Labour Me Softly

‘Labour Me Softly’ is a multidisciplinary cultural event that explores the invisible, precarious and undervalued labour in contemporary society. Part of the exhibition's ‘Who’s Grafting Now!’ wider programme, it combines a discussion, artistic performances and conversations with artists to create a space for reflection on the effort, repetition and accumulation that shape both physical and emotional labour.

On May 1st at 3 pm, International Labor Day, we invite you to the Cube Gallery, Toplocentrala. Spontaneous artistic interventions and actions from the audience are welcome!

Programme

🟣 15:30 - 16:30: Welcome and Discussion on ‘Invisible Labour’

Participants Alessandro Vincentilli, Doreida Xhogu, Snejana Krasteva and others to be announced.

🟣 17:00: Performance - Andrea Celeste La Forgia and Gloriya Avgust, ‘Spinning the Mechanisms of Trouble Making’

Mixing fiction and archival material, 'Spinning the Mechanisms of Trouble Making' is a polyphonic choral work that puts the specificities of supposedly class-bound female “trouble-making” centre stage. 

It is everywhere: in the prison, the factory, the workshop, the brothel, the apartment block, on the roof, in the kitchen, the bedroom, on the street. It takes every form imaginable: the mother, the worker, the nurse, the unemployed, the witch, the prisoner, the artist, the “we”, the “I”.

Guess what? They all turn out to be the same person.

In “Spinning the Mechanisms of Trouble Making”, the female figure immerses herself in trouble, moving through non-linear historical narratives as a strategic act of constant dispossession, loss and rearrangement.

🟣 18:00: Performance Intervention - Voin de Voin, 'Have a good one!’ 

In collaboration with Wendy & Jim (Austria), styling by Slava George.

With Martina Apostolova, Nia Pushkarova, Martina Stefanova, Nadezhda Moskovska and others.

The performative intervention is structured around the concept of vita active, in Human Condition by Hannah Arendt, in which she establishes a threefold division of human activity: labour, work and action. Among these, it is action that most directly engages with plurality, publicness and condition of appearing before others. Crucially action is bound to speech. “Action without speech “ Arendt argues, “would lose its revelatory character and be no less mute than labor”. Speech is not accessory to thought, but the vehicle through which action gains political and existential weight.

In the performative architecture of the piece, we will mobilise language through interrogation, building a collective narrative, based on personal and revelatory ideas by the participants. This communicative function becomes the performative architecture: a spatial articulation of thought, subjectivity and presence.

The outcome of this “conversation” becomes the radical counterpart, reinscribed to the audience’s immediacy to reform, perceive, react.

This work is supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum.

🟣 Anytime: Invisible Performance - Masha Gyurova, ‘The Artist Cares’

To expect care 

To allow care

To assume care

To suggest care

To impose care

To insist on the need for care

To need care

Do we expect invisible (caring) labour anywhere? Is it tied to a presumed place where it is perceived as something self-referential?

Care merges with context, with space, and disappears from sight. 

🟣 19:15: Audio-visual performance - Margg & Rada Mateva, ‘Re.born’

In the Labour me softly event Rada Mateva, together with audio producer Margg, will generate live vision and sound, translating their personal challenges and experiences with the balance of being a parent and professional life. 

🟣 20:00: DJ set - Julieta Intergalactica

With over 10 years of experience behind the decks and musical influences from all corners of the universe, the irresistible Juliet Intergalactica combines the courage of experimentation with the magic of dance rhythm.

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The event is part of the exhibition ‘Who's Grafting Now!’, which won the open call for co-productions at the Cube Gallery, Toplocentrala. It is supported by the Singer-Zahariev Foundation, the Austrian Cultural Forum and Sofia Municipality. It is part of the Cultural Calendar of Sofia Municipality.