AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

from Franklin Furnace

Sofia Underground Performance Art Festival started in 1997 as a series of performances unfolding in a long happening.

Over time, Sofia Underground has evolved into a forum, an event that showcases and debates contemporary art in interaction with the independent scene. A meeting where emerging, established, local and international artists can experiment, create, exchange and collaborate spontaneously on the fly. A space and time continuum with its own unique energy and atmosphere. A form of resistance, of sober questioning of reality by the means of art.

Created twenty years ago, revived ten years ago, the festival for performance art – Sofia Underground in 2017 will focus on the topic of time. Time as force, as a factor, or as a problem, but mainly as a question of personal, social or artistic matter, and abstraction. Symbolically, hundred / сто can serve as a frame and limitation, or recommendation for projects and forms of expression that deal with the topic and evoke the perception of time.

As before, in April 2017 the festival's program will go from top to bottom in three parts:

Higher Ground – educational part – a post- theoretic conference focused on contemporary forms of public art. We accept suggestions for lectures, workshops, artist talks, project presentations and all forms of cultural exchange.

Overground – exhibition part – a selection of contemporary Bulgarian authors from private collections will focus on the alternative forms of consumption and creation and their value for the development of the scene in the country.

Underground – performance part – traditionally a long run happening around and underneath the National Palace of Culture, but also in public spaces in the city of Sofia, accompanied by a public screening program of video works, documentaries and art films and a party.

For the three parts of the festival expected are all kinds of projects from artists or groups from all disciplines.

Please, submit a CV/portfolio and a project description at: 2017 [@] sofiaunderground.com

Every shortlisted project will be discussed in detail for best funding and realization opportunities.

Deadline for submissions: 20 December 2016

Notification of selected participants: 20 January 2017

Festival dates: 24 – 29 April 2017