World-Wide-Walks / SOFIA I & II

2008-2009, 6:00 min, sound

Peter d'Agostino performed video walks throughout the city of Sofia, Bulgaria during 2008-09. Completed two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the SOFIA project focuses on east/west divides of the cold war. It is one of a series of projects mapping a range of geo-cultural-virtual concepts that include related walks performed in both Berlin and Lodz, Poland in 1990, forming the broader World-Wide-Walks / LODZ- BERLIN- SOFIA (2009) video-web project.

The World-Wide-Walks / SOFIA videos display mirror images symbolizing an overall theme of reversals. For example, use of the terms right wing / left wing in Bulgarian politics appears to have opposite meanings to that of western politics. Other reversals are notable, yet not well known. Working with the Russians on the Soviet space programs, sophisticated Bulgarian technologists later became highly adept at "reverse engineering" copies of the latest computer hardware and software applications from the U.S. One of these 'mirrored' videos ( SOFIA I ) is of d'Agostino's daily walk up a winding a staircase to his apartment during his artist residency in Sofia. Another walk ( SOFIA II ) was performed in and around the screening and debating room in the historic Red House Center where the video-web installation was exhibited. The mirroring effect in this video creates images of a room that appears to expand, contract and fold in on itself. D'Agostino's sound collage juxtaposes his real-time walk with brief snippets that reflect aspects of Bulgarian cultural and political histories. This project was commissioned by Sofia's Red House Art Gallery and Interactive Arts EV, Hamburg, Germany as part of the Work In Motion: On Migration, Mobility & Labor exhibition, June 2009.

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2012, 63:53 min, color and b&w, sound