Public Republic

An interview with the photographer Doris Peter by Dessislava Berndt
Translation to English: Asya Draganova

Doris Peter was born in 1967. At the age of 18 she starts a four-year photography course in Zurich which she finishes successfully in 1990. The world is vast, and Doris Peter decides to follow its call. What follows are a [...]

Interview with Sealiah by Dessislava Berndt
Translation: Nadejda Nikolova

Sealiah was formed in 1999 and is comprised of Daniela Miteva and Franck Helwina .Their music mixes the Bulgarian voice of Daniela with Spanish, oriental and gypsy rhythms, combining traditional music with a modern sound.
The band has sold more than 35,000 copies of their first album “World Influencia” [...]

Interview with Laura Chukanov by Dessislava Berndt

Foto: Arthur Garcia
Laura, why and how did you decide to enter the contest for Miss Utah?
I was at a point in my life where I felt that I had to do something that forced me to organize. It needed to be something that I felt I could be good [...]

Ivan Hristov

(created as part of the Word Express Project organised by Literature Across Frontiers with support from the British Council and the Culture Programme of the European Union, translated from the original by Angela Rodel)
Why did we have to read in a MALL? Maybe it would’ve been more interesting to read in the crypt of [...]

Elayne Clift

Photo: Philms
One day when our daughter was five years old she proudly proclaimed herself bi-lingual. “I speak English and American!” she boasted to friends.
Now that I’m sixty-five, I’d like to express my own point of pride: I’ve survived three decades in a bi-cultural marriage. It hasn’t always been easy.

Maria Aladzhova’s interview with Huang Xiang and William Rock

In this issue of Artist of the week Public Republic presents you Huang Xiang and William Rock – two incredible artists and creators of The Century Mountain Project. The Century Mountain Project is an East/West collaboration of art that creates a “visual dialogue across humanity.”
Huang Xiang [...]

Photo: optical_illusion

Each of us carries inside a small universe. Lets wish ourselves to keep it intact – through it we build the stories of our lives, for which each year opens a new page.

Photo: Global Jet
1. When do the Chinese celebrate their New Year?
At the second new moon after the winter solstice
2. The Jewish New Year is called?
Rosh Hashanah
3. Where is one of the largest annual New Year’s Eve celebrations?
Sydney, Australia

Photo: Eustaquio Santimano
4. How do they celebrate the new year in Edinburgh, UK?
People gather for a large, organized [...]

An interview with the curator of Let’s go home – Charlotte Friling – by Maya Kolarova

Photo: Personal archive
How was the idea of such a show born?
I was approached by the artist, Sophie Holstein, and the first owners of the S-KAI building, DWI Grundbesitz GmbH, who wished to give young artists the chance to exhibit [...]

Roland Boer

Photo: edhelien
Sterile white body suits, swimming goggles, face-masks, heavy boots and rubber gloves – six figures dressed as though they were entering a space craft or perhaps a laboratory with a highly contagious disease. Any plane from Australia, a swine flu hotspot (it was 2009), was always going to be suspect. They came on [...]

Susan Christerson Brown

The inspiration for When the Bough Breaks fell at our feet when an enormous branch broke away from a nearby royal paulownia tree and crashed to the ground. This shock of a gift came to us during our group’s writing retreat at Hopscotch House in Kentucky during the summer of 2007. We [...]

Claudia Bierschenk
Photo: L-plate big cheese
9 November 1989 was the day of our weekly school disco. That particular day was supposed to be the last time I’d ever go to the school disco. It was the night I said goodbye to all my friends, because it was very likely I would never see them again. [...]

“The secret to success is to know something nobody else knows” – Aristotle Onassis

On a small island, at a 2000-km distance from the nearest island, some
amazing stone statues were hewn into the rocks of an extinct volcanic
crater. When some Dutch sailors visited the island on Easter Sunday in
1722, they were stunned by those enormous images. [...]

Roger Conner Jr

It was nearing nightfall in Lexington and I had one last destination to make, an appointment that I had promised myself to keep. I needed to hear the voice of living culture.
With the help of the navigation system and internet on my I-phone I eventually found my way to Natasha’s Bistro [...]

Ellie Ivanova Ponti

Photo: quartermane
Speaking of fashion, I didn’t delve into the question whether style is really a personal expression of self identity or just a convention, a formula offered by society and used by an individual in one combination of elements or another. Is an individual ever free, after all, to use any piece of [...]

An interview with Laurent Goldstein by Desislava Velichkova
Laurent Goldstein was trained to be an architect, but then he became the designer and the art manager of several high fashion companies in Paris, London and Milan, before settling in India in order to launch a household linen label.
Along the Ganges relationships with people are different [...]

Interview with American poet Diane Kendig by Kristin Dimitrova

You have taught creative writing to university students, children, prisoners, as well as to groups of people who have nothing in common except their interest in literature. What is the difference between them in class? What is common between them in class? Where did you get the [...]

Roger Conner Jr
Leaving Frankfort I drove to Lexington, and after an overnight stay in a hotel went to the University of Kentucky art museum, where an excellent exhibition of Ancient Egyptian artifacts called “Excavating Egypt”is on display. This exhibit permitted no photography, and while it may have been possible to sneak a non-flash picture [...]

The faces speak …
Who is Vessy Borisova?
A photographer, a film producer, a diver, a mother and a very creative and positive person. Who loves life with all its challanges.

What impresses you about the human face?
The face is the silent story of a human life. A poem, written from the soul about love, joy, sorrow, dreams, [...]

Roger Conner Jr
Sequel
I was on my way to the old capital building in Frankfort.
Kentucky was originally intended to be called Transylvania by the man who sponsored Danial Boone’s first attempt to settle the area, not because it is known for vampires, but because Transylvania is Latin for “across the woods”.
Lexington is still home [...]