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Welcome to the COMMUNICATION FRONT
2000! 
Why ‘Communication Front’?
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
There exist in recent years words and
phrases whose meaning has been deeply contaminated by the previous
system of government, the communist dictatorship. One of them
is the word ‘front’, although in Bulgarian language it possesses
a number of meanings. Certainly, I consider this quite normal,
especially having in mind the fact that Bulgarian public opinion
connects the word with the most popular movement or social organization
in totalitarian times, The State Front. As a matter of fact, the
membership in the SF was nearly compulsory to all Bulgarian citizens.
At the same time, the purely formal membership in the organization
signified that you are not eligible to be admitted into the Communist
Party which granted membership only in return to special and confirmed
merits. Neither is this the right text, nor am I willing to draw
a detailed description of the SF. I could point out, however,
to those who find it a curiosity that there is some allusion between
our CFront Project and The State Front. Two years ago when we
put our heads together to find the most suitable name for the
Project that needed to reflect our critical attitude towards the
issue of man and technology, we agreed that there would be a particular
touch of parody in the combination of words such as ‘front’ and
‘communication’ in Bulgarian social environment. Opting for the
present name of the Project we decided to bring to new life the
meaning of ‘front’ in Bulgarian, while at the same time being
fully aware that the ‘community of media-artists’ was so far barely
noticeable, going through its period of ‘political, historical
and chronological’ irrelevance to the global process at the time,
with the sole exception of some prominent figures such as Iliyana
Nedkova, Luchezar Boyadjiev and Ventsi Zankov, who presented a
more facetious, provocative and critical approach toward cyber-culture
and the electronic on-line environment. At the same time, this
situation had its objective reasons. At the time, the access of
local artistic community to technology was not only substantially
limited but virtually non-existent as a guiding factor of their
career. In this line of thought, I would like to quote the critic
and art-historian Svilen Stefanov:
"Even today it is no hard task to find out that in as much as
our institutions perform some cultural exchange, it does not have
the capacity to subvert likeness in the province of art by introducing
radically innovative elements. Other personalities are accepted
no further than they resemble us. In case the qualities of a foreign
cultural product go beyond the discriminating capacities of our
institutions, it is never allowed the status of a cultural product.”
Going along the same lines in his book ‘Cultural Dimensions of
the Visual’ released by Graffiti Publishing House, Sofia, in 1998,
S. Stefanov further remarks:
“These signs of profanity on an institutional level are also caused
by the fact that ‘senses’ need to be cultivated, which is a long
and laborious process. The suspicious attitude toward us is additionally
caused by our feigning meaningful structures as regards peripheral
and marginal situations. The semantic clusters are superficially
emulated without anyone having an idea of the actual functioning
of these structures. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, there
came the time for getting to know each other. History has shown
that this is not a one-sided process. Records have it that in
the years succeeding the discovery of America, while the Spaniards
were dispatching committees to ascertain whether the natives have
souls, Indians were drowning white captives to see if their corpses
would undergo decay.
In our individual case on the Balkans things tend to be even vaguer
as evaluation is concerned since cultural peripheries are most
often semi-transparent to eyes from without.”
It is interesting to ponder on the strong influence of the Soros
Centre for Contemporary Art that we witnessed several years ago.
It was the only institution funding contemporary art in this country.
That undoubtedly granted it the status of the most powerful establishment
shaping and influencing the development of the policies in contemporary
Bulgarian art which is characterised by a lack of response towards
the multi-media and the electronic on-line environment. At the
same time, the Ministry of Culture and other minor organizations,
entangled in their numerous problems, played the part of passive
spectators, never producing self-initiative and energetic actions
in the province of art.
Perhaps, these are part of the reasons for the positive attitude
to the Internet shared by Bulgarian media-artists’ community as
a whole. They see in it a means of subverting and rendering more
democratic the system for disseminating information employed so
far. Naturally, this enhanced interest led to apparent novelties
in the strategies for presenting and financing projects of Bulgarian
artists and organizations. Beyond doubt, this creates an opportunity
for rendering the processes of the cultural and social sphere
in the country more democratic, and restructuring the artistic
environment.
Furthermore, we witness not only a willingness but also actual
results of the attempt to go beyond the local state-run and non-governmental
organizations dealing with culture and financing art, having in
mind their complete inertia and indifference in regard to the
new artistic media. Maybe, the time is coming when we can discern
the beginnings of new traits and tendencies that stretch beyond
our idea of self-sufficiency and help us overcome at least in
part our provincial problems. Recent years saw a genuine thrive
in the development of small local organizations and communities
of artists. In spite of the common track of development, we can
curiously come across different ideologies concerning the Internet
context and new technology. Most of them, however, share not so
shallow an attitude to new technology and manifest a soberer view
on the capacities of the Net. This, at the same time, portends
new crises and is a ground for the cultivation of a new ‘elite’
of artists and organizations that enjoy free access to technology
and information since the whole issue reflects the differing social
and cultural aspects of the environment in which our personalities
are developed and shaped.
Text by Dimitrina Sevova
Translated by Ivan Ivanov
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