Forum of Visual Culture

The Forum of Visual Culture is the public forum for debate on a particular agenda, serving the circle of the Visual Seminar, specially invited participants (intellectuals, academics, artists, journalists). Its meetings are also intended to involve the media and the public. The themes of the public meetings are suggested and discussed ahead of time by the Experts' Unit of the Visual Seminar. The Experts' Unit is composed of artists and intellectuals sharing the priorities and concerns of the project, but representing various viewpoints and professional interests, who are capable of uniting those in a common debate as well as awarding the debate with a challenging and inspiring profile. The main function of the Experts' Unit is through closed discussions and brainstorming sessions to define the hot points of our contemporary visual culture.

The Forum of Visual Culture has three specific and interrelated foci:

• Public presentations of Resident Fellows, discussions of the results of their artistic projects;
• Presentations of the Guest Fellows and participants of the Red Riviera Revisited show: lectures, workshops, discussions;
• General discussions on actual problems of the visual environment in Sofia (advertisements, billboards, electronic media, public performances etc).

A specific sub-module of the Forum of Visual Culture is the exhibition project “Red Riviera Revisited” that will involve the outsiders’ perspective on the chang(ed)ing visual interface of the country by mainly German and other artist who had been to the Bulgarian Black Sea coast (the Red Riviera) before 1989 as vacationing youngsters.