar-ivan-assen street. not because it is a particularly beautiful, old, original or practical house. “i just felt that it was the right one because i immediately felt at home”, says neli mitewa. the young artists group from sofia was looking for a common workplace, a room for their interdisciplinary artists’ association, and found it right there. the brain store project wants to establish an arts centre that can be used by various artists for common work projects, meetings and events. besides that, the centre can also be used for performances and exhibitions. so to speak, a nodal point for the network that they’re laboriously spanning across their country. a central meeting place for people who want to have a good time and want to change something. the living room turns into an adventure park and at the same time attracts the interested public. as one can imagine, it was not easy to find a house that lived up to all expectations but in the end, the long search was worthwhile.
for the new tenants in the second storey of 22, tzar-ivan-assen street, their home is much more than just a systematic assemblage of bricks, mortar and concrete. it’s the shell that at the same time houses them, protects them and gives them room. from the very beginning, the house itself has played a big role in their entire project. the great deal of effort that they have put into the search and the renovation has formed a great bond between the artists and their house. the house started to tell them its story, it took them into its confidence – and producer willy prager, fashion designer neli mitewa, performers mila odajieva and stefan shtereff and dramaturge greta gantscheva of brain store project listened well. after all, there’s a lot more to be discovered behind the façade of the old house than living rooms in need of restoration. it took them back to the sofia of the 1930s, took them down to the cellar to a woman that desperately scratched her parquet floor with hair nails and to a family that had to leave the house because of their mentally handicapped child. the house opened its doors to them and told them its secrets. and that’s how the artists’ group eventually came up with the idea of an artistic performance based on the story of the house. “tzar-ivan-assen-street 22” is also the first joint project of the brain store project in their new home. each of the five artists makes a contribution from his or her own field of art and thus presents one aspect of the house. the result, the performance, will keep this fragmentary structure, everyone being his own producer, but at the same time there is an integral whole that joins everything together: the house. you could also call it a kind of homage because it’s not just about providing documentary evidence of the biographical key figures. naturally, the house plays the main role in the performance – the premiere in autumn will also take place there – but besides that it should be presented to the public as what it is now: a cultural centre of attraction, a meeting place, a home for artists of all fields. |
|
| isabel baier |
|
|
|
