180° Circle
Issue 8 I March 2026
Dear Friends,
As we move into 2026, we are happy to share this new edition of 180° Circle—a moment to pause, look back at the processes that shaped the past season, and open a perspective toward what lies ahead.
This issue brings together the texts created within CriticLab° 2025, part of 180° Community Lab°—our cultural-educational programme dedicated to critical writing, reflection, and dialogue around Sofia’s independent arts scene. CriticLab° continues to function as a space where emerging voices can engage closely with artistic practices, develop their own critical language, and publish their perspectives.
We are glad to feature texts by Niya Georgieva, Boryana Savova, Iuliia Holovchenko, Madlen Deleva, Andreya Gandeva, and Yves-Christian Angelov. Through different approaches and sensitivities, their writings reflect on performances, formats, and encounters across the contemporary performing arts landscape—capturing both immediacy and distance, observation and involvement.
At the same time, we are already looking ahead to the next chapter of 180°. In October 2026 (9–16 October), the festival will return with its 13th edition, continuing to explore collaborative formats, shared authorship, and artistic risk. Alongside this, 2026 will also mark the launch of 180° SHUM—a new format dedicated to experimental music and sound practices, expanding the festival’s ongoing engagement with listening, sonic experimentation, and alternative modes of encounter.
We see these developments as part of the same continuum: a commitment to process over product, to exchange over fixed outcomes, and to creating spaces where thinking, making, and reflecting can happen together.
Thank you for reading, listening, and staying connected. We look forward to continuing this journey with you throughout 2026.
With warm regards,
The 180° Team
Team 3
by Niya Georgieva
This year in October, the 12th edition of the independent arts festival 180° took place. During the festival, artists from different disciplines are brought together in three teams to collaborate and, through their interaction, create something that would not be possible individually. The theme of this year’s edition was PARAD-ISO—a concept that evokes religious and utopian associations while granting participants full freedom of interpretation.
On October 15, the third and final team presented the results of their collaboration at DOM Club. DOM is one of the places in Sofia where one can encounter everything—from poetry readings and activist meetings to film screenings, concerts, or electronic music parties. Yet it was certainly the first time something like what Team 3 presented had taken place there.
The team consisted of dramaturg Marcus Peter Tesch (Germany); artist and researcher Slava Savova (Bulgaria), whose work operates at the intersection of environmental history and the history of medicine, focusing on water, resource extraction, waste, and the entanglements of nature, politics, and healthcare; and Roberto Makeda (Switzerland), who works in the fields of experimental art, electronic music, and club culture.
That evening, the dance floor at DOM was arranged with armchairs and chairs that slowly filled up before the beginning of the performance. At the center of the space stood a table with microphones and DJ equipment. The artists took their designated positions. They were surrounded by the audience rather than separated from it. The dance floor—usually animated by endless movement during weekends—was now filled with stillness and intimacy.
The presentation begins.
Marcus Peter Tesch and Slava Savova sit behind the microphones and invite the audience to close their eyes and relax. Easy if you are on a couch. Difficult if you are sitting on a bar stool.
The performance is structured as a podcast interview.
In its staging, Marcus asks questions, while Slava responds in a gentle voice that takes us by the hand and guides the consciousness of those present through the history of public baths in Bulgaria—their functions, emergence, and eventual disappearance. She speaks of discovered water bodies and the public disputes surrounding them, and of the question of who water belongs to.
The conversation moves from the public to the personal when Marcus shares his experiences in gay bathhouses—how he tried drugs there for the first time, and how, years later, the icy water of a lake in Berlin welcomed him into its embrace after a nearly fatal overdose.
This personal confession, placed immediately after Slava’s historical overview, radically connected the social (the history of public baths) with the most intimate (the experiences of the body and addiction). Water, initially presented as a historical resource, became a salvational and redemptive element within a personal narrative.
A key element of the conversation was the soundscape created by musician Roberto Makeda. The gentle sounds of dripping water spread throughout the space, transforming DOM into a “cave.” This sonic sculpture was more than a backdrop—it evoked sensations of humidity, timelessness, and solitude.
Ultimately, the work of Team 3 offered a powerful interpretation of PARAD-ISO, not as unity but as tension. It presented the paradox (PARAD) of a communal culture (public baths, shared water) that has been isolated (ISO) and lost over time. Through the podcast format, the audience witnessed a collaboration that could not have existed otherwise: Savova’s historical depth, Tesch’s theatrical framing, and Makeda’s emotional soundscape merged into a single immersive experience.
Despite its strong conceptual core, the performance had moments in which the chosen form imposed limitations. The “live podcast” format is intriguing, but it does not always function effectively as a theatrical tool. The static presence of the two speakers, combined with the absence of visual or physical action, created a sense of distance within an otherwise intimate setting. Some audience members appeared torn between listening and watching, suggesting that the format was not fully adapted to the live context.
The rhythm of the conversation included several stretched segments, particularly in the historical part, where details about public baths risked becoming heavy. The transition from the public to the personal—from Slava’s archival perspective to Marcus’s queer confession—was powerful in contrast but not entirely prepared structurally. The abruptness of this shift was compelling, yet it could have been softened to emphasize the growing tension rather than allowing it to “jump” abruptly from one theme to another.
The Team 3 event by Slava Savova, Marcus Peter Tesch and Roberto Maqueda was held on October 15th 2025, at Club DOM as part of 180° – Laboratory for Innovative Art Festival 2025
Niya Georgieva is a philosopher and emerging critical writer based in Sofia. She studied philosophy in Berlin, focusing on ethics, justice, and the moral dimensions of artificial intelligence. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in culturology at Sofia University.
Her interests include philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminist theory, and cultural criticism. Her work engages with contemporary artistic practices and explores their social and political contexts. She is fluent in English and German.
An Open-Ended Flight
by Andreya Gandeva
The passengers have settled comfortably into their seats. The airplane is unusually wide, and everyone is commenting on how much legroom there is. From this alone, it is clear that we are in for an unconventional flight.
The crew is ready for takeoff. The final destination is hinted at as PARAD-ISO. Perhaps we are heading for paradise? And yet, can a journey to paradise really begin with safety instructions and an acoustic musical performance?
Within the framework of the 180° Festival, a group of young artists comes together for the CoLab° project—a space for experimentation and collective creation. Over the course of several days, the participants work as a team to create a performance that brings together their individual artistic practices, perspectives, and forms of knowledge.
The outcome of this process is presented in the space called “Crew”—a name that seems to have influenced the overall concept of the performance itself. The performers take on the roles of an airplane crew, while the audience becomes passengers. From the very beginning of the performance, and with its metaphorical takeoff, it becomes clear that the journey will be more important than the final destination.
The flight attendants perform their duties diligently. With measured gestures, smiles, and occasionally even gentle, dance-like swaying, they inform the passengers about what is happening during the flight—the increasing altitude, the location of the emergency exits. They demonstrate how to put on oxygen masks and distribute water to the passengers, all the while maintaining a carefully calibrated friendliness. Some of the performers appear fully immersed in their roles, moving with the concentration of a real flight crew, while others approach the situation with lightness, finding amusement in its absurdity—an absurdity continuously reinforced by the musical accompaniment of two other crew members, who repeatedly assure us that “everything will be fine.” Meanwhile, the captain is also the DJ, steering not so much the aircraft as the sonic rhythm of the unfolding events.
And the rhythm intensifies, which naturally signals that the climax is near. In the case of this flight—constantly balancing on the edge between the comic and the absurd—there is nothing more fitting than the realization that the plane is about to crash. Yet chaos does not ensue. Everyone seems aware of their fate and accepts it with surprising calm. The plane crashes, and the remains of the “wrecked” aircraft are transformed into a new space for interaction and for a comprehensive presentation of the festival’s idea, as well as of the other performances in the program. The experience itself—the process of sharing and collaboration—proves to be stronger and more meaningful than any predefined destination.
The performance, like the 180° Festival itself, does not offer ready-made answers about how art functions. Instead, it creates a field for experimentation in which both participants and audiences are invited to reconsider the established, allowing their perceptions and expectations of a final outcome to be turned 180 degrees. In this context, PARAD-ISO ceases to be a utopian endpoint and becomes a space in which mistakes do not exist, and the exchange of experience becomes a generator of meaning. As the other projects in the festival also demonstrate, the value of contemporary practice often lies in opening dialogue, posing questions, and creating new forms of communication. What matters is not reaching a conclusion, but initiating a conversation—and it is precisely this search for a beginning that makes the experience meaningful.
The CoLab Project 2025, included the emrging artists Simona Angelova (Bulgaria), Rossella Delvecchio (Italy), Iren Dimitrova (Bulgaria), Veronica Messinese (Italy), Dakota Wayne (Switzerland), Yehu Sha’ashua-Dar (Switzerland) and was mentored by the theater director Ksenia Ravvina. The project took place between 11 and 17 October 2025 in EquipaЖ Sofia as part of 180° – Laboratory for Innovative Art Festival 2025.
Andreya Gandeva holds a BA in Cultural Studies from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. In 2024, she completed the MA programme Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Studies Department of the National Academy of Art, where she is currently a PhD candidate. Since 2024, she has been part of the team of the art space KO-OP and the FIG Festival.
Vulnerability – Pipilotti Rist
by Boryana Savova
Times Square, located at the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue in New York, is a symbolic center of consumer culture. Its skyscrapers are almost entirely covered by a kaleidoscopic mosaic of bright digital screens. Across their surfaces, in various scales, the logos of familiar brands frequently appear, along with advertisements for products, clothing, cars, cosmetics, and countless other ideas of luxury. The clichéd imagery of advertising inscribes ideals of life largely defined by material acquisition, promising instant happiness and a sense of success.
In the year 2000, this place looked almost the same as it does today—with one notable difference. On one of the nearly 200 screens, instead of an advertisement, passersby could unexpectedly encounter the comically distorted face of Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist, appearing for the first time in Times Square through her digital video Open My Glade (Flatten). In the video, Rist herself interacts with—or rather struggles against—the surface of the screen. She attempts to push the invisible barrier away with her hands, presses her face against it, drags it across the surface, smearing her makeup onto the glass. The digital image appears to be trying to free itself from a claustrophobic, enclosed space, narrowly defined by external forces. The humorously distorted forms of the female face must have stood in sharp contrast to the idealized advertising images dominating the surrounding screens and billboards. The video reads as an act of protest, positioned in vivid opposition to its original context. The shock of encountering a naturalistic human image amid corporate fantasies is enough to pull any passerby out of the hypnotic spell of marketing promises.
Open My Glade (Flatten), accompanied by other works by Pipilotti Rist, was briefly presented at the Sofia-based gallery Credo Bonum. The artist’s colorful, immersive installations—which inspired American critic Peter Schjeldahl (The New Yorker) to describe her as an “evangelist of happiness”—were not among the works on view. Instead, the exhibition featured a small selection of some of her most significant video works from different periods. Removed from its original context, the video speaks more as an experiment in the perception of human vulnerability, to some extent setting the tone for the rest of the video installations.
Pickelporno is an alternative pornographic film, while Blutclip examines the process of menstruation as part of nature. In both works, naked bodies appear colossal in relation to the camera’s perspective. The fisheye lens mimics the logic of a “hidden camera,” while the close-ups appear expressionistic and abstract, presenting body parts as surreal images. In this way, the naked bodies—or rather their fragmented representations—escape the reach of the constructed gaze that would objectify and sexualize them, even within alternative pornography. Colors are often overexposed; green and magenta swap places, palettes are oversaturated, image overlays are introduced, along with pixelation and other digital glitches. Pipilotti Rist reminds us of the nature of her alternative worlds and installations, existing on the boundary between physical, natural realism and exuberant digital kitsch.
(Absolutions) Pipilotti’s Errors and I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much are earlier works and take a slightly different approach. Here, the primary expressive technique lies not so much in the method of filming as in post-production. Audio and visuals are slowed down or sped up, situations are replayed and repeated, images are blurred—sometimes sharpened—colors shift, and digital glitches emerge. In (Absolutions) Pipilotti’s Errors, the voice makes a series of personal confessions, but not in a whisper—through a megaphone. These confessions almost sound like a street protest, perhaps directed against the lack of openness in others. In I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much, Pipilotti sings the opening lines of the Beatles’ Happiness Is a Warm Gun, but in the first person. She describes the work herself as an exorcism—by repeating the lyrics like a mantra, she enters a trance, dancing and jumping to a rhythm that alternates between acceleration and slowdown. These two videos casually reveal personal processes and rituals of survival that most people have, but rarely share.
All the works presented reveal some aspect of human nature that can be understood as vulnerability or weakness. Pipilotti Rist does not offer recipes for dealing with these “problems”—doing so would amount to circumventing the human condition itself. The openness she brings to her work creates the possibility of perceiving vulnerability as something inevitable, natural, and positive. It can also be understood as an innate quality—universal, human, and shared—capable of bringing people closer together, regardless of how different our individual experiences may be. For this reason, her works speak a language that is universal.
The exhibition by Pipilotti Rist was part of DA! Fest 2025 and took place in Credo Bonum Gallery between 21 and 31 October 2025.
Boryana Savova is a visual artist and writer focused on contemporary art criticism. Her engagement with critical writing developed during her studies in the MA programme Art and Contemporaneity of the 20th–21st Century at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski,” where she wrote reviews and critical texts on exhibitions and films as part of the Master’s Studio course.
She previously studied Printmaking at the National Academy of Art and has participated in several solo and group exhibitions. She currently works for a non-governmental organization in the field of culture.
Just Dance: Trash
by Madlen Deleva
The dance performance titled Just Dance: Trash, features two women who conveyed a strong sense of power and authority from the very moment they stepped onto the stage. Alongside them stood a man who played an essential and functional role, maintaining the tempo and rhythm of the performance from beginning to end. What struck me was that at the very start he interacted with us, the audience, making us feel like an important part of the performance. He walked around the entire audience, looking each of us directly in the eyes, as if mentally preparing us for what was about to happen. It was clear that we, the spectators, were necessary to create the intended atmosphere—namely, that of a boxing match.
I did not expect to enter the space and find the stage raised in the center, shaped like a ring. At that moment, I felt as though one of my dreams was coming true, as I had always wanted to attend such an event. Everything felt so realistic that for a moment I forgot I was witnessing a dance performance rather than an actual boxing match. There was music, shouting, euphoria. We all waited impatiently for the stars of the night to appear.
Their entrance was impressive. They were completely immersed in their characters, and I even felt a slight sense of fear in response to their fierce presence. A fierce “fight” began. The performers’ movements were extremely precise and perfectly synchronized with the background music. It was evident that a great deal of hard work lay behind everything we saw. The rest moments between the “rounds” were carefully structured, and during them I noticed that the women never stepped out of character, not even for a moment.
During these short breaks, “advertisements” were projected onto the walls—highly effective in influencing the audience, as could be seen from their reactions. Within these “commercial breaks,” something emerged that one might encounter only on an independent stage like this one: a reflection of political reality. It was presented in a striking and provocative way—through the use of toys shaped like male genitalia. I would say this is a powerful association with the fact that power largely remains in the hands of men, both in personal and professional contexts. On stage, these women fought against this injustice with all their strength.
It was precisely through this “boxing match” that the performance demonstrated that women, too, possess the power to rule—not merely to remain in the shadow of the so-called “stronger” gender, which often resolves conflicts through violence. This idea was reinforced in the very final moment of the performance. The two women concluded their inspiring dance by shooting at each other with water pistols—once again shaped like penises. The water sharpened all my senses and left me with a fresh perspective on what had just taken place.
This dance performance both puzzled and impressed me. I rarely enjoy performances of this kind, as in most cases I struggle to understand them. But it made me reflect on the fact that perhaps it is not necessary to understand them, but rather to feel them. And Just Dance: Trash managed to affect me precisely in this way. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to see it.
I would like to emphasize that everything written here represents my personal perspective and my own way of perceiving what I witnessed.
“Just Dance: Trash” by Marion Darova and Yanitsa Atanasova took place on 17 October 2025 in Toplocentrala as part of ACT Festival 2025.
Madlen Deleva is a writer and actress based in Bulgaria. She began her artistic training at the theatre school Zlatnoto Klyuche, led by Siya Papazova, where she developed her interest in theatre and creative writing. During this period, she presented her own poetic texts within staged projects.
She is currently studying acting at New Bulgarian University in the class of Mariy Rosen. Her interests include theatre, literature, and music, and she works across different forms of expression, exploring the relationship between writing and performance.
Masterwork For Six Dancers
by Yves-Christian Angelov
“Masterwork For Six Dancers” challenges the very notion of the masterwork, rethinking dance tradition in a search for freedom—both for the body and for dance as a means of expression.
Originally created as a duo by Hungarian dancers and choreographers Emese Cuhorka and Csaba Molnár (and presented at Toplocentrala in 2021) under the title Masterwork, the piece entered the repertoire of the international dance collective En-Knap in 2023. Founded in 1993 by Slovenian choreographer Iztok Kovač, En-Knap remains to this day the only professional contemporary dance ensemble in Slovenia. The performance brings together leading figures from the Slovenian and Hungarian dance scenes in a work that challenges our understanding of the possibilities of dance as an expressive medium.
At its core, the piece is strongly influenced by Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet. Conceived in the early years of the 20th century, the Triadic Ballet is characterized by its strict structural adherence to the number three (three acts, three dancers, twelve dances, eighteen costumes) and its use of colorful, highly geometrized costumes. Schlemmer’s ballet—combining philosophical influences from Nietzsche, Musil, and Schoenberg—later became emblematic of the Bauhaus theatrical school.
By departing from rigid structure and geometrized costumes, Masterwork For Six Dancers foregrounds the dancer’s corporeality and the spontaneity of dance expression. The performers appear naked on stage—the geometric forms are replaced by abstract patches of color painted directly onto their bodies, while the clear boundaries between sections are erased through comic interruptions and the elongation of episodes.
Unlike the Triadic Ballet, the “costumes” here consist of everyday objects—handles, fans, yoga mats—that transform the dancers into different beings. Geometric form is not imposed by the object onto the dancer; rather, it is generated through the dancer’s use of the object in motion. The modernist impulse to reassess traditional forms and expressive means is here directed toward ballet, vaudeville, jazz dance, physical exercise, and avant-garde dance. The range of cultural references in the work is virtually inexhaustible, and the piece itself functions as an alternative history of bodily culture in the past century—dismantled, parodied, and reimagined.
The scenography is extremely simple, yet dynamic. The dancers are illuminated by warm stage lighting whose angle shifts several times throughout the performance. Only in the final section—referencing the “black” act of the Triadic Ballet—does the light grow cold. In Schlemmer’s ballet, the final act creates a mystical or fantastical atmosphere. In Masterwork For Six Dancers, however, the visual references point toward war and mourning—the colorfulness and humor of the earlier sections are absent.
The performance does not rely on a clear narrative or overarching framework. It begins with physical exercises performed at a rapid tempo and in near-complete synchrony (the choreography frequently plays with individual dancers slipping out of rhythm), accompanied by electronic music. Individual dancers enter and exit the group, disrupting both the mechanical quality characteristic of the Triadic Ballet and the classical hierarchy between soloist and corps de ballet.
Subsequent episodes unfold either in silence—emphasizing the percussive quality of the dancers’ movements—or against a backdrop of musical quotations from canonical ballet works, recontextualized by what occurs on stage. The lightness, purity, and weightlessness associated with classical ballet technique are undermined by provocative costumes and wooden clogs, which not only add a humorous layer to the choreography but also accentuate the ensemble’s synchronicity in group passages.
One of the work’s major strengths lies in its exploration of the transformative potential of working with props. The pain, discomfort, and vulnerability imposed on the dancers radically alter their stage presence. This is not merely a matter of the choreographers’ imagination, as evidenced by the endless transformations, but also of the object’s capacity to lead the body toward a form of corporeal otherness. It is no coincidence that the official description of the performance begins with the words: “Bodies without organs. Apologies again, Deleuze.” In contact with the object, the body gains the possibility to free itself from its own predetermined identity within dance tradition. It becomes other, discovering new points of support, centers of gravity, and uses that fundamentally transform the dancer. This potential is explored through numerous costume changes and a series of theatrical, surreal, and absurdist episodes enacted by the dancers’ bodies.
The sense of liberation generated by the performance’s many parodies extends beyond the bodies themselves. As one of the performers—the Slovenian dancer Tina Habun—noted during a post-performance discussion, the piece “allows dance to live its own life.” Masterwork For Six Dancers not only satirizes traditional dance language, exposing its artifice and absurdity, but in the same gesture succeeds in freeing dance from its own tradition. The nudity of the bodies, the naivety of the theatricality, and the encounter with objects—each element enables the body to become something other than its conventional dance function and, at the same time, to truly dance. Alienated from tradition, elegance, weightlessness, and absolute control, the dancers’ performance also alienates the spectator, revealing the humor, eroticism, fantastical quality, and raw corporeality that choreography might otherwise conceal.
Masterwork For Six Dancers demonstrates that a masterwork is not merely a piece defined by specific creative, formal, or philosophical qualities, but a space that allows one to be liberated and to move beyond oneself—whether as performer or as spectator.
“Masterwork For Six Dancers” by En Knap company took place on 24 November 2025 in Derida Stage as part of Derida Dance Fest 2025 in Sofia.
Yves-Christian Angelov is a writer, researcher, and sound artist based in Sofia. He holds degrees in Bulgarian Philology and Literary Theory from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and has published texts on trauma, writing as therapy, and the aesthetics of terrorism.
Since 2017, he has been active in experimental and noise music under the moniker nqma nikoi, as well as in various collaborative projects. His practice spans ecoacoustics, psychogeography, performance, and contemporary art. He is part of the experimental collective Maluk Ruchei, and his work has been presented at platforms such as Sofia Art Week, Sofia Underground, and BUNA.
The Clowns of Our Time
by Iuliia Holovchenko
We are on stage every day: in conversations, at work, in our attempts to maintain our own balance. The clown is funny not because they fall, but because they solve the simplest things in the most complicated way. It is precisely in this that we recognize ourselves.
We, too, often choose complexity where we could simply be. We spend enormous resources on psychotherapists, coaches, astrologers, searching for the key to ourselves. And yet, perhaps this key has long been nearby: in the circus, which we are used to perceiving as entertainment rather than therapy.
The circus is a forgotten form of self-knowledge, a place where the body, laughter, and error become part of healing.
The Clown as a Mirror of the Human
The history of clowning is the history of human nature. The first jesters appeared as early as the tombs of Memphis (2400 BCE) in Ancient Egypt. During the Middle Ages, the court jester could speak the truth to the monarch, because laughter always grants permission for sincerity.
In the 18th–19th centuries, clowning became an independent art form. Joseph Grimaldi in Great Britain created the stage image of the white-faced clown—bright, grotesque, yet deeply human. In France, Jean-Gaspard Deburau created Pierrot—the sad poet in white, who remains silent but speaks more than words.
The 20th century brought cirque nouveau—the new circus—which abandoned animals and transformed performance into a philosophy of movement. Cirque du Soleil, founded in Canada in 1984, turned circus into a theatre of emotions. There, animals are not trained; stories about the human condition are told.
Today, clowning is no longer only a stage practice, but also part of psychotherapy. In the 1990s, clown therapy emerged in hospitals in Israel and Italy, where laughter treats anxiety. In 2011, the scientific journal The Lancet published a meta-analysis of studies (Vagnoli L. et al., The Lancet, 2011) confirming the effectiveness of this method: laughter and play reduce fear of medical procedures and improve emotional well-being in both children and adult patients.
Psychologists explain that every time we recall the past, the brain recreates it anew. In our consciousness there is no objective “what was”—only new interpretations dependent on present experience. This is precisely why laughter, bodily action, and even the clown’s fall have a therapeutic effect: they allow memory to be rewritten not through pain, but through acceptance.
Cirkulation Festival (Cirkolution), Sofia, 2–5 October 2025
This year I found myself at the Cirkolution / Mini Art Fest 14 festival in Sofia, Bulgaria. It takes place at Toplocentrala, one of the most vibrant centers for contemporary art in the Balkans. Artists from more than twelve countries participated, including France, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Germany.
This is not simply a festival. There are no animals, no tricks—only people, bodies, sound, and movement. Contemporary circus in its “pure” form resembles a laboratory, where the human psyche is explored through the plasticity of the body.
An Island of Instability
In front of Toplocentrala there is a wooden platform. The boards move underfoot, and beneath them bells ring with every step. Someone laughs, someone grows tense—some have come to support a friend, a loved one, a colleague, others simply watch with amazement. It is cold outside, the wind carries voices. All of this resembles life, which never stays in one place.
During the performance, the actors fall, struggle with balance, search for ways to remain upright. First chaos, then rhythm.
And suddenly you realize: instability does not need to be tamed—it can be lived through.
If you cannot organize the chaos, systematize your actions.
And your perception.
I watched and saw myself. After a forced relocation to another country, I too stand on fragile boards—between identities, between languages, between “what was” and “what is.” And in that moment, among the bells and the boards, this was not just art for me.
It was a reminder: balance is not a state, it is a process.
“Three Men on Unstable Ground” is not simply a performance, but a parable of psychological balance in a world that constantly changes the rules of the game.
They fall, but they rise again.
Three men on unstable ground—that is all of us, who every day try to remain standing when what trembles beneath our feet is not a stage, but our own identity.
Status, or Its Absence
The following day, I attended a masterclass by Titania Chaos, an actress, psychologist, and clown working in Vienna. Her real name is Tatyana Petkova.
She spoke simply and precisely:
“Enter uncertainty.
Don’t try to be interesting—be interested.
Be present in the process.
React quickly.
Establish a connection with the audience.”
Her words sounded not like instructions, but like principles for living.
She explained the concept of “status” in clowning—it is a hierarchy that the performer creates and then loses. It is precisely the moment of losing status that provokes laughter, because we recognize ourselves in it.
Perhaps that is why this event resonated with me so deeply. I, too, am experiencing a crisis of status—a new country, new people, new meanings. And I understand: when you stop holding onto status, you begin to feel life.
The Clown as Psychotherapist
Clowning is not only the art of laughter.
It is psychotherapy without a couch.
When a performer falls on stage and the audience laughs, something deeper happens. The spectator relaxes because they see themselves in the clown—the one who also sometimes fails, stumbles, but continues.
“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”
— Victor Borge
Once, Sigmund Freud became famous not only because of his ideas, but also because his nephew Edward Bernays was a successful PR strategist. He knew how to “sell” even what people did not yet understand. Perhaps this is why psychoanalysis became a cultural phenomenon, not just a science.
After visiting Cirkolution, I thought: perhaps contemporary circus also needs its own Bernays? Or even an entire team of PR specialists to explain that circus is not entertainment, but philosophy in action.
As I was returning from the festival, it felt as if I were leaving not a circus, but a psychotherapy session. In a world where everything is unstable, where everyone strives for status, success, and control, I saw this: perhaps the only way to remain human is to allow yourself to be a clown. Not amusing, but real.
Because a clown is not the one who makes others laugh.
It is the one who has already stopped being afraid of looking ridiculous.
Iuliia Holovchenko is a communications and community professional based in Sofia. She works as a Community Manager at Humans in the Loop Foundation, leading growth and engagement across Eastern Europe, MENA, and East Africa. Her practice focuses on storytelling, event facilitation, and digital campaigns that bring together diverse perspectives and foster cultural dialogue.
Her background combines experience in digital marketing, project management, and content strategy, developed through years of work with international platforms and tools. Alongside her professional practice, she is interested in contemporary culture, performance, and critical reflection, exploring how communication and narrative shape collective experience.
CriticLab is funded by the Culture Programme 2025 of the Sofia Municipality.
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