Living Archive Initiative

Ongoing research project

The Living Archive Initiative is an evolving interdisciplinary project exploring relationships between ecology, cultural memory, landscape and collective belonging.

The project proposes forests as living archives: ecological spaces that preserve intangible cultural heritage alongside biodiversity restoration. Drawing upon Bulgarian folklore, embroidery symbolism and environmental thinking, the initiative investigates how reforestation might function simultaneously as ecological intervention, memorial structure and participatory cultural archive.

Central to the research is the Elbetica symbol, traditionally associated with continuity, familial memory and cosmic interconnectedness. Reimagined as a large-scale landscape blueprint, the motif becomes a framework for planting forests embedded with oral histories, songs, recipes and personal narratives linked to individual trees through digital archives.

Positioned between conceptual art, ecological imagination, cultural preservation and speculative landscape practice, the project continues to develop through research, writing, visual experimentation and long-term planning.