FIG.FIVE

FIG.5 is starting the way we always should – together, dancing, dialed in, and loud.

This year’s theme is how we work together but honestly, how we party together says just as much. That’s why we’re kicking it off in collaboration with the ones who know how to do both: Berlin-based platform combining an artist agency, record label, and event concepts – @drob_am .

LINE-UP:
Stanly – the pulse-holder. Deep selecta. Clean execution.
Monikah – warm, body-level frequencies and that groove that hits soft and hard.
Davy @t.a.m.22_davy – elusive, glitch-slick, raw presence from the DROB core.

FIG x DROB.
Let’s get to work.

How We Work Together explores collective practices in the fields of graphic design, illustration, graphic arts, and visual arts. It delves into the ways collectives function, highlighting their structures, methodologies, challenges, and coping strategies. Through an interactive and participatory format, it examines the realities of collaboration, touching upon shared experiences, coproduction of knowledge, notions of understanding, solidarity, friction, disagreement, participation, conviviality as well as the subversive potential of collective work. 

This exhibition marks the opening of FIG. 5, the fifth edition of the Festival for Illustration and Graphics, which this year focuses on the theme of collaboration. FIG. 5 will investigate collective work across disciplines, from co-authorship and shared resources to mutual care and resistance. As its inaugural event, How We Work Together sets the stage for this exploration, gathering perspectives from collectives worldwide to create an evolving conversation around working together.

At its core, the exhibition is built upon an extensive survey of collectives, mapping their structures, decision-making processes, and coping mechanisms. Responses will be presented on a table, an object that facilitates work, negotiation, conviviality, and rest. Visitors will be invited to explore the collected insights through printed materials, annotated surfaces, and a digital platform, where they can contribute their reflections, expand a collaborative playlist, and browse reading lists and resources that have shaped the participating collectives.

By bringing together diverse voices, How We Work Together explores key questions of authorship, hierarchy, sustainability, and care. It considers how collectives balance friendship and labour, how they distribute responsibilities, and what happens when conflict arises. It also looks at collective work beyond practicality—how it fosters new ways of thinking, making, and resisting within an increasingly fragmented cultural landscape.

How We Work Together is a shared space of exchange, continuously shaped by those who engage with it. Whether through contributing to the growing archive, adding songs to the playlist, or simply gathering around the tables over coffee and snacks, visitors become participants in an ongoing dialogue about what it means to work together.

The exhibition is realised with the financial support of the National Culture Fund, and is part of the cultural calendar of Sofia Municipality, section “Significant Events..

RAWLAB will lead a two-day creative coding workshop inspired by Mruno Munari’s “Useless Machines,” which revolves around creating intentionally unproductive machines that challenge the relentless pursuit of technological progress in a hyper-efficient society – by doing nothing useful. This workshop will aim to rethink the human-to-technology relationship.

Participants in the project will explore AI-powered interaction using beginner-friendly tools and create user-reactive machines that respond to input, movement, sound, or even emotions in unexpected ways. The workshop will culminate with a showcase of the created useless machines: playful, unexpected creations that offer a break from today’s obsession with productivity and automation.

The workshop is creative coding beginner-friendly. Participants will be working with web-based tools that integrate AI algorithms directly in the browser. All you need to do is bring a laptop, and RAWLAB will provide you with the Wi-Fi password!

The workshop is open to artists, designers, students, and anyone curious about creative coding.

What does it take to be a freelance graphic designer in today’s fast-changing creative landscape? Whether you’re already freelancing or just curious about taking the leap, join us for a five-day shared studio in Sofia.

During the five-day workshop, hosted at Siesta Studio, participants will have the chance to work in a shared studio space in the center of Sofia. The workshop is led in collaboration between graphic designers Zahari Dimitrov (BG) and Paul Voggenreiter (DE). Project Swap is open to freelance practitioners but also to employed designers who are simply curious. Expect brainstorming, critiques, and group discussions to simulate a real-world freelance experience.

The workshop will blend actual client work, mentorship, and practical insights into freelancing. Participants need to apply with a project — find a local business or cultural organisation that needs a fresh visual identity. On the first evening, each participant will pitch the project and swap it with a fellow designer.

Over these 5 days each designer will receive guidance on the process, allowing them to sharpen their conceptual, design and presentation skills.

** Project Swap has an open walk-in policy. People are also welcome to stop by and ask a question and engage in a group discussion about it.

Every edition of the festival debuts a solo show by a young artist. FIG. 5 welcomes Lora Nestorova – her work is inspired by ancient cultures and myths, particularly the Mayan civilization, yet vibrant colors and humor add a playful but thought-provoking dimension to it. „This journey is not mine alone. It is a collaboration—between me, the myths, and a very special person who taught me to believe in them.”

To be Reborn you First have to Die a Little will take place in Charta Gallery. In the exhibition, Lora will be revisiting and showing the body of graduation works she created for her diploma in the ceramic bachelor’s program at NBU. 

The central question of the exhibition explores two pivotal and timeless concepts – apocalypse and sacrifice. The series of ceramic works are positioned on the intersection of ancient mythology and contemporary expression, creating a dialogue between past and present. They are a result of a collaborative journey between the artist, myths and her mentor. This taught Lora how to look at mythology as a living organism, allowing her to see these stories not as relics of the past but as forces that shape our present. 

Through her point of view the artist reimagines the concept of sacrifice and the apocalypse as a chance for creating destruction – where the end of one world gives rise to a new one, vibrant and full of life. 

ChattyPub is a collaborative and experimental editorial design and publishing workshop led by Hackers and Designers. H&D is a non-profit initiative and conglomerate (based in Amsterdam) of various artists and designers that organizes activities at the intersection of technology, design and art.

In their collective practice they create hands-on learning moments that promote the collaborative process across disciplines and technological literacy. H&D engage in creating tools that support the realms of communal experimental publishing and design as well as surpassing the traditional tools and forms used while designing.

ChattyPub is an experimental instant publishing tool developed by the collective. The workshop participants will explore its abilities to create a small publication, collectively and on the spot, using its interface to create layouts and take decisions about the narrative together.

Bring your own device (computer/tablet/phone) from which to join the platform and work with the tool. There will be a thermal print station on which zine output can be printed instantly. The workshop will accommodate different levels of engagement: participants may get involved in all layers of the publishing workflow (writing content, designing the publication with ChattyPub, coding the css styles that determine the design…) or choose to focus on just one aspect. 

Through a playful fusion of painting and sculpture, Paul creates a multidimensional space where form, colour, and humour coexist. At the same time, the show aims to start a discourse on how art, technology, and human ingenuity continually reshape one another. It reflects upon our relationship to creativity amidst a rapidly changing cultural context.

This show will concentrate on a dynamic exploration of the evolving crossroad between human creativity and artificial intelligence. Each piece begins as a collage of diverse image sources, carefully selected and transformed through a meditative process of layering and composition. This approach blurs the lines between the familiar and the unexpected, resulting in works that challenge conventional perspectives about these topics.

Loose Threads is a risoprint pattern workshop inspired by the diploma work “Paper Thread” of the Polish graphic designer Radek Gorniak.

Paper Thread tells the story of the Kowary Karpet Factory, situated at the base of the Karkonosze Mountains in south-western Poland. After upgrading its production methods in the 1960s, the factory grew to an impressive enterprise that employed over 3000 workers, exporting woven carpets worldwide. The carpet patterns were first meticulously hand-painted on paper by a team of female designers and then used to program the weaving machines. In 2009 the factory closed its doors, leaving behind little of its impressive library of designs.

In this risography workshop in Slopi Kopi, the Polish graphic designer Radek Gorniak will delve into his research-based methodology. He will make a short introduction about his practice and other relevant examples of artists doing site work/research, emphasizing the playful and visual aspects of this type of practice. Radek will also introduce the concept of non-traditional archiving by active artistic gestures and recontextualizing found material. Then will dive into a short historical overview of the textile and carpet industry in Bulgaria.

During the first day of the workshop, the participants will look at and analyse examples of textile designs and patterns – how they are built, what their rhythms are, are they a closed composition or do they repeat endlessly. After that exercise, the participants will work hands-on to create one, by choice – digitally or analog. The first day of the workshop will conclude with a discussion of the created materials.

During the second day of the workshop, together with Radek we will create a layout and editorial for a publication where every participant will have a section of the zine. Finalize the designs and print the publication collaboratively.

*The workshop will also include a short introduction for beginners about how the riso works and about color separation, so no experience in riso printing is needed.

Spolia is a collaborative exhibition between the artists Jannis Zell and Lisa Ertel. The exhibition will take place in the spaces of the Regional History Museum of Sofia located in the Parliament’s underpass. The space is positioned within the remnants of Roman archeological layers of Sofia that are frozen in a state between past and future. The environment in which the exhibition will take place recalls the practice of spolia, where remnants of older structures are repurposed, carrying traces of one time into another.

The artists will present their own spolia: materials shaped through collaborative encounters. Wood cut by beavers, traced by bark beetles, marked by human hands. Stones hovering between movement and stillness. Objects that are not quite finished, not quite abandoned – paused in transition.

By presenting this work, they ask what material is carried forward and remains in time and what disappears, as well as who really is the author of the displayed fragments.

Painting the Clouds is a mural painting workshop for children from Concordia Youth and Social Center in Sofia. The workshop is led by Alexi Ivanov, who is a multidisciplinary artist and illustrator with a focus on urban muralism.

The workshop will take place over a couple of days, in which the children will learn about the conceptual and technical process behind it, as well as paint the mural together. The mural will be based on their interests, hobbies, dreams, and collaborative spirit, allowing them to explore the concepts of togetherness and collaboration. The children will develop their characters and composition, which will later on, during painting become one coherent piece.

The workshop will be held in collaboration with Concordia Youth and Social Centre in Sofia. The mission of Concordia is to provide sheltered housing and educational opportunities for young people from marginalised communities.

Book Monologue is a two-day workshop led by Viktoria Staykova and Maria Valkova dedicated to the visual language of communicating through images. It is inspired by the publication Talk Soon by Erik Kessels and Thomas Sauvin.

The workshop will take place in AVRTKL and will have two groups: one working with found postcards, the other with images discovered online.

Together, the participants will create a collective book where the images communicate with each other. They will share their perceptions of the world through exploring pictures, emojis, and memes as well as postcards, photographs, photo letters, and mail art.

On the evening of 07.06 FIG. teams up with Goethe-institut Sofia in an evening of screening movies created by the collective Metahaven. Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden are a Dutch collective known for their groundbreaking work on the intersection of design, art, and politics. Their work spans various media, including film, visual design, and writing, often addressing themes related to digital culture, propaganda, and geopolitics.

During FIG.5, for the first time in Bulgaria, two of their movies will be screened in the summer cinema of Goethe-institut Sofia.

The Feelings Sonnet (2024)

This film is a collective adaptation of Eugene Ostashevsky’s poetry, shaped through years of creative exchange. Based between Berlin and New York, Eugene’s work intersects with ours through a shared fascination with illogical poetry and linguistic play. Since 2017, our collaborations have spanned film, translation, and live discussions.

The film brings together voices and sounds in a layered dialogue: Eugene’s poetry is embodied by Amélie Haest, scored by inti figgis-vizueta, with cello contributions from Vesper (their daughter) and Aliona Ciobanu, a close collaborator of theirswho  has worked on electronic sounds with the cello. We filmed alongside two cinematographers, crafting a visual language that plays with palindromes and time reversals.

Chaos Theory (2021) is a film about patterns, unpredictability, and the ways language bends over time. Inspired by Eugene Ostashevsky’s poetry, it explores how small disruptions can shift meaning, creating a space where logic and absurdity coexist.

The screening is realised with the support of Goethe-Institut Bulgaria.

Join us for an insightful conversation with Jannis Zell, Metahaven and RawLab, exploring the role of collective practice in contemporary art and design. Both guests bring unique perspectives on collaboration, authorship, and shared creative labor, offering reflections on its significance in shaping critical and experimental work today.

“The Quarantine” is an international short film festival aimed at popularizing young and unknown authors among professional filmmakers’ circles. The festival is organized on a completely voluntary basis, there are no screening fees and nobody receives any payment. The festival takes place on the beach at “The Quarantine” fishing village which is the last standing fishing village in Varna, Bulgaria. The village is in danger of disappearing because a luxury residential complex is under construction on the coastline behind it. By provoking cultural exchange between contemporary artists from the whole world and locals, they intend to turn the fishing village into a culture and art zone and to preserve the fishermen’s way of life. For FIG they curated a selection of animation movies.

The screening is realised with the support of Hyperspace Hub.