Kuba: Why did you leave your country?

 

Anna: Apart from the things I love and value in Austria … I still was unhappy with my personal situation. I felt I have something inside, I can not access yet and not express as I want – a talent, a need, a desire. I felt that everything was very determined – life sets you on a fixed path, you cannot decide which train to take.

 

Anna: What were the difficulties you had in the beginning?

 

Kuba: Living difficulties, communication in Bulgarian – Changing your environment all at once, is always somehow challenging, I think …

 

And starting to work right away about something which is important for me – theatre and photography – with people I don´t know.

 

Anna: Why is this difficult for you?

 

Kuba: I guess art is pretty personal for me, and doing it with someone who I don´t know, is like straight away letting someone in … Because art is about sensitivity, and exposing your sensitivity and seeing someone else´s sensitivity exposed, is really strong.

 

Kuba: What did you expect coming here?

 

Anna: That I will join a group of artists, some institution formed by artists who do theatre with a social purpose, who combine art with social work.

 

Kuba: Did they meet your expectations?

Anna: They exceeded my expectations, but it took me some while to realize this. I had to adjust myself to the fact that it is not yet “so established”, with a daily programme, not like in the theatre in Austria, with fixed, divided responsibilities. That we are building a base. But therefore everything is self-made. You have to develop it from within yourself.

 

And I love this very humanistic approach towards art, in the sense that they see art as a part of our human nature – to be creative, to dance, to sing, to act, to paint, … – having the ability to have feelings and thoughts is connencted with the ability to express them.

 

Because people are not some black holes that absorb and lose what they experience. What comes in will go out anyway. And we have to deal with each other, finding our way within this human jungle. We should to be gentle and careful – which is not easy because there are too many things you can only be angry about, too many things that are simply disgraceful. Art works as a catalyst. It allows you to be sensitive and strong at same time because it allows you to feel and to go to the core of things, without being killed.

 

Anna: And what do you think are the benefits or improvements on a larger scale, the effects?

 

Kuba: Maybe we are not feeding people, maybe we are not giving blankets to those who are feeling cold, but I think that showing other people the beauty, to make them more sensitve for the beauty is an important mission …

 

Anna: Why do you think, this is important?

 

Kuba: To discover more, because I hope there is something more …

 

Anna: Because you don´t like the things, that are there, what you see?

 

Kuba: Some are scary, definitely. But I hope, that this spark of beauty can be found anywhere. And actually it´s not only beauty that attracts me ...

 

Anna: So what attracts you then?

 

Kuba: Putting something in some order, aesthetically, philosophically, … To look behind the curtains, under the different layers, of religion, politics, …

 

Anna: How would you describe your way of working as a photographer?

 

Kuba: It depends on the subject, usually I would try to make myself fresh in thinking and in seeing. To have this childish look, where nothing is obvious …

 

Kuba: Does theatre influence your writing?

 

Writing is not just an activity which is executed alone in front of a screen or a white paper. The thoughts get born before you write them down, out of the context, out of the situation. Finding the right word, a complementary or contrastive one, to translate thoughts to words, or words to movements, gestures or pictures, this is theatre, a constant translation of perception.

 

Anna: How did you come to photography? Kuba: Why writing?

 

Anna: I grew up in a house where books were part of life, reading aloud was tradition. Kuba: One day I thougt, I have to buy a camera, and then I got 150 issues of national geographic magazine from my uncle, … Anna: Books opened the world for me, the world I just suspected to exist. Kuba: … and I was just looking at the photographs and I think it shaped my view of aesthetics a lot. Anna: Authors became my friends, companions, authorities; they had the courage to talk about things other people wouldn’t dare to. Kuba: This approach to be an observer – I made hundreds of thousands of photographs, but gradually making less and less. Anna: Books made me think that there is much more. Letting you into someone´s thoughts, all kind of thoughts, the bad , the good, the wicked and strange ones, all the dualities … Kuba: And with the time being more sure, what I wanna photograph … Anna: I don't wanna look away - this continuous reflecting and thinking, within finding a story you rearrange the things around you. Kuba: At first I made photographs, because I thought something interesting might happen there, and then this reversed, first I see the image, then I take the camera. Anna: I like discipline and form - to limit yourself, to reduce. Kuba: And with the time I realized, that I will maybe reach that point, that I can express what I want, and rise the quality of the things I see. Anna: For me the first step is to collect, to let everything in, information, pictures, sensations, memories, associations Kuba: And this is the reason why I came here, not only to make photography, cause this sensitivity comes from all directions, theatre, dance, poetry and this enriches me … and I can recoin it into photography. Anna: … and reduce it again to the essence.

 

Kuba: What is the essence?

 

Anna: To find one gesture, one move – to reach a point where you say- “That´s it, I wanna stay here.”

 

Kuba: where life becomes like walking through a gallery, at every corner you meet something astonishing, …

 

Kuba: What you value most from your time here? Anna: What were the most important moments during your stay here?

 

Kuba: I hate grading and making lists … Anna: I changed my focus, Kuba: I loved all this moments, when we where here in a more private situation, talking and sharing all these thoughts about art, or those moments, when I fell in love with slacklinge walking, juggling, … Anna: I am no longer so focused about the result. Kuba: And from a distance it is even more beautiful, when you gather all these various things we did together, handcraft, making masks, stilts, I don´t know; being shown Ernst Jandl by you, Anna: The target is a trigger, much more important is the process, the process is already the result. Kuba: … these ten months of constant circulation of creative energy, Anna: I am no longer afraid to fail. Kuba: To walk through the city with wings on your back or pretend, that you are a sheep without being ashamed, or going out on the street and ask people for a smile with a half bold shaved head and painted faces. Anna: Every result, everything you finish is part of a bigger process, which is lasting for your entire live. Kuba: drinking Rakia in the train and talking about revolution … Anna: a record of a certain moment, a stage of life.