The Performativity of Protests: Artistic Opposition to the Monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia as a Way of Modeling Urban Space

The main topic that the article deals with is the artistic initiatives of the Destructive Creation group: the manifestation of a critical attitude to a visible remainder of the communist past in a public space of the capital of Bulgaria. The basic tool for characterizing these artistic forms of social activation is analysis of the cyclical actions to repaint the Monument to the Soviet Army with regard to their contestative strength, as well as their potential to change urban space and social reality. These considerations, deepened by reflection on the community, event-driven and subversive dimension of the discussed resistance practices, show their performative character.