Georgi Gospodinov 3 projects The Impossible Collection A gallery. Eight absolutely empty glass cubes (window displays) closed from each side, just with captions beneath, in the following order: apples – shrivel, rot cheese – begins to smell bad clouds – physically variable quince jam – gets mould crust children – grow up snowmen – melt tadpoles, silkworms – bodily inconstant lovers – grow old, shrivel (See apples) (Motivation, message) If we square accounts, it will turn out that anything organic does not worth collecting. A world with constantly approaching expiry date. Non-durable, shriveling, rotting, perishable (and that is why) wonderful world. If everything lasted forever nothing would have been valuable. Gaustin, 2012 2. Radio-made Natural Radio An old wooden radio set with the typical scale marking the cities. While the radio is on, the lamp shines and the pointer moves with that specific cracking sound. When it stops on some city of the scale, we hear the authentic noises of that city. In order to be accomplished, this project requires just a web-mike put at a given place in different cities (Berlin, Sofia, Rome, London, Budapest, Lisbon…). The microphone will broadcast the sound of the place in real time. Radical Radio A Radio that broadcasts silence. An old wooden radio set identical to the above mentioned, with the typical scale with cities. While the radio is on, the lamp shines, the pointer moves with that specific cracking sound and when it stops on some city, we hear only the silence of that city. Vienna Bordeau Luxembourg Berlin Brussels Paris Prague Lisbon London Warsaw Madrid Turin Riga Roma Milan Sofia Budapest Bucharest 3. Vertical Reading A holy text, an airplane, the Himalayas, the Empire State Building, a cherry tree, an ocean, a crypt, a cave, a submarine, volunteers for reading. One and the same excerpt from a Holy Book (the Bible, the Qur’an, the Talmud, the Vedas…) is read at several different vertical points. The reader may be different. Only the text that is to be read aloud is important. In this case, we start with the first chapter of Genesis from the King James Version. We have a recording of the text being read while orbiting the Moon. On Christmas morning, 1968, the astronaut James Lovell read the first verses aloud in the space: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The other reading altitudes: 12,000 meters (in an airplane); Himalayan peak higher than 8,000 meters; the roof of the Empire State Building (381 meters); cherry tree (three meters); the shore of the Atlantic Ocean (zero meters above the sea level); reading in an old cemetery (2,55 meters under ground); from a cave (700-1,000 meters deep); in a submarine at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean (4,000 meters underwater). Does the text preserve its sublime and profound nature at different altitudes and depths? This technique could be used both to test the sacred (vertically) and to do something more important: to read the story of the Creation to the Creation itself in heaven and on earth (and beneath it). Georgi Gospodinov (1968) is a poet, writer and playwright. His Natural Novel (Dalkey Archive Press) has been published in 20 languages, including English, French, Spanish, Italian, etc. It was praised by The New Yorker, NY Times, Guardian, Times. The German edition, Natuerlicher Roman (Droschl, 2007), was qualified as a “small and elegant masterpiece” (FAZ) and its author as a “humorist of desperation” (NZZ). Gospodinov edited I’ve Lived Socialism. 171 personal stories (2006), a collection of ordinary people’s memories of socialist times. His work in this field continued with the Inventory Book of Socialism (2006, co-authorship with Y. Genova), a catalogue of Bulgarian everyday life objects from the period 1956-1989. Georgi Gospodinov has a PhD in Bulgarian literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In 2008-09, he was guest writer of Berlin (Berliner Kuenstlerprogramm, DAAD). In 2012, he acquired an Andrew Mellon grant at WIKO, Berlin with the project A World Denied, or: A Short History of the Unhappened. He lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Georgi Gospodinov 3 projects The Impossible Collection A gallery. Eight absolutely empty glass cubes (window displays) closed from each side, just with captions beneath, in the following order: apples – shrivel, rot cheese – begins to smell bad clouds – physically variable quince jam – gets mould crust children – grow up snowmen – melt tadpoles, silkworms – bodily inconstant lovers – grow old, shrivel (See apples) (Motivation, message) If we square accounts, it will turn out that anything organic does not worth collecting. A world with constantly approaching expiry date. Non-durable, shriveling, rotting, perishable (and that is why) wonderful world. If everything lasted forever nothing would have been valuable. Gaustin, 2012 2. Radio-made Natural Radio An old wooden radio set with the typical scale marking the cities. While the radio is on, the lamp shines and the pointer moves with that specific cracking sound. When it stops on some city of the scale, we hear the authentic noises of that city. In order to be accomplished, this project requires just a web-mike put at a given place in different cities (Berlin, Sofia, Rome, London, Budapest, Lisbon…). The microphone will broadcast the sound of the place in real time. Radical Radio A Radio that broadcasts silence. An old wooden radio set identical to the above mentioned, with the typical scale with cities. While the radio is on, the lamp shines, the pointer moves with that specific cracking sound and when it stops on some city, we hear only the silence of that city. Vienna Bordeau Luxembourg Berlin Brussels Paris Prague Lisbon London Warsaw Madrid Turin Riga Roma Milan Sofia Budapest Bucharest 3. Vertical Reading A holy text, an airplane, the Himalayas, the Empire State Building, a cherry tree, an ocean, a crypt, a cave, a submarine, volunteers for reading. One and the same excerpt from a Holy Book (the Bible, the Qur’an, the Talmud, the Vedas…) is read at several different vertical points. The reader may be different. Only the text that is to be read aloud is important. In this case, we start with the first chapter of Genesis from the King James Version. We have a recording of the text being read while orbiting the Moon. On Christmas morning, 1968, the astronaut James Lovell read the first verses aloud in the space: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The other reading altitudes: 12,000 meters (in an airplane); Himalayan peak higher than 8,000 meters; the roof of the Empire State Building (381 meters); cherry tree (three meters); the shore of the Atlantic Ocean (zero meters above the sea level); reading in an old cemetery (2,55 meters under ground); from a cave (700-1,000 meters deep); in a submarine at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean (4,000 meters underwater). Does the text preserve its sublime and profound nature at different altitudes and depths? This technique could be used both to test the sacred (vertically) and to do something more important: to read the story of the Creation to the Creation itself in heaven and on earth (and beneath it). Georgi Gospodinov (1968) is a poet, writer and playwright. His Natural Novel (Dalkey Archive Press) has been published in 20 languages, including English, French, Spanish, Italian, etc. It was praised by The New Yorker, NY Times, Guardian, Times. The German edition, Natuerlicher Roman (Droschl, 2007), was qualified as a “small and elegant masterpiece” (FAZ) and its author as a “humorist of desperation” (NZZ). Gospodinov edited I’ve Lived Socialism. 171 personal stories (2006), a collection of ordinary people’s memories of socialist times. His work in this field continued with the Inventory Book of Socialism (2006, co-authorship with Y. Genova), a catalogue of Bulgarian everyday life objects from the period 1956-1989. Georgi Gospodinov has a PhD in Bulgarian literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In 2008-09, he was guest writer of Berlin (Berliner Kuenstlerprogramm, DAAD). In 2012, he acquired an Andrew Mellon grant at WIKO, Berlin with the project A World Denied, or: A Short History of the Unhappened. He lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria.