Off-site Heritage: Diasporic Intimacies with Feral Landscapes

• In Event: Liminal Place-Making: Peripheral Senses and the Folds of Experience

Abstract

The presentation examines the liminal space that the transition period from planned to market economy in Bulgaria, known as Prehod, makes visible through the ruins of socialist modernity. Taking as points of departure a film and a curatorial project, the presentation considers how these exploratory approaches to research practice make possible new ways for thinking about tangible and intangible heritage preservation in the post-socialist space. What initially started as an observational film about herbalist Bai Stoyan foraging through the Balkan Mountains near the post-industrial city of Sliven in Bulgaria evolved into a broader documentary that follows the lives of five retirees who find hope and livelihood in the mountain. From lived experience, the presentation moves to the groundworks of a research and curatorial initiative, “Off-site” which explores an expanded relationship to heritage and diaspora through collaborations between international artists and sites of ruination in Bulgaria.

How might we re-imagine the preservation of architectural ruins in the Balkans through “curated decay” (DeSilvey)? How do we preserve a foraging practice, the native knowledge of plants and their medicinal properties, driven as much by the olfactory sense as it is by the ocular? What does taking care of heritage from a distance look like in the patchy and unruly edgeworks (Tsing) of the Balkans? How does the brownfield offer new ways of understanding the ruins of socialist modernity not as a dead space, but rather one that is feral, teeming with vegetal and animal life?

Authors

• Pauline Shongov, Harvard U

• Maya Shopova, Harvard U