6 Books part 1

1) Photographer

Wolf, Michael, Transparent City, Aperture Foundation Books

I have wanted to do similar work for long time. This maybe comes from the fact that I grew up in 15 floor towers, and the systematic grid of separated personal spaces is deeply engraved in my mind. The reason for not taking over such a project is of course the fact that I don't have adequate equipment, but most of all because access is difficult. I could not believe that Wolf was allowed to photograph these random people and thought they are posing. I am surprised nobody minded the published photographs, well maybe the only reason being that separate portraits are pixelated and not really recognizable.

2) Movie Director - Lars Von Trier

Dogma Brothers: Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg
Rombes, Nicholas, New Punk Cinema, Edinburgh University Press 2005

I cannot say Trier is one of my favorite filmmakers, he has made movies I really like and movies I hate. Trier never the less is experimenting and this is what admire about him, sometimes succeeding sometimes failing. His work deals with disillusionment, doubt and skepticism about wide spread notions in society. The lack of happy ends in his movies and ambiguity is relevant to my point of view on topics I examine. There is no one way to approach them, as well as no end - ending is only in movies.

3) Sculptor

Ron Mueck, Thames & Hudson 2006

First saw his work in the Hirshhorn museum and really appreciated it. The presence in the gallery is a great part about his pieces. They are realistic to such an extent that they become unsettling. The connection to my work - how people determine how "real" looks is not based on the reality but the peoples' will to see or not aspects of life and their accumulated collective consciousness, common values.

4) Painter

Banksy Wall and Piece, Century 2005

Maybe he (she/they) became too popular to be rebel art. Banksy's work is now sold side by side with big names in art. The artists never the less have rediscovered many mediums to create their own street art - activism genre that unites collage, sculpture, site specific installation, painting, performance. The way they combine visual elements is brilliant - simple and very effective. The main thing that is being employed is context, generating meaning and response based on the specific place or situation the work is made.

5) Non Fiction

Royte, Elyzabeth, Garbage Land, Hachette Book Group USA, 2006

This book is a personal non academic research of waste. The author decides to spend time finding out where here family waste goes and what happens with it. There is a lot of information thrown at the reader, sometimes presented only on one side of the problem. The dry academic specificity (verification of sources of information and researches) and accuracy is less while a more personal approach makes the book readable. Sometimes presenting interviewed people like characters from a fiction book describing how they look and talk and giving opinions about them goes overboard and annoying. What I really admire her work for is the access she gained to these places - landfills and processing plants. This is result of her skills as a journalist and the resources she had to work on the project. In my case bringing a camera makes things even harder, since it creates documents capable of recording environmental violations or the visual mood of waste management facilities.

6) Fiction

Karavelov, Liuben, Old Time Bulgarians, Ignatov Publishing (1920-30?)

I read the book while in Bulgaria and working on the mass tourism project. The plot is set sometime in the mid 1800s before the reestablishing of the Bulgarian state from a 5 centuries of Ottoman occupation. Karavelov during that time was a prominent scholar and activist for Bulgarian independence emphasising on education and cultural development rather than armed resistance. His short novel is not melancholic but actually very satirical. He focuses on archetypes that are anti-heroes, and the lack of state institutions and social services during these times. His book is surprisingly relevant today. After the fall of communism Bulgaria was left with a highly disfunctional state. Most of the tourism projects that turned to be disasters are a result of ineficient state regulations and the greed of few anti-heroes.