My work always has a technological, social and research component. I am interested in the impact of different digital technologies on our society, and I always strive to remain critical. I usually develop several elements in parallel in my projects - using a technology as a mechanic, but also as a problematic. I spend a lot of time in researching the given topic, but also for self-education in the specific technology. It's important to me to build works with multiple levels of access, where each viewer chooses how far to go.
Space is important to my work, although my pieces are not spatial or immersive. I rarely have the dream space available, so I have learned to turn challenges into effects. In some projects, I master space as a means of misleading the subject. I use it to build a common narrative, to create a thin red thread between the works.
In others, I choose the right space that adds additional context. Especially if it's an urban environment. I don't like to make big interventions in the urban space, but rather find that element to add and through it completely reverse our perception of reality. That way I get something whimsical out of something everyday. I used a similar approach in my first urban intervention, Universal Encounter. I set up an old armchair, found in the garbage, in meeting places around the city, interactively connected to a phone, where the audience could listen to stories directly on the street.
And when I work on stage, I try to build the video objects around the need to partner the live performers. Rarely my work is large in format, it's more interesting for me to build intimacy, to discreetly influence the audience. And there I use the medium to switch from the real to the imagined. In this way, my interventions are not monumental, but rather serve as an automated sparring partner. A nice example of this is in Ivan Dimitrov's play The Eyes of Others, directed by Mariy Rosen. There the actress Alexandra Vassileva communicated with the audience only through a "smart" TV. This TV was an extension of her image, it followed her, recognized her face and confused her.
For me, the beginning of a new work often takes the form of text, or words, and subsequent associations. My earlier works were directly inspired by specific works by Milorad Pavić, Kurt Vonnegut and Isaac Asimov. For the sculptures in the Naked Bodies series, on the other hand, I draw on sexist slurs such as bitch, chick, sheep, and pig to create sculptures of hybrid goddesses, a combination of 3D models of female classical sculptures and animals. In Solidarity Machine, I use artificial intelligence trained with historical works by Cage, Sol LeWitt, Marina Abramović, Yoko Ono and others to generate instructions for new works. I then execute these instructions in the form of drawings, augmented reality and murals. Sometimes, the code of the work itself, is also a text-message. For example, in my collaborative work with René Beekman, Aya, the Robot Looking for Love where the functions of the program are in the form of love explanations. Or in the series of performances with the writer Ivanka Mogilska, DNA of Words. There, her poetry turned out to be the basis for a new sonic instrument - a talking loop machine through which we break words down into their constituent sounds.
I want the audience to ask questions. My work is on several levels, the first level I usually present lightly, sometimes even humorously. This way I let the work tempt the viewer to get carried away, and think.
I think exploration has always been an integral part of art, artists have explored anatomy, space, zoology, mechanics. It's just that we're now seeing a more widespread recognition and acceptance of that component. More and more attention is being paid to exploration as part of a contemporary artist's work. This comes somewhat from the academic world trying to formalize artistic practices as part of the classical academic process. Contemporary art today deals with increasingly broad themes that often intersect scholarly practices. A uniformity of methods helps such projects to fit more easily into existing structures, giving them visibility and the very important access to resources.
