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Rivers of Sofia

Art installations

The Collective Foundation announces a competition for visual art installations related to the conservation of Sofia’s rivers, their past, and their possible future as spaces for the intersection of nature and culture.

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The ecological crisis and the need for new paradigms in caring for and interacting with nature is the most significant topic in our time. In recent years, the Collective has demonstrated a systematic approach to the implementation of its series of festivals The Rivers of Sofia, in which the focus is on sustainability through social and artistic practices. The current exhibition is a continuation of this mission.
 
The exhibition is composed of specific interventions, united by the attention to the river, its role in the dynamics of urban everyday life, the visible and hidden stories that flow along its banks. Their proposals are specially created for the festival and for the Perlovska River.
 
The specific locations of the five interventions serve as a metaphor for small islands of a new way of thinking and looking at the park and the river. These creative spaces, scattered in several key places for the festival, explore perceptions and knowledge, trigger empathy and awareness of the river and its environment.
The exhibition examines the significant role and inalienable belonging of the Perlovska River in the urban fabric. It is an impulse for change and for the creation of places that enrich communities with care and attention to nature.
 
Adriana Andreeva and Boyana Gyaurova, Studio Komplekt, curators of the exhibition
 
The exhibition is the result of a competition with over 100 participants and original ideas for spatial installations for the Rivers of Sofia 2025 festival. The competition and the exhibition are part of the project “Rivers of Sofia 2025 – Time Machine”, funded by the “Festivals” 2024 program of the National Culture Fund.

Participants and Their Works

RE:ka – The River that Remembers
Teodora Rumenova
The Rivers Speak
Anna Bacheva & Ivo Ivanov
HLAD
Daniela Solueva
Museum from the Future
Ekaterina Leondieva & Julien Clabecq
SIPHONOPHORA
STUDIO TASH

RE:kа – The River that Remembers

Teodora Rumenova

RE:ka is a temporary spatial installation born out of the problems of urban rivers – pollution and construction waste. The intervention used precisely these abandoned materials to create an architectural structure: a series of columns that seemed to emerge from the memory of water. The installation invites people to pass through it, feel the place and realize that the river does not forget – everything that falls into it becomes part of its DNA. The project turns the mark we leave into a starting point for change and a new beginning.
 
What new role or voice do you give to the park?
The installation turns part of the river into an active and accessible space for meeting between people and water. It gives a new voice to the river, that of memory and the possibility of transformation, even from the waste we leave behind.
What would happen if your project stayed here permanently?
He would continue to tell his story. How something born of waste and destruction becomes a structure that brings new life and value. Its constant presence is a reminder that our actions leave a visible and invisible mark on the waters. The installation could be used as a small public space in the river: a platform for play, for meetings, for conversations, which brings people together and makes them think about urban rivers as part of our daily lives.
 
What is the invisible that you want to be noticed through your work?
The invisible is what we do not want to see – construction waste, hidden traces of human actions, plastic, concrete, materials that time and water carry but do not disappear. Rivers store our stories, mistakes and hopes. With this installation, I want to make the invisible visible, take the waste out of the shadows and show that it can become a new beginning. RE:ka is a metaphor for our responsibility that change is possible if we see and remember the trace we leave, because the river always remembers.

The Rivers Speak

Anna Bacheva & Ivo Ivanov

Rivers speak through people. An audio-visual installation looking for the inner river in man through portraits, monologues, stories, prose and mysticism.
 
What new role or voice do you give to the park?
We personalize the river. People identify with a river and talk about it as about themselves, giving it publicity and imaginary, finding in themselves unspoken feelings about it. The goal is for people to spend more time by running water.
 
What would happen if your project stayed here permanently? Most likely, it would have been destroyed by vandals or knocked down by a storm. But many more people would see it and stand more along the riverbank, which generally does not happen often.
What is the invisible that you want to be noticed through your work?
Rivers are the geological pulse of the planet. People are like rivers. Indescribable and repressed sensations of the person who finds himself unexpectedly close to the flowing water, as well as to the flow of time.
 

THE RIVERS SPEAK
Poetry in Image and Sound

REALIZATION
Anna Bacheva, Ivo Ivanov

VIDEO AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Anna Bacheva

SOUND
Ivo Ivanov

WITH THE PARTICIPATION
Nadia Ruseva, Trendafila Trendafilova, Yoana Robova, Victoria Nikolova, Petar Parmakov, Martin Petrov, Nino Gomez, Georgi Hristov, Georgi Bachev

PRODUCTION
The Collective Foundation

Instagram Soundcloud

HLAD

Daniela Solueva

HLAD is a passive cooler made of 3D printed ceramic modules. On the outer layer are marked the rivers that cross the center of Sofia. The individual levels of the water tower rotate, allowing the visitors to search, find and recognize the river routes of Sofia. The interior of the sculpture has clay water chambers, which provide the passive cooling effect. The installation combines traditional material with modern technologies and draws attention to the cooling role of water in the urban environment – especially important in the context of the climate crisis.
 
What new role or voice do you give to the park?
The project is reminiscent of what the park is doing. “I will help you (cool down) if you allow me to exist.”

 

What would happen if your project stayed here permanently?
In case HLAD remains in the park, it will retain its function as a cooling element in the urban environment, due to the overall humidity of the area around the valley. But it is also positively possible to become a home and shelter for mossy plants and numerous microorganisms.
 
What is the invisible that you want to be noticed through your work?
The search for symbiosis between tradition and innovation in the construction of sustainable urban environment, made of natural materials and for the benefit of people.
Instagram Soundcloud Globe

Museum from the Future

Ekaterina Leondieva & Julien Clabecq

A museum of the future is a series of installations that reveal the ways we think about natural resources, pollution and water. It was created by an imaginary future civilization that investigated the causes of ecological collapse. Transported to the present, the museum unfolds on the territory of the festival and puts an emphasis on the traces of human intervention in nature. Through each installation and its history, a fragment of the future is revealed, which raises questions about our present.
 
What new role or voice do you give to the park?
Our approach is to let human intervention do the talking. The park is nature domesticated by man. He speaks through the layers of intentional or unconscious actions that are reflected in the landscape.
 
What would happen if your project stayed here permanently?
Probably, over time, it will be “tamed” by nature.
What is the invisible that you want to be noticed through your work?
We want to reveal the invisible, both in natural processes and in those created by man: for example, the often hidden networks of pipes that transport various resources necessary for the functioning of our modern world. When we start looking at everyday things as artifacts, it creates psychological distance and leads us to ask unusual but meaningful questions. We would describe this research approach as “archaeology of the present”.

 

A BATHTUB WITH A VIEW

Relax in the armchair, made from a rare fragment of an antique bathtub. Lift the shower head to learn about the hidden network that once sustained the life of the ancient civilization — but also contributed to its downfall.

THE WOUND OF THE FOREST

Atmospheric data from the past indicates that increased CO² levels played a key role in the Great Collapse. It is unclear whether our ancestors fully understood the ability of trees to capture carbon and produce oxygen. Traces of peeled bark, preserved to this day, tell the story of a contradictory relationship — one interwoven with both benefit and neglect.

THE LIVING BARK

In the past, giant trees known as sequoias existed in various parts of the Earth. Due to pollution and climate change, they are now considered extinct. Here, we can observe a sacred fragment of the Circle of Life — the bark of dead sequoias sheltering a rich biodiversity of insects, birds, and microscopic fungi. Walk around the Tree and look into the pipe to discover them.

CANAL ORACLE

It is believed that people of the past held unusual beliefs about pipes. Could mysterious forces within them make your problems disappear? Let’s find out. Throw your problems into the pipe and move to its other end to hear the prophecy of the Canal Oracle.

HUMAN OBSERVATORY

Peek through the pipe to glimpse rare evidence of the customs of people from the past. They seemed to find joy in water, in the sounds and freshness of rivers, as can be seen in these archival images. Why they continued to pollute them despite this remains a mystery for future research.

ANOTHER BRICK

The rust-brown porous “pebbles” found in the river are of anthropogenic origin. In the past, they were mass-produced and widely used in construction. The circumstances under which they spread into the river remain unknown. One theory suggests they were used in rituals performed by construction entrepreneurs to secure the success of a new investment. Another claims that a strong storm swept them away from a nearby building site.

Globe

SIPHONOPHORA

STUDIO TASH

SIPHONOPHORA is an interactive light installation that draws inspiration from siphonophores – complex underwater organisms that often remain invisible to the human eye. Imagine a creature from the depths – transparent and radiant, whose movement in the underwater space resembles an elegant dance between light and water.
 
What new role or voice do you give to the park?
We turn the park into a living scene that draws attention to the river as a functioning natural system, and not just as a water channel in the city. The installation creates a space for slowing down and contemplation, in which visitors can feel the beauty and significance of the processes taking place below the surface.
 
What would happen if your project stayed here permanently?
SIPHONOPHORA would become a characteristic feature of the place, a presence that draws attention to the river on a daily basis and reinforces the connection between people and the aquatic environment.
What is the invisible that you want to be noticed through your work?
SIPHONOPHORA is Studio Tash’s way of giving form and presence to the otherwise unnoticed. Inspired by siphonophores – underwater superorganisms whose numerous elements (zooids) live in complete symbiosis – it becomes a symbol of interdependence and balance. Just as the individual parts of the siphonophora exist in symbiosis, so the rivers and the city are connected in a common organism, whose existence depends on this balance. The installation aims not only to introduce the audience to the amazing underwater world, but also to focus on the magical and significant role of each organism in the larger whole.
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