The City through the Window of the Museum

Ivan Moudov

title:	The City through the Window of the Museum
year:	2005
place:	Sofia
publisher:	Institute of Contemporary Art - Sofia
ISBN/ISSN:	3-86588-237-4
language:	english
author(s):	Ivan Moudov
source:	Visual Seminar. Resident Fellows Program 4: The City as a Museum, 2005, Sofia: Institute of Contemporary Art - Sofia, ISBN: 3-86588-237-4

There is a two-way process of making impact between modern art and the city life. Artists often use it to analyze how the modern man lives, what is the visual background surrounding him, how different political or aesthetic views determine his everyday life.

However, in Bulgaria the feedback, which helps the artist's ideas to reach the public and find their place in a two-way discussion is seriously impaired.

The lack of a fully fledged system of public interest in contemporary art, of inspiring institutions, more specifically by the lack of a Bulgarian Museum of Contemporary Art, makes the connection between art and the city (the environment and the public) almost impossible to establish.

It is true that the museum is a way of looking at things, that the museum look suggests distance, sends the object to infinity, but can we have a look through
the museum window, even if it is being protected and using another media, if it has no place in our life?

The project will comprise a simulation of the opening of a Museum of Contemporary Art as a site and vision. It will be the basis for analyzing how a Museum of Contemporary Art would function in Bulgarian and, furthermore, I hope it will once more draw the interest of the public to the lack of such a museum. I suggest two objects as a starting point for my project – the actual building of the Poduyane railway station and the virtual façade and visual communication of a future Bulgarian Museum of Contemporary Art.

In the same time, I hope it will draw interest to a historical building in Sofia – the Poduyane railway station, which will soon be closed down as a station and will lose its initial function to remain just an envelope which needs to be filled in again. The Poduyane station is the first railway station in Sofia and a symbol of a modern Bulgaria. The station as a point of contact, as opening to the world (this was the stop of Orient Express in Bulgaria).

What is its significance today? How are the buildings that lose their initial function and role used today? These are some of the questions, which will be raised by an imaginary Museum of Contemporary Art replacing the station.

The museum is the Noah's Arc, which should select everything of value from every species endangered in the flood of city chaos.

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Last modified on Feb 10, 2021