Natalia Jordanova (b. Sofia, Bulgaria) is an interdisciplinary artist working with a variety of media to create context-aware installations, which combine sculpture, video, sound, text, and drawing. Currently, she is concluding a master programme at Dirty Art department of Sandberg Institute in The Netherlands. Previous education includes BA Fine Arts from Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (2018), BA Photography from the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Bulgaria (2013) and and participation in the Erasmus programme at Central Saint Martins in London (2017).

Natalia Jordanova is interested in investigating and drawing parallels between the unstable state of meta-modernity and the current human condition, defined by the relationship between human and technology, image and language mediation and the new understanding of materiality. 

In 2018 she was nominated for BAZA Award for contemporary art, Bulgaria. Her work has been exhibited internationally including presentations at Sofia Art Week 2019, Magma Festival at Kanal Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2019), The Common Inn at Het Nieuwe Institute, Rotterdam (2019), Untouched Intimacies at NEVERNEVERLAND, Amsterdam (2019), The Nudist on the Late Shift, The Hague (2018), Supervue, Liège, Belgium (2018), W139, Amsterdam (2017), Lockers, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017), The Old Police Station, London (2016), (De)Quantify Me!, TENT, Rotterdam (2016), The Fridge, Sofia (2016), Institute for Performance and Theory project, Haspel Art Centre, Sofia (2014), Trans–Ideology Short Film Festival, Berlin (2012).

She is currently based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 

Contact
Email: nataliqiordanova@gmail.com
Website: www.nataliajordanova.com

Natalia Jordanova
Photo: archive of the artist.

Museum of Non-Human Ethics after The Fifth Law is the name of a video work and sculptural installation. This doubled signification results in a coded reference riddle. Within a sculptural installation, objects appear as artifacts from the near future, which humanity is currently constructing. An avatar welcomes you both into a real and digital context, leaving open the question of what space we are confronted to, and what it means to preserve materiality in the future. Translated into their digital versions in the film, the sculptures’ materiality and empirical data are preserved. They become part of the image circulation, bypassing physical distance, concerning the body in presence. The museum, as proposed, is placing us in a speculative scenario in which ethics are assigned to non-human, human-created entities. Whether or not they possess rights, is not a question of 2084, but of today.

It is problematic to understand the idea of claiming responsibility of non-human entities since we don’t assign consciousness to those. Even not being fully described and explained, consciousness has been never assigned to animals either. This anthropocentric belief hence becomes the premise of considering rights and ethics intrinsic only to human. The question remains – how we understand those principles in time of accelerated change and redefinition of what it means to be human today?