X-tendo on Sofia Underground

Dessislava Tomova | 14.05.07 | Kafene.bg

From 13h. on May 12th 2007 till 3.30 on May 13th 2007 in Shipka 6 Gallery and the surrounding space there took place the National festival of action and performance named “A day and a night on Shipka 6. Remember Sofia Underground”, with curators Ruen Ruenov and Yovo Panchev. More than 80 artists took part in the festival of the performance. Most of them don’t have classical artistic education. There were theatre actors, cinema makers, poets, architects, designers, engineers, pedagogues, musicians – a very colorful picture. This is to show how open the art of live action is.

Among the theatre actors can be added some of the first participants that opened the festival – Association for city studies based on the means of art X-tendo. They had settled on the sidewalk in front of the Shipka 6 Gallery, where they presented their performance named “What is the city telling". Corrugated nylon was used as a divider of the street space. In this performance the artists from X-tendo – Elena Koleva Ivanova, Spiros Xenos and Raina Moneva, successfully represented the typical city images (an old maid teacher, a business lady and a cab driver). Simple daily actions followed one another – hand shaking, hugging, greeting. The idea of the performance “What is the city telling” is to represent the principle of work within the city background.

Seems like X-tendo achieved their purpose – they succeeded to include the unprejudiced passers-by in the instant theatre, in a happening that they haven’t met before, and that can only be achieved by getting involved in it.