The first shots from the newest festival on the Northern Black Sea are now available! Ritual Gatherings welcomed over 2,000 people to the beach at the mouth of the Kamchia River and impressed with a large, wooden stage and several light installations made especially for the event by FlipZurd stage design studio. Names such as Crazy P Soundsystem, Grammy-nominated Axel Boman, France's Traumer, the remarkable Ivan Shopov and Neiko Bodurov, Third Attempt, one of the most promising young names on the Norwegian electronic scene, one from the most current names of the Detroit electronic scene - DJ Holographic, and a number of Bulgarian artists who varied in styles from house, through disco and new jazz.
Ritual Gatherings also showed the first contemporary art exhibition on the beach in our country, curated by Martina Yordanova - curator at the National Art Gallery and Director of the 25th Gabrovo Biennale. More than 20 artists from Bulgaria and abroad took part in it. Some of them are popular, have reached the biggest galleries and international festivals, and another part are those that the Ritual Gatherings team had the pleasure of working with during their events in Kyustendil, Troyan and Shumen - artists who preserve local traditions and support local creativity and cultural life in these cities.
A key artistic manifestation of the concept of combining contemporary art, traditional crafts and rituals and one of the highlights of the program was the Norwegian artist Tine Surel Lange, who recreated a traditional Norwegian ritual in a new, multimedia format, with a live musical performance of 2 violins.
In addition to the night program, the festival offered a number of activities during the day to enthusiasts - from yoga, through gong meditation on the shore, stained glass workshops, making a natural repellent with oils and talks about traditional Bulgarian rituals. Visitors also had the opportunity to experience attractive water experiences such as kayaking on the Kamchia River, yoga on a sandbar and zorbing in the sea with Answear's floating balls.
The festival opened the first evening with a dinner on the beach for more than 100 people, seated at a 50-meter-long table and a menu specially prepared for the occasion by chef Filip Spasov, chef Vladislav Penov and the Kosmos restaurant team. This marks the dinner as one of the largest and most spectacular culinary events in our country, as the chefs had to cook on the beach, without electricity and a zero-waste menu in 5 degrees, and each course was paired with the boutique wines of the Corten Cellar. The table was located next to the huge white dune, and to remind about the importance of its preservation - the organizers had invited MP-Studio with a small part of Lunar - a festival of lights - a remarkable light installation - a hologram in the form of 7 human-sized flowers. The message to protect the beach and the animal species on it and the nearby reserve was also conveyed through jars of echinacea seeds that attract bees and each guest took with them to plant after the event. The gesture is a continuation of the previous initiatives of the 'ASORI' Association in the direction of the protection of endangered animal species and support of the truemed.bg platform.
A few days before the event, the organizers, with the help of the municipality of Avren and the teams of several large Bulgarian and foreign companies, as well as the Change the Picture initiative, cleaned the beach at the mouth, and the result was more than 100 bags of collected plastic and household waste.
The project partners are the municipalities of Avren, Kyustendil, Troyan and Shumen, the Museum of Folk Art Crafts and Applied Arts - Troyan, the Norwegian artistic collective Pikene på Broen and the annual cultural festival The Barents Spektakel in Norway, the Museum of Living Art/The Living Art Museum - Reykjavik, Iceland, National Art Gallery, Cosmos Restaurant, Gabrovo Museum of Humor and Satire, Sound Ninja Music Technology Academy and GLAS Foundation.
For photos, video and information about the next edition of the festival, follow www.ritualgatherings.com, the project's Facebook page and Instagram account.
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Ritual Gatherings: Traditional Rituals and Interactive Contemporary Art - Mechanisms for Building Communities and Achieving Sustainable Cultural Ecosystems” (Project BGCULTURE-2.001-0117-C01) is implemented with the financial support provided by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway under the EEA Financial Mechanism to the amount of EUR 199,984. The project is part of the OP “Cultural Entrepreneurship, Heritage and Cooperation” Result 2 “Improved access to arts and culture”.
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