The Roma community of Sofia, Bulgaria is living on the periphery of city life in ghettos, economically impoverished and socially separated. They are the only people still using horses, so there is a historic chasm between the Roma and the rest of Bulgarian society.I mixed the contemporary technology of video and ancient technology of horse travel to describe the disparate polarities of contemporary Bulgarian society. I also became interested in giving a voice to the Roma people by using their own traditional sayings. These sayings such as “What is a lie to you is truth to me” contain clues to the history and identity of the Roma.

I used a video projection of a slot machine on a screen mounted on a horse wagon. The slot machine espoused Bulgarian Roma sayings as the wagon traveled through Sofia. The wagon traveled through zones forbidden to Roma wagons by the decree of the mayor such as the square in front of the Parliament building and other center city locations. The slot machine represents chance of birth, profiteering at the expense of the poor, fortune telling. The horse wagon represents a marginalized minority holding on to their historic way of life in a sea of contemporary automobile traffic.