This video material is video documentation about video installation and performance at the annual exhibition for Bulgarian Contemporary Art Awards, 2009. (Watch videodocumentation: below! Main camera: Petar Bonin, support camera: Milka Yudova and Evgeny Veskov)
video installation and performance: seven pickaxes, a blue car (BMW), a TV screen, four channel DVD PAL screening) / dimension variable / duration: continious
More than 30 different cases of pickaxes imbedded in luxurious cars have been recorded in Bulgaria since 2005. It is claimed this is a patent of the Bulgarian mafia along the Black Sea coast, constituting a message to the owner of the car meaning "We have unfinished business with you!". Others think some of the dozens of assaults were not made by the mafia but by ordinary people seeking justice that they did not find in court, but this cannot be proved. Using a car with pickaxes imbedded in it simply as a form in combination with video documentation, the video-installation presented charges this metaphor with different meaning and connotation. Using the problems in today's Bulgarian society as a base, its objective is to face visitors with conundrums. In the present complex and contradictory times, when the value of humane ideas has been changed1, it is not the job of the artist to give easy answers. Every observer will find a different meaning in this video installation and that is precisely what is important today, when pluralism is of enormous importance for the development of both art and society as a whole.
Different documentary video interviews are broadcast simultaneously on the TV screens2, ones that were filmed during a hitchhike trip though the countries from South-eastern to Central Europe and in which the drivers share their opinion of the European Union and Bulgaria's membership in it. One of the major problems facing Bulgaria is the existence of a mafia and structures similar to it in every single sphere of society, which also reflects on the international attitude towards the country and on Bulgaria's relations with the European Union.
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1. The people who want to find the true value of the ideas should look and see the real essence of things through their outer skin.
2. The people interviewed are drivers of cars who pick up hitchhikers. This is a very specific group of people and it cannot be an official statement about the thinking of the European population, but it is interesting to know what precisely this subculture milieu thinks about Bulgaria's relations with the European Union. In fact, these drivers choose to be interviewed themselves, allowing the author to hitch a ride in their cars by their own choice. Of course, some of the drivers (mainly Bulgarians) refused to be interviewed.