synaesthesia

SU2024-web

 

Sofia Underground International Performance Art Festival

 

Synaesthesia

 

24 — 28 April 2024

Synaesthesia (from the Greek syn, “together” and aisthesis, “sensation”) is the blending of the senses in which perceptions are linked without a clear cause-and-effect relationship. Thus they evoke an idea as if from a sense that was not actually stimulated. People with synaesthesia often note that letters or numbers are associatively visualised in colour, sound tones resonate with colour power, or even a sense of smell.

But synaesthesia is not just a neurological condition. Against the background of the relentless drive toward systematisation and standardisation alongside the processes of segregation, individualisation, and marginalisation, it is also a powerful conceptual and practical tool for overcoming the current trend through authentic arbitrariness. For leaping boundaries, creating and redefining relationships, discovering new horizons of creativity in swarming systems of rules.

We decided that in a time when the body is over-occupied and over-coded by everything but its owner, the construction of arbitrary connections between unusual elements is a key moment for a possible liberation of its movement, thinking, feeling and being in general. For its deification.

We use synaesthesia as an approach to contingent relations, as unforeseen strategies, arbitrary intentions, inexplicable approaches, and as an urgently needed local terrain eclecticism, interdisciplinarity and collaborativeness.

In addition to the standard format of the festival, this year we also announce the long-awaited edition of SU FILES 1997 — 2023 in the Alma Mater Gallery, a retrospective exhibition with archival materials, photographs, texts, videos, works, traces and fragments of previous editions.

 

This edition is organised by Studio DauHaus and Synaesthesia Collective.
Supported by National Culture Fund, Goethe Institute Bulgaria and Embassy of Ireland, Bulgaria.
In partnership with Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Cultural center at SU, HyperSpace Social tech hub, Belka Studio for sound and form, Bobbina Cultural space and others.

 

More information, program and locations coming soon!