Greetings to everyone. Wishing you a very productive and creative 2026!
This first post of the year marks a new, tentative step for Clickbait Citizen: A long-format video-podcast which adds a third dimension to the project. Written texts and audio-podcast are now going to be accompanied, from time to time, by videos made with the help of a small yet dedicated team.
Clickbait Citizen was designed as a deep dive into the relationship between art and culture, power and politics. Sometimes the word ‘propaganda’ is used. But I often try to avoid that word. Why? Because almost all art and culture is in a dynamic relationship with power and politics - the sea in which it swims. So what is and is not propaganda is sometimes a question of propaganda itself! During 2025 the thirty written publications and thirteen audio podcasts explored multiple facets of this subject from both historical and contemporary perspectives. I sincerely hope you will join me during 2026 - as the questions keep arising in this vertiginous universe we inhabit.
In this video I take a leisurely hour to talk to curator and dear friend, Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva, about her exhibition ‘The Monumentals’ at the Kapana Gallery in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. I hope that many of you will immerse yourselves in this masterclass from Svetlana on the role and responsibilities of curating in the contemporary world. I had the huge pleasure of visiting the exhibition on more than one occasion and to delve into the materials and exhibits, the art works and documents, and the politics of the epoch in which they were produced.
Project for a mural in Rozovetz
Encho Pironkov
I take a walk around the city of Plovdiv most mornings - it has become my home over the last decade. With the Rhodopi mountains (birthplace of the mythical musician Orpheus) continually in my sight to the south, the Balkan mountain range in sight to my north, with Greek and Turkish borders so close and their cultural influences even closer, this city is a palimpsest of cultural traces, political epochs and living struggles. As I walk through the city the works by the artists featured in ‘The Monumentals’ are ever present. Some remain in pristine condition, while others are ‘hanging on’ under layers of grime or spray-paint graffiti or simply fading away due to the time, let along political epochs, which has elapsed since their creation. It is also a city of artists - past and present. Indeed Svetlana is one of them. She was Artistic Director of Plovdiv, European Capital of Culture in 2019.
The palimpsest known as Plovdiv
The exhibition is 100% Clickbait Citizen material. Watch the video and you will see and hear why. It’s a symbolic homage to the work of the legendary “Plovdiv Five”: Georgi Bozhilov – The Elephant (1935–2001), Dimitar Kirov (1935–2008), Yoan Leviev (1934–1994), Encho Pironkov (1932–2025), and Hristo Stefanov (1931–2013). Known as “the magnificent ones” they negotiated Bulgarian manifestations of Stalinism, made art works for what we now blithely describe as ‘public space’, were the drivers of the artistic “thaw” of the 1960s and 1970s, and changed the face of art beyond the boundaries of the official doctrine. Encoded in the conversation with Svetlana is, I hope, a proposal for how we might see such art as an opportunity to explore ideas such as contestation of cultural heritage, how art has a power to make public memory, how culture and the arts are rarely neutral but rather ‘negotiate’ a interwoven path with political power. The question which remains open, at least in my mind, is whether art is ever a pure manifestation of power itself.
The exhibition was curated by Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva.
The graphic and exhibition design was by Nikol Decheva and Krasimir Stavrev.
Thursday, November 13, 2025 – Sunday, January 11,2026 at Kapana Gallery, Plovdiv.
Video - МОНУМЕНТАЛНИТЕ - The Monumentals:
Concept - Clickbait Citizen: Chris Baldwin
Producer - Gina Kafedjian
Studio Manager - Antonio Matishev
Composer - Paul Alan Barker
