This is a reflection upon all that happened, and still is going on, during the first two weeks of June 01 in Plovdiv.

Just a short reminder: The CF01, third edition of Communication Front, was organized in Plovdiv from June, 1st to 14th and You were present! Were You present my friends? If you were that you can remember the days, and nights, that went by and all the food we eat, all the drinks we drank and all the words that we exchanged. (for those of you with a short memory here are some usefull links:
http://www.ljudmila.org/~saso/plovdiv/
http://userpages.umbc.edu/~sbradley/projects/plovdiv/
http://www.cfront.org/cf01/virtualexhibition
http://skylined.org/cfront/grill.php
And Don't forget the CF mailing list because You'll find a lot of usefull texts by participants.

I'm not going to try to give an objective overview(jane's got a point "have we been merely self referential/looking inward/celebrating ourselves and eachother? (chopping vegetables, shopping for vegetables, laughing, talking, presenting, grilling, singing) - is the web site just vanity
publishing?- have we been emotional and not cerebral.. " but rather my emotional thoughts on CF 01 (Adnan was right when he spoke about Emotional Inteligence and I'll come back to that later).

Arrival/Departure

It was a sunny day, Wednesday, June 6th, when Zoran and I walked to the Mexican House in Plovdiv to find MariaX and Jane sitting in the garden and Emil on the stairs just leaving while others were engaged in a meeting :-) with a journalist(whose name I keep forgeting), and Diomos was heading the meeting. Just a minutes later we got some coffee and sat in the garden. Frst communication was with Jane, so caring and full of love and that went on for the rest of our stay. Next came an emotional stress, eye to eye, hand to hand contact with MariaX, to whom I have wrote some angry mail over a stupid catalogue matter for the Media@terra 99, and in an blink of an eye the matter was resolved!
Others came for a cigarette break and a topic of Plovdiv art scene came out. The proposals were made on how to communicate out of our comunity of tech. art new media geeks! Some words were said like "artists in plovdiv just care for painting and sculpture", "they resent all new media stuff", "we should engage them with our project" and so on, and I felt some kind of "us and them" "new and old" kind of thing. That I don't regard as a value. Communication Front should resolve such divisions and we shouldn't let the whole thing remain in between ourselves(Jane again: "have we been merely self referential/looking inward/celebrating ourselves and eachother?"). The whole idea of communication is to understand what is being said/acted to you and to make sure you're understood when you speak/act. What can be more simple, just use your emotional inteligence and leave the cerebral, neocortex, out of it. now back to that day, the idea of bar-b-q came out as a possible "programme" for CF. Orriginaly my idea was to have a party, good time, and some food because it is the simplest way of getting to know people. The disscusion went on and Eva and I were assigned to manage the project. Than the idea of "children's workshop" came out and Aleksandar and Rupert were the ones to magae the project. Other ideas were put up front but somehow the whole discussion was orientated towards ourselves, sort of a closed structure, a group that's being on a hostile territory and expecting trouble from the local tribe. Well that did arrive the very same evening at the opening of an exhibition, down in the Mexican house. The negative energy that we just have projected in our discussion ealrlier brought two "angry" Plovdiv artists to the opening. I must admit we all failed to see it coming and left MariaX to take the heat. It was an example of a quick response of what we have all, subconciously, wished for when saying that the Plovdiv public is "hostile". We got what we wanted! And a proof that we were the ones to create such a hostilyty came later at the local bar where we went, to find the same two artists, one of which tried to catch our attention by dancing "dangerously" with a "blonde" girl, and even we exchanged some eye/body contact we didn't manage, or didn't want to establish a communication. We rather danced in to the morning(like a very closed group).
Thursday went in preparations for the workshops and lot of meetings. The main thing happened in the late afternoon meeting when we discussed projects and Ruth, from i-love-u, stood up and gave an answer to our frustration of a day before simply by handing out a photoes of local people thay have being picturing at their homes. What an approach! Simple and full of "i-love-u" emotional inteligence. No one reacted, we sat quiet.
Friday brought some new faces and and more person to person contacts with local art comunity but also within our group. Emil, Eva, Pauline, Zoran and I went to the Art school at 10am to hand out invitations for the e-BAR-B-Q party. We met young people who were very friendly and open, we wondered arround the classrooms, as they painted the seated figure. After we went to cople of IPS caffees and ...had less success. The Music College was next on our list so we spreaded invitations in the caffee in front where majoity of students were sitting. Later we went to the department for traditional music and talked to some people there. Posters were handed out ina couple of local bars. Eva and I were eager to test the equipment for the projection and Emil was trying to find the grill. Shopping list was made throughout the day. The talks with Bojana, Athanasia and others were productive, we talked of independant productions, relations within a group and the matter of "living and working" together. Andreas was presenting the Syndicate and the same inward/self neocortex traits were at work. For me the question was can we escape these traits of a western white-man civilisation and elevate to a different possition? Some picked the bits and pieces but all of us needed to react. Eva and I collected money for the grill, final arrangements were made, who's going shopping, the web meeting was tried as an iterface for the projection, Dimos was worried about the managment of the event, the rest were cool.
Saturday morning and we went shopping. Monica, Eva and myself headed for Metro to by meat and drinks. The car was full of stuff and police wouldn't allow us to driwe up to the house so we had to carry the stuff from the down road and up the hill. Evryone helped and the work was done in no time. Jane, Kristel and Steve went to the market to buy vegetables and rest of the stuff. Bojana prepared the presentation and others were chopping the stuff. The Bojana gave a wonderfull presentation and the food was just displayed on the hudge table we all sat arround. By the time she finished we were running late for the grill preparation but finnaly made it before guests arrived(Dimos started the fire) and rest is history. The evening went on in eating, drinking and talking to people. Impression is that everyone had a good time. After we went to a bar(again) and danced to couple of songs.
Sunday started with a children workshop. It was beautifull, they made a city, virtual and than painted it. Also some gerat computer drawings and photoes taken by children. We started discussing the whole network idea and the levels of communication/participation in meetings such as CF. Dimos had some critical observations and we agreed in many points. Meeting after meeting and a presentation and again meeting. That night we finished meetings at 00h or even later. People were drained and tired. Group got subdivided in smaller groups and so on.
Monday, meeting of a group for CF net interface, net/web design. Ana, Barbara, Rupert, Darko, Dimos and myself started drawing interface. Ideas came out and in a couple of hours we had layout/blueprint* for the whole site. Later it was presented to others. No comments, some suggestions, and we went on. Eva started working on a e-BAR-B-Q interface for the site. I want to help but the time is running out so I just jump in and out. A meal, a coffee and Zoran and I are in a bus heading for Sofia. Our bodies are moving but our minds remain in Plovdiv. Train leaves Sofia and we still remain in Plovdiv. It was an intensive experiance, still is.