180° opens its 13th edition with the first night of 180° SHUM – a new format dedicated to experimental and electronic music, sound art, improvisation and the spaces in between.

For its opening night, SHUM brings together international and local artists for a sequence of individual live sets and performances. Rather than following a traditional concert format, the evening moves between different musical languages and practices – from acoustic and electronic experimentation to sound performance and club culture.

The night begins with live performances and gradually shifts towards the dance floor, where electronic sounds take over later in the evening.

SHUM is also the starting point for the encounters that will continue throughout the festival. Some of the artists presented individually on Friday will meet again the following night at Bobbina in new constellations, leaving their prepared work behind and entering into spontaneous collaborations and improvisations.

Participants:
Dietmar Wiesner, Mihaela Dobreva, Sergej Leonov, Stefan Hadjiev, Sednoid and more

Timetable: tba

After Friday’s individual performances, 180° SHUM continues on Saturday at Bobbina Cultural Space with a night dedicated to collaboration, improvisation and unexpected encounters.

The artists leave their prepared sets behind and meet each other in new constellations. Throughout the evening, musicians and performers with different backgrounds and practices come together for a series of improvised sets created especially for the night.

There is no predefined repertoire and no fixed outcome. Instead, the evening becomes an open experiment – a space for listening, reacting, taking risks and discovering what can emerge when artists who may have never worked together before share the stage.

Moving between acoustic and electronic sound, experimental music, improvisation and performance, the second night of SHUM shifts the focus from the individual artist to the encounter itself.

Participants:
Dietmar Wiesner, Mihaela Dobreva, Sergej Leonov, Stefan Hadjiev, Sednoid and more

Timetable: tba

The third and final evening of 180° SHUM takes place at Central Halls with Dietmar Wiesner, flutist, composer and co-founder of Ensemble Modern, together with a group of young local musicians.

Following an afternoon workshop led by Wiesner, the musicians will present the results of their collective work – developed through experimentation, composition and free improvisation.

The second part of the evening turns to Panayot Kenkov’s Bulgarian silent film Resort Dream (Курортен сън) from 1926, exactly 100 years after its creation. The film’s journey between reality, dreams and seaside adventures will receive a new soundtrack, created live by the ensemble as the images unfold.

Connecting to Fabula Absoluta, the theme of 180° in 2026, the evening asks how a story can be rediscovered and retold through sound – a century after it was first captured on film.

The event is presented in collaboration with the Bulgarian National Film Archive and Kaufland Bulgaria.

Nine emerging artists from Switzerland, Croatia and Bulgaria meet in Sofia for the first time: Ivet Dimitrova, Ludmilla Mercier, Martin Marijanović, Martina Jembrišak, Peter Denchev, Sebastijan Sarapa, Sergei Leonov, Timm Cornelius and Yoanna Tuchkova.

Coming from music, performance, visual and digital arts, they enter a collaborative process with the support of theatre director Ksenia Ravvina – without a predefined form or expected result. They have only a few days to explore each other’s practices, experiment, improvise and discover where these encounters might lead.

Under this year’s theme Fabula Absoluta, the first evening opens the process to the audience. What will happen is still unknown – and that is precisely the point.

The LAB° is developed in partnership with Music Biennale Zagreb and with the support of Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.

Unmasking Nature by Irish neurodivergent artist AlanJames Burns explores the question: what does it mean to be neurodivergent in nature?

Through sensory cues, textures and tiny details, the work explores biodiversity, stimming and more-than-human communication through a neurodivergent lens – drawing connections between patterns in nature and different ways of sensing and moving through the world.

Presented at Travelers Club, Unmasking Nature is part of an EFFEA collaboration between 180° – Laboratory for Innovative Art (Bulgaria), Scena Ribnjak (Croatia) and A&E (UK), with the support of Culture Ireland.

LAB° I Day 2
19:30 | Vhod B

The process continues.

Ideas from the previous days can disappear, transform or lead somewhere completely unexpected. Different artistic languages begin to intersect – sound, image, space, movement and performance become material for collective experimentation.

Fabula Absoluta continues to unfold, not as a fixed narrative, but as something being written and rewritten through the encounters between the nine artists.

On the second evening, the doors open once again and the audience enters the process while it is still evolving.

How can cultural spaces and organisations become more accessible – not only in theory, but in the way we actually work together?

Irish artist AlanJames Burns leads a workshop at HyperSpace Social Tech Hub exploring accessibility within the cultural sector, with a particular focus on working with neurodivergent artists.

Drawing from their own artistic practice and lived experience, Burns opens a practical conversation around barriers, access needs and the conditions that can enable more inclusive artistic processes and collaborations.

The workshop creates a space for exchange, questions and reflection – looking at accessibility not as an addition to cultural work, but as something that can be considered from the very beginning.

The workshop is presented in partnership with ACT – Association for Independent Theatre.

Unmasking Nature (Installation)

16:00 – 18:00 | Travelers Club

Unmasking Nature by Irish neurodivergent artist AlanJames Burns explores the question: what does it mean to be neurodivergent in nature?

Through sensory cues, textures and tiny details, the work explores biodiversity, stimming and more-than-human communication through a neurodivergent lens – drawing connections between patterns in nature and different ways of sensing and moving through the world.

Presented at Travelers Club, Unmasking Nature is part of an EFFEA collaboration between 180° – Laboratory for Innovative Art (Bulgaria), Scena Ribnjak (Croatia) and A&E (UK), with the support of Culture Ireland.

LAB° I Day 3
19:30 | Vhod B

After several intensive days of working, experimenting and questioning together, the nine artists reach the final public evening of the laboratory.

But there is no demand for a finished work. What is shared can remain fragile, unresolved or still in transformation – a glimpse into what has emerged from the time, space and encounters they have shared.

The final evening of Fabula Absoluta brings this collective experiment to a close without necessarily giving the story an ending. Some stories, after all, are more interesting when they remain open.