Ani Kodjabasheva ’08

Interview by Petia Ivanova '97

When Ani and I arrange to meet in the space that is home to the The Collective foundation, I can feel a conviction in her voice that the place will impress me. The Maria Luiza Blvd. address doesn’t say much to me, so I let that conviction of hers guide me; I rarely have off-campus meetings, so I welcome the opportunity to do something different somewhere different. When I enter the loft on the top floor of the building and a little later step onto the U-shaped balcony that surrounds it, I am stunned. The whole of Sofia is in front of me, the central part at my feet, and the horizon stretches from Vitosha to the Balkan Mountains. Later, Ani will mention the importance of physical space, how it creates connections. In this space, which they are using with the permission of the district municipality in exchange for first renovating it, regular training, design workshops, exhibitions and meetings like ours take place. On the whiteboard, I see a monthly calendar – a long line dotted with events and locations in Bulgaria. “Everything is always in the making,” is one of the first things Ani shares with me.

So, Ani, what have you been up to since graduating from ACS back in 2008? You studied art history at Vassar, Oxford, and Columbia University – impressive! Were you drawn to art and its history while at the College?

Mm-yeah, you could say that after ACS I started studying and then I felt like more and more studying, earning one diploma after another, I kind of got into that groove, learned how to be a student and then a researcher, until at some point I had to stop myself and wonder what I was doing and what I was really meant to be doing.

My interest in art and design came while I was an ACS student. My family had nothing to do with culture and art. As I had moved from Ruse to Sofia, I found what I saw in the capital super inspiring. Attending Sofia Design Week was one such experience that left a super strong impression on me. Now, I like to think of The Collective as the next generation of designers following in the footsteps of the Sofia Design Week team. We are even working with some of them now.

I discovered my hometown of Ruse and its culture a bit late through our work with The Collective there. We met a lot of great people from the independent cultural sector with whom we still collaborate. I felt like I had to travel halfway around the world to truly see my birthplace. But I guess that’s how it goes sometimes, the hard way.

At ACS, I was in the humanities profile, literature being my favorite subject. I even wrote poetry. I would occasionally go to a gallery with classmates — I remember the Red House, which used to be a vibrant place for culture and art. All the exhibitions and cultural events there seemed magical to me. The very idea that you could create something new, change your environment — I hadn’t seen anything like that in Ruse. It’s not that it didn’t exist, I just wasn’t aware of it.

Our BLL teachers would take us to the theater. I have vivid memories of Petya Rousseva, Rashel Baruch, Nina Rumenova, and Vanya Dimova. I took Rumyana Rangelova’s creative writing elective class. Before that I didn’t know there was such a thing at all. All these teachers instilled a feeling that culture is something living, you don’t just look at it in the textbooks and learn about it, that there are people out there who create it. When the teacher herself is an artist — Petya Rousseva was a playwright and an Icarus Award winner even then — we were in an environment where people were doing things, where we were doing things, instead of just looking at what someone else had done somewhere else. Instead of a boring education, an active education, learning by doing – that’s what I remember from my literature classes at the College. The assignments they gave us were very exciting in that department. I remember my very first homework assignment in eighth grade. It was supposed to be a reading log for the required summer reading books, only this time we had to say what we thought about the books, a very novel idea to me at the time. There happened to be one book I didn’t like very much, but since the assignment was to say what I really thought, I did it — of course, with argumentation. And Ms. Rumenova had liked that text and her comments were positive. Then in the later grades, 11 and 12, we had an assignment to make an anthology of works that were important to us, our own anthology. I really appreciated the creative atmosphere.

With my strong interest in literature, when I entered the world of visual art, I encountered a yet new type of magic, it was indescribable. Along with the exhibitions at the Red House, I remember seeing design objects and installations around the city. We would walk around downtown and see on the street events happening, interventions visible. I was very impressed by a temporary installation on Slaveykov square, where the French Institute is now. It was an empty building back then and in it – this super magical atmosphere with lights, temporary materials, and furniture.

I wonder if you are tempted to live and work somewhere where there are many more people like you. A place in the world that more people associate with design than Sofia, I don't know, Berlin, New York or Copenhagen.

I did live in Berlin for a year in between my studies. I really liked the vibrant culture there, which I feel here, as well. Maybe there was even more of it there, yes. Art not as something framed that you look at, but rather art as part of life, your life. Be it a music event or an exhibition or something else, it’s just your life, the everyday you share with your friends, a culture close to you that you get to participate in.

So yeah, I’ve been to places like that, places with more prestige. You do what you have to do, what’s expected. However, I felt that the context was very important and so were the people you work with. Say you’re in a famous place, so what? Sometimes, it even has the opposite effect. If a place is so famous for design, things are bound to sort of stand still at a certain point, much like the cycle of life – there’s the turbulent development, when you create and create. It was like that in Berlin, a culture that was alive and very much part of people’s lives.

In New York, I felt more of a standstill. I lived in Manhattan, near the university, where those pursuing their Master’s and PhDs were housed. I guess it is not just the location, but also the moment in time, and the environment you’re immersed in. Not to imply that there weren’t places in New York where there was more experimenting and creating going on, places that draw me much more than those with framed art. New York City also has a history of super tumultuous creation, back in the ’70s and ’80s: when the financial crisis with its derelict buildings coexisted with a thriving music scene and art scene, with Patti Smith and her friends living their best creative lives. That’s not what I came across though.

Here in Sofia, I was inspired by things like Design Week –, if no masterpiece, still something new that was changing the environment, paving the way for more such things to happen, for more people to dare to try something new. Something that had the potential to become a regular thing, a thing that lasts… or to stagnate, obviously depending on all sorts of external factors, including generational change. It is great to see good examples from all over the world of what’s possible and let your imagination run wild even more. Mere studying what has come before is not for me though. I’d rather be in an environment where we’re doing something, here and now. Sometimes being in a place off the beaten track has an advantage. That’s what happened in Berlin. Artists purposely went there at a time when the city was a cold wasteland, set right on the Iron Curtain, with a lot of problems, a place far from ideal. Gradually, it grew into a magnet for artists, one after the other. Creative energy began to pour in, a feeling came about that anything was possible, or at least that something was possible, that we could make change, do it our way. That’s what I felt as The Collective was getting started. It is extremely valuable to work in your own context, to respond to what you know so well and see in front of you.

I was studying art history, and eventually the history of architecture became my major and the subject that interested me the most, probably because it always exists within a context. In architectural design you always work with what you have at hand. You are looking at what is possible, not what is ideal. I find that very curious. In practice it leads to more creation and as a result to more meaningful things. Yes, there is some ideal case that we can think about on an abstract philosophical level, but it’s quite another thing to see clearly what is in front of you and work with that, with the people, the materials, the finances you have – that’s how things happen. Otherwise, we are just sitting around saying, “Ah, if things had only been different. See, I don’t have this or that.” Well, no, you don’t but here is a different place, and yes, there are some things missing, but there are others at hand, and they, too, are valuable.

In The Collective we believe in starting from what we have instead of giving in to nihilism and complaining why it is not otherwise, which is a very counterproductive practice. It’s interesting to work with designers because they are people who don’t like talking, they like doing: if someone starts talking a lot, at some point the designers get fed up and say “OK, let’s do something” and something starts taking shape and is tested in practice. Designers avoid philosophizing. While it’s important to have clear values and a clear idea of what you’re doing, it’s also important to start somewhere.

The Rivers of Sofia was the first and most vivid example of this. It’s easy to say, “Change is hard work. The issues are so multilayered and so muggy, literally and figuratively. It will take decades to fix Sofia’s sewers. Who’s ever going to start it? It’s not going to happen.” There hasn’t been any meaningful change since the stone beds of the canals were built in the 1940s. It was, back then, the largest and most important infrastructure project aimed at keeping rivers from spilling over so that the city could grow.

Now the goals are quite different. While it was about channeling the rivers back then, it is about preserving the biodiversity of nature now, having it accessible to the people in the city, thinking about nature-based solutions and looking for a way to keep the rivers in their natural beds. And to make the already built stone channels more accessible, something that did happen during the festival. When you encounter the attitude “This is how it is around here, it’s been like this for over 70 years” you don’t give in, in spite of all the talk about how it’s not possible and in spite of the abstract plans that will never be implemented, you go ahead and do something.

I joined The Collective after the first edition of the Rivers of Sofia festival, done by the bravest enthusiasts in the autumn of 2020. It was literally three people and their friends and family who helped with whatever they could: resources, manual labor, hauling. The budget was paltry for a festival — a little help here and there from friends and a few sponsors. Artist friends created and donated works. So something good appeared pretty much out of nothing. Sometimes you just make your way by doing. Doing brings about more energy. People see the result and say to themselves, “Something is happening.” It is visible, it can be shown. Moreover, people are happy to be coming together. Even for the simple exercise of seeing what we do have, under our nose, instead of looking for things missing or comparing ourselves to something else.

When working with students on events and design initiatives, we start with an active looking exercise: we go to a place, perhaps a place they usually avoid or haven’t thought about at all – like some of the more neglected riverfront areas in Ruse, for example – and we start looking together. We ask questions such as “What do you see? What impresses you?” This is part of the creative process. Seeing clearly what is there, really seeing it, and then asking yourself why it’s like that, imagining how it could change. Starting from a specific place is great, that’s how things work in the end. Whether for building communities, urban planning, democracy or active citizenship – first we have to come together in physical space.

Another thing to keep in mind is we were the first generation to really grow up with and on the internet, which has influencеd us in making us more passive. We often sit alone, look at our screens. In contrast, when we come together in physical spaces, we open up possibilities. An energy emerges that is much more than the sum of our individual energies. New ideas are born, and things happen. This is participation, democracy, citizenship. It’s so energizing when we come together with young people and we can pass along the idea that they can change their environment quite literally.

In fact, that’s exactly how I met Martin, the founder of The Collective. I was part of a working group for students and other enthusiasts interested in the river festival; we were invited to share ideas on how the initiative for Sofia’s rivers should go forward and we worked on concrete proposals. Later, some of those ideas were incorporated into subsequent editions of the festival and various urban intervention projects.

In 2021, we started working with young people even more purposefully; this became part of our main activities and takes place in more cities now. This year, we held workshops in Gabrovo; last year, in Ruse we worked with students from local technical schools who have the relevant skills. It was super interesting to look together, to see in a new way, and to think how it could be different. The students came up with things that we built together literally with our hands and then the results of our efforts stayed there for the summer. This way we shortened the urban development cycle, which usually takes years.

Do you have a favorite project, festival or intervention, as you say, that you’ve been involved with?

The project involving the young people for Rivers of the City – Ruse edition was very close to my heart. They were directly involved: they came up with designs and then the place on the Danube riverfront was reshaped based on those designs. To see 20-30 young people realize that not only do they have ideas that they can work on together, but that they can execute them, create something totally different, and then have thousands of people from the city come to admire this place that they have transformed – amazing! At the end of the program, some of them shared that they felt like they had found their craft.

How do you see the role of ACS in your life path so far?

It’s been a great start and has awakened my curiosity about many things. We’ve been super lucky to get a good education, travel the world, and see wonderful places and great things. We’re scattered though – some of us in the States, some in the UK, some elsewhere. My personal experience felt a bit like a disconnect when I suddenly had to go so far away, in my case to the US, after I had just established this connection to the culture of the city here. We’re now rebuilding the lost connection, it feels like starting all over again. Even though I’m in the same places physically that I used to go to, they’re different. The network of people I interact with is different. I actually don’t know many alumni that are not from my own class or neighboring classes. Dimiter Kenarov, ACS Class of 1999, is an exception; I’m a big fan of his work and admire everything he does, but I can’t think of any others right now.

But yeah, everything has gone great since I came back, things have started to fall into place. We’ve been living in a somewhat miraculous time – peace in our country, we’re able to create freely, imagine all sorts of beautiful things and create them. I hope we never lose that.

Our organization has a strong mission: we want to make our corner of the world a good place to live for everyone. We want to show more people, especially young people, that they are full citizens of their city and of Bulgaria; that their ideas can lead the way, and they can be what they dream of. Because the reality in Bulgaria, especially in some parts of Bulgaria, for example in the north, for example in Ruse, is that many of the young people can’t wait to leave their hometown, to go somewhere else where they will actually have the opportunity to develop, be themselves, and achieve something. That was also the case for my generation — many of us did leave. Many are now coming back.

At The Collective, we want to create opportunities. We want to promote this idea that anything you wish to see somewhere else, if you hang in there and get support from your peers, your classmates, and others in your community – you can literally do anything you want in your town. The hunger is there, the desire is there. So many people flocked to the new space in Ruse for months. We were amazed by how quickly it happened, too.

We don’t do things with the idea that they are a one-time thing and then move on. We want to build something that is sustainable, that is our future, and attract young people to this common future. All in all, it is a very serious and long-term undertaking. We do temporary and short-term interventions, as well, of course…

But even with the short-term ones you seem to show people what can be done in the long term, share ideas, plus there are the regular festivals you organize…

That’s right. The Ruse festival and the events in the other towns where we’ve set foot have become annual.

And what’s coming up in your event calendar next?

The biggest upcoming event of 2025 is of course The Rivers of Sofia at the end of August 2025. There is no shortage of ideas – we are currently looking at a couple of new places we have not been to yet.

I can think of one place you haven’t been lately – at ACS. It’s not quite up your alley, but it’s such a nice and special place.

Yes, the Mladost area lacks green spaces like the ACS campus. The complicated access is stopping me. While I lived in the neighborhood, or when I was working on a project in the Business Park, I often said to myself, Hey, I’m two steps away, why don’t I go to the College, but then I thought how I have to call in advance, how they’ll check my documents at the Ministry of Interior gate like at a border crossing, and I lose my enthusiasm. I find the site’s history and how times and different eras affect spaces very interesting though, so I will visit one day.