The Federation of Minor Practices

The acclaimed Bulgarian Pavilion from the 61st Venice Biennale, The Federation of Minor Practices, will be presented at NOUA, Bodø, opening on October 6, 2026.

The exhibition, featuring artists Veneta Androva, Gery Georgieva, Maria Nalbantova and Rayna Teneva, curated by Martina Yordanova is presented as the sole official exhibition during the Arts of Democracy week, a newly launched cultural and civic programme exploring the relationship between art, freedom of expression and democracy.

The Federation of Minor Practices is conceived as the headquarters of a fictional research lab operating within a care oriented political imagination. Positioned ahead of the present, the exhibition looks back at the early 21st century as the moment when the conditions for this future first became visible.

The near past of this formation is presented through four films which have been newly commissioned and reworked for the occasion of the 61st Venice Biennale: Gery Georgieva’s UWU Channel Radiance which mobilises digital myth and prophecy to question regimes of identity, pleasure, and mediated truth; Veneta Androva’s Spray and Pray, a work that examines infrastructures of disinformation through the ecology of mushroom websites and algorithmic systems; Rayna Teneva’s Geography Is Destiny is a new film which traces the entanglement of labour, care, and violence in the Rose Valley surrounding the Bulgarian town of Kazanluk, where rose harvesting coexists with arms production and Maria Nalbantova’s ongoing work at the Dragoman Marsh in Bulgaria unfolds as a long term practice of ecological care, combining artistic research, environmental maintenance, and the recording of local human and non human narratives.

Conceived as an interactive environment based on a computer game, The Federation of Minor Practices gathers signals from the four films and activates them through play as a practice of collective orientation.

"The Federation of Minor Practices speaks directly to what Arts of Democracy is about. Art as a space to imagine collective futures together, rather than simply react to the present."
— Henrik S. Dagfinrud, Managing Director, Bodø2024 Legacy AS

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Arts of Democracy – Demokratijja dájdda in Sámi – was developed for Bodø's year as European Capital of Culture in 2024. This year it is being launched as an annual programme, organised by Bodø city, Nordland county, the Sámi Parliament

The week includes the Sámi Literature Days, hosted by the Sámi Parliament's library, and the Arts of Democracy conference on 8–9 October, bringing together artists and cultural institutions from Nordland with counterparts from across Europe, with a special focus countries along Europe's eastern border.