IN ADATA / НА АДАТА

The island Adata is used as a symbol, a metaphor for those parts of the city that are not perceived consciously and are not part of our daily lives – places that are ignored by the collective memory. We know they exist, but we don't have them on our minds. Constantly present and absent, they become abandoned spaces, living their own lives. Spaces that begin to tell their stories, with or without our involvement.

 

The collective unconscious exerts overwhelming power on the minds of individuals – the island as an individual. The way we, as citizen’s perceive it, or whether we perceive it, is shaped by the expression of the collective unconscious of a city and its urbanites. 

Abandonment of places can be seen as those archetypes of a city, that move into the collective unconsciousness. Legends tell the stories of archetypes of humankind, the island tells the story of its unexpressed archetype through its abandonment by humans. In the past it used to be a part of the city’s conscious, mature persona, after which it vanished like a ghost into the collective unconscious of the city.

By going back into the island’s history of the beginning of the 20th Century, we let the persona of the past reappear, like a dream where it had a conscious, mature self.

A performance evolving around the history of the island will be staged “in abandonment” on Adata, in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, which used to serve as cultural meeting point in the beginning of the 20th century. It will be live screened on city squares, cafes, art venues and abandoned places across the town and cities of our partners in Europe. Mirroring the island's character of dereliction, the performance investigates in “abandonment” as cultural, social and scenic phenomena, the island's myths from the past and the present, including a one-month anthropological and historical research on the topic with our partner organisation AKEA "Mediator", investigating in the citizen’s perception of the island of nowadays. The screenings of "In Adata" will be accompanied by open discussions, posing the political and legal situation of vacant housing in each city of display.

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The production-process was accompanied by workshops, internships and public events, contributing to capacity development in Plovdiv’s contemporary dance and performance art community.