Ecologies of Prehod is one of many Off-site initiatives to engage with heritage sites falling into ruin during the ongoing Transition Period from planned to market economy in Bulgaria known as Prehod. Between 2020-2024, invited artists participated in a long-term collaboration with mailed prompts that were collected by locals in Bulgaria, distributed by the project team, and entrusted in the artists’ care for the duration of their research. Prompts included certified care agreements that accompanied the rubble and flora collected from landscapes and building stock left in ruin since the start of Prehod. Ranging from an Ottoman-era hammam brick to plant specimens from an abandoned Soviet-era observatory, prompts were composed of mobile fragments that serve as aural, visual, and material witnesses to Prehod. Over the course of their circulation across the globe, mobile fragments gain new meaning in the form of artifacts that alter and move through different hands and geographies.

At Swimming Pool, five artists adopt a “thinking with matter” approach to conceive of a critical framework for working with unofficial heritage and archives through the notion of Prehod. Through a range of haptic,visual, and sensory modes of re-inscription, each artist transforms their prompt material through acts of translation, transmission, reinvention, and adaptation. Between organism and waste, the mobile fragment partakes in a metabolic process from environment to body that brings about a more capacious understanding of experimental preservation practice and collective care.

Full Curatorial Statement below

Manar Moursi, Evth that Remains to be Lived, herbal outfit, print, archival footage

Elitza Koeva, OMAPA, video projection and photographs

Katarina Burin, Fake Holiday Series, cast concrete

Off-site Archive, prompt materials