Antoni Rayzhekov (BG)

Antoni Rayzhekov is an interdisciplinary artist working in the field of music, theatre and digital arts born in Sofia, Bulgaria and currently living in Salzburg, Austria. He has a master degree in theatre directing and bachelor in drama acting at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts “Krastyo Sarafov” (Sofia, Bulgaria).

He studied jazz improvisation at the Vienna Konservatorium / jazz department (Austria) and computer programming at LearningTree (London, UK) and was an IT consultant for the United Nations Office, Vienna. He is a co-founder of the Vienna-based New Media label THIS.PLAY [2013], focused on interactive technologies and art, and a associate lecturer since 2012 in the Media and Digital Technologies (Interactive Media / Experimental Media) at the University for Applied Science (St. Pölten, Austria) and since 2016, a guest lecturer at the National Academy of Art (Digital Arts MA program / “Performative Media”) – Sofia, Bulgaria.

He is a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude [2015-2017] – Stuttgart, Germany and Akademie Hallein [2014] – Hallein, Austria. For his works, he obtained awards, fellowships and grants from ProHelvetia, Soros Foundation, ComputerSpace, Ministry of culture – Bulgaria, BKA – Austria, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Akademie Hallein, among others.

Since 2004 he is working professionally as an artist in the field of “performative media”, borrowing from contemporary theatre, music and dance performance practices, developing generative music and motion graphics compositions, creating audiovisual works based on interactive technologies and using techniques such as sonification, musification, artificial behavioral and unstable systems. He works as an educator across Europe within the field of Digital Arts, Sonic Arts and performance. Antoni’s influences stem from the artistic practices of Jerzy Grotowski, John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett, Tristan Tzara among others.

Through designing and building performative “instruments”, he situate the media as a creative partner and often as a protagonist and an author, in addition to employing the audience as an active participator and co-author. By embedding the poetics and artistic intent of his compositions directly into a technological representation, he attempts to uncover and reveal hidden processes and entanglements, often at the border of unpredictable results, letting the artwork unfold “here and now”.