site.btaUPDATED BTA Presents LIK Magazine at Apollonia Art Festival

Addressing the presentation ceremony of seven special issues of BTA’s LIK magazine in the small coastal town of Sozopol on Saturday, Assoc. Prof. Georgi Lozanov, Head of the BTA Culture, Science and Education (LIK) Directorate, said that LIK has the significant editorial task of finding a value criterion for going back in time, so that the values of art and human behaviour can be recognized.

The BTA event is taking place within the Price of Success Format at the 40th Apollonia Festival of Arts. The special issues of the magazine are dedicated to poet Atanas Dalchev, composer Pancho Vladigerov, artist Dechko Uzunov, writer Aleko Konstantinov, public radio pioneer Sirak Skitnik and actors Nevena Kokanova and Stefan Danailov. 

Every month, a radio version of BTA's LIK magazine will be broadcasted on the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR), BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said during the presentation.

Lozanov noted that the LIK issues include information gleaned from both BTA's rich archive and contemporary articles. "This is helpful in reassessing the value of contemporaneity," he said, adding that it is important to reassess the past with Western values because Bulgarian culture belongs to the Western cultural world.

The LIK Directorate Head explained that the LIK magazine’s history has three development stages. "The first stage began before 1989, when the magazine was one of the few open windows in the Iron Curtain through which you could stick your head out and see what was going on in Western culture," he noted. In the first issues, foreign texts were published with English translations, informing readers about current events in Western culture at the level of processes, authority figures and sensationalism. Lozanov shared his opinion that with its magazine BTA has performed a cultural feat of informing the public about the cultural world in a time of totalitarianism.

With the fall of the Iron Curtain after 1989, the magazine’s function of cultural saviour has diminished, Lozanov continued. "During this period, Bulgarian culture began complex processes of democratisation, commercialisation and loss of ideological focus. The LIK magazine then committed itself to creating high standards in Bulgarian culture during the transition years," he explained, adding that with the advent of the Internet, this model has gradually lost its popularity.

LIK’s third development stage is related to memory, Lozanov further stressed. Currently, the magazine focuses on the cultural memory of important historical events and figures of the past. In this regard, the LIK Directorate Head recalled the special issues of LIK dedicated to Atanas Dalchev, Pancho Vladigerov, Dechko Uzunov, Aleko Konstantinov, Sirak Skitnik, Nevena Kokanova and Stefan Danailov.

BTA Director General Valchev underscored that the success of providing Bulgarians with access to culture and knowledge is priceless. In the past year, the most important thing that happened was the restoration of the LIK magazine to be published monthly. The access to the magazine has also been expanded so that more Bulgarians can gain knowledge of culture, he said.

Valchev noted that paper copies of the magazine are distributed free of charge in educational and cultural institutions. Furthermore, all issues of the new LIK magazine can be found on the Agency's website, he explained.

This is the second BTA event at the 2024 edition of Apollonia, after a press launch on August 30 of News on File: 1899-2023, a book presenting each of the 125 years since the BTA's establishment by one major domestic and international development.

At the opening of the Festival on August 29, BTA received the 2024 Apollo Toxophoros Award of the Apollonia Foundation for its overall contribution in covering the 40 editions of Apollonia.

The Apollonia Festival of Arts is organized by the Apollonia Foundation, which was established in 1991. The first edition of the Festival took place in 1984. Apollonia aims to preserve cultural traditions and to support new talents across the spectrum of arts, the organizers point out. BTA is a media partner of the event.