The Institute for Silence Research (ISR) is a PORTAL to a parallel dimension within the existing reality, as well as the seed of a new culture – the culture of silenauts. At the core of all the Institute’s research and practices is the premise that they occur in the dimension BEYOND WORDS, meaning that communication through language is temporarily put on hold. Since 2019, the Institute has had its permanent base – Silence Lab, the first creative laboratory operating 24/365 BEYOND WORDS.
Originating as a concept in 2005, the Institute works in close collaboration with “Sensory Theatre Sofia,” which began in 2014 with the first BEYOND WORDS performance of the Theatre, titled “Institute for Silence Research”. Since its creation, the Institute has been a generator of hundreds of events – silenaut performances, concerts, journeys, exhibitions, residencies, evenings, retreats, as well as some entirely new scientific-artistic formats, laying the foundations of a silence culture destined to spread across the planet.
Among the most notable events of the IIS are the eight editions of “The Island of Silence,” held on the large island of Lake Goliam Beglik in the Rhodopes as part of the Beglika Festival, the five experimental silence performances in the Vertigo business building, hundreds of sensory urban journeys in Sofia and seven other cities in Bulgaria, the concerts “Silenautics” at the Bulgarian National Radio and the Museum of Contemporary Art, the “Still Sessions” concerts and sensory dinners at Silence Lab, “Deep Sound Station” at Toplozentralata, the annual participation in the festivals Wake Up! and Lost Gypsy Land, as well as the music meditation Live Trance Circle, which has been held weekly since 2002 to the present.
SILENCE LAB
Located on a high floor in Izgrev neighborhood of Sofia, just next to the forest with views of Vitosha and the sunset, the first base of the silenauts is a true research laboratory that has given rise to new forms such as “Deep Sound Station,” “Still Sessions,” “New Night Geography,” meditative urban retreats, and more. Periodically, Silence Lab organizes open days to introduce a wider audience to its work, discoveries, and possibilities.
For more information, you can visit its pagе
We are creators of urban legends, opening portals into the very fabric of space-time. The city is the canvas on which we paint. The consciousness of the viewers – co-creators is the stage on which our performances are played.
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