Vitto Valentinov

THE MISSION is a participatory project proposal. It was part of the NINE ELEPHANTS exhibition from the Swimming Pool Project Space.

Two participants stand in designated areas (П-shaped constructions - goalkeeper doors without nets in inter-block spaces). In this arrangement, the two performers are far enough apart that they cannot communicate verbally. To transmit messages to each other, they use hand gestures.

On the streets, in the gardens, in the spaces between the blocks and everywhere in the city there are many abandoned or worn objects, structures and parts of buildings. I like to use things that already exist, but long defunct or with a banal purpose. To give them a metaphorical meaning, to activate them in the role of play equipment, to turn them into props for fictions. All objects placed in cities are created to serve us - practically. I want them to have another layer of significance. To have another type of relationship with them – a symbolic one.

As an artist, I am excited about the constant return to the body, both as a metaphor and as a performative process, because no matter what we have invented in our thousand-year history, the human body remains the most precise technology that we apply always and everywhere. For me, games and gamification define the relationship building approach. The playful interaction of transmitter and receiver, of encryption and decryption of messages, gives a field for tangible action to the participants, who are not just passive observers, but active participants.