CO-OPERATION BRUNCH with Katja Praznik, Slovenia, BIFC Regional Hub / Caroline Hornstein Tomić, Croatia/Germany, ERSTE Foundation / Isabelle Schwarz, France/Germany, European Cultural Foundation / Radmila Maslovarić, Serbia, Open Society Foundations/East East: Partnership Beyond Borders Program / Haki Abazi, Kosovo, Rockefeller Brothers Fund / moderated by Katja Kobolt (Slovenia/Germany) and Gordan Bosanac, Centre for Peace Studies, Croatia

Farewell party with Replikas (Turkey), Cripple and Casino (Croatia) and DJ Chaspa (Bosnia and Herzegovina/Germany)

Lecture by Murat Belge, independent political theorist and activist (Turkey) about EU-Turkey relations and the position of Turkey in the Europe and Middle East

THE FUTURE OF THE SEE REGION / Gordan Bosanac, Centre for Peace Studies, Croatia / Jelena Vujović, cultural worker, Montenegro / Žarko Trajanoski, researcher and activist, Macedonia / Nebojša Jovanović, theoretician, Bosnia and Herzegovina / Dunja Blažević, SCCA Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina / Moderator: Lana Zdravković, Peace Institute, Slovenia

TURKEY, THE MIDDLE EAST, SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: EU AS THE OTHER / Carmen Rodriguez Lopez, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain / Edgar Busuttil, Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, Malta / Özge Genç, Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, Turkey / Moderator: Ana Frank, Peace Institute, Slovenia

Literary reading with Bekim Sejranović (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Elizabeta Bakovska (Macedonia), Jeton Neziraj (Kosovo), Olja Savičević Ivančević (Croatia), English translation reading by Eric Dean Scott (Slovenia/USA), moderated by Katja Kobolt (Slovenia/Germany) followed by DJ BASIC (Slovenia)

Support and a debate with the activists at the “BOJ ZA”

RETHINKING THE CONCEPTS OF MULTICULTURALISM, INTEGRATION, TOLERANCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS AND THEIR MEANING IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY / Amanda Keeling, human rights activist, UK / Kien Nghi Ha, Institute for Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies, Germany / Morten Ebbe J. Nielsen, Centre for the study of Equality & Multiculturalism, Denmark / Timea Junghaus, European Roma Cultural Foundation, Hungary / Moderator: Mirjana Mikić, Centre for Peace Studies, Croatia

Katja Stergar has been working for the Slovenian Book Agency (JAK) since its establishment in December 2008. She is Adviser for international cooperation in the field of books of fiction and scientific publications, and is also responsible for agency’s public relations and edits JAK’s website. Her responsibilities include organization of Slovenian appearances at international book fairs, organization of international seminars for translators of Slovenian literature, cooperation in international project of literature promotion, and representation of JAK in the TRADUKI network. Katja Stergar has a MA in comparative literature. She was editor and editor-in-chief of the youth magazine Pil, and editor of lexicons Sova and Literatura. She is a freelance proof-reader and an honorary co-worker of the Centre for youth literature and librarianship at the Ljubljana City Library.

The TRADUKI network was founded in 2008 with a basic idea to support and advance cultural exchange and cooperation between many participants from the above mentioned countries. To achieve this cooperation, a translation program for fiction, the humanities and books for children and young people was set up. TRADUKI supports translations of works from the 20th and 21st century literature from German to South-Eastern-European languages, from SOE languages to German, and within SOE languages. The program gives a special focus to literary translators who are seen as important cultural mediators and have given the name to the project – traduki is an Esperanto word for the verb to translate. Further, TRADUKI supports literary festivals, translation workshops and writers-in-residence programmes, and appears at international book fairs, thus further strengthening literary cooperation, mobility and exchange in Central and South-Eastern Europe.

The TRADUKI network was initiated by the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria, Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, Swiss arts council Pro Helvetia, KulturKontakt Austria, Goethe-Institute and S. Fischer Foundation. The Slovenian partner in the project is the Slovenian Book Agency, which joined TRADUKI in December 2009. All partners have outstanding connections with local cultural institutions in their respective countries, which are fostered and extended in many cultural events in which TRADUKI participates.

http://english.traduki.eu

Haki Abazi is a program director for Western Balkans portion of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Pivotal Place program. Prior to joining the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 2007, Haki Abazi served as director of the Kosovo office for East West Management Institute, Inc.  Abazi developed and implemented a wide-range of programs addressing critical issues in Kosovo during the transition period. He has also played an important role in the development of civil society in the region.  Haki Abazi has over nine years of experience in designing and managing development programs in Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro Afghanistan and Indonesia. These programs were designed to support overall sustainable developments, increase the transparency and accountability of government and global institutions, and increase the level of participation of citizens in the decision-making processes. Haki Abazi has in-depth knowledge and work experience related to the Balkan’s civil society community and the geopolitics of the region. He is chairing the steering committee for Grantmakers East Forum and seats on boards of different international organizations.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) has been engaged in grantmaking in the Western Balkans since 2001.  During its first years in the Western Balkans, the Fund’s grantmaking aimed to nurture healthy democratic processes, support regional initiatives to debunk persistent myths and prejudices, and encourage development of a vibrant civil society.  The Fund’s work in the Balkans, and especially in Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo, builds on its 20-year experience in Central and Eastern Europe, supporting transition processes and helping to create conditions for their accession to the European Union.

The countries of the Western Balkans are now focused on realizing their own European integration aspirations, as accession brings with it the promise of stability and rule of law – necessary perquisites for long-term peace, prosperity, and democracy. To support that vision, the Fund will help create an enabling legal, fiscal, and political environment for EU membership, giving special attention to democratic practice and sustainable development requirements.  Engagement and leadership of youth in building a sustainable future for the region, facing the past, and establishing a truth and reconciliation process will continue to be part of the RBF’s support in the region.

www.rbf.org

The East East: Partnership Beyond Borders Program supports peer collaboration and learning among civil society actors and activists in two or more countries.  The Program promotes the movement of ideas and spirit of inquiry by convening people with shared interests to work together for sustainable impact locally and internationally. The Program supports long-term initiatives based on sharing experiences, expertise, best practices, and lessons learned as developed by local actors; convening stakeholders to promote a culture of communication and create new thinking and alternative perspectives; and, creating space for civil society to reflect on social discourses and reform processes comparatively to add value to local agendas for social change.

The Program was created for the Open Society Foundations in Central and Eastern Europe in 1991 to prioritize trans-national civil society cooperation in the context of post-socialist transition. “People should meet each other and exchange opinions and experiences,” George Soros noted at the time.  “There is much people in Central and Eastern Europe can offer each other.  People should engage in processes of transition together.” Today Program resources for trans-continental peer interaction are available to civil society and non-governmental actors and activists in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

www.soros.org/initiatives/east

Isabelle Schwarz (France / Germany) is Head of Programmes and Advocacy at the European Cultural Foundation. She joined ECF in 2002 with responsibilities for building up a cultural policy development strand for the foundation. Since June 2009, she is leading a team of ten staff combining programmes and advocacy. Previously she was Executive Director of the European Network of Cultural Administration Training Centres (ENCATC), first in Brussels, then in Copenhagen in the framework of which she launched the Nordic-Baltic Platform for Cultural Management.

Isabelle also worked as research assistant for the World Commission on Culture and Development (UN/UNESCO assembled independent group of leading economists, social scientists, artists and thinkers under the chairmanship of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar) that published “Our Creative Diversity” (1995), as well as at the Council of Europe (Cultural Policy and Action Division) and the Ministry of Culture of France (Department of Forecast Studies). She has worked as programme manager at the Marcel Hicter Foundation in Brussels and various cultural NGOs in London and Paris. Isabelle is founding and steering group member of the Platform for Intercultural Europe and member of different juries. She holds an MPhil in international cultural exchanges, and in history of international relations. She also has an MA in history of art and archaeology.

We set out to achieve our goal of strengthening the connection between Europe and its citizens in three ways; by empowering and engaging people through art and culture, by linking cultural policy and practice, and by connecting sources of knowledge for the future. Within these guiding principles, we invest our resources in several ways; through grants, awards and financial partnerships, through our own programmes and advocacy efforts, and by building knowledge through reflection, publication and a committed digital strategy.

Our grants support high-quality artistic and cultural activities and cultural cooperation across borders and boundaries. Our programmes take their names from their particular focus: European Neighbourhood, and Youth and Media. In these changing and challenging times, our advocacy work is crucial in promoting the impact of art and culture on our societies. We advocate for the pivotal role of culture within the European agenda and to help create favourable conditions for citizens working collaboratively in the field of culture. ECF also organises public events to bring target audiences together and to make our work more visible.

The digital shift has significantly changed our lives, the way we experience culture – how art is created, produced, encountered and shared. A strong digital component in all of our work helps us to connect as widely as possible, to reflect on our changing society, and to build a platform where knowledge can be brought together and shared.

www.eurocult.org

Caroline Hornstein Tomić holds an MA in cultural anthropology and a doctoral degree in sociology from Goethe University/Frankfurt. She is Research Associate at Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences in Zagreb and teaches at Zagreb University (areas: political anthropology and sociology of power; migration; minority, gender, identity politics, and state building processes in SOE). In 2001 she gained her PhD (Konrad Adenauer Foundation fellow) with a thesis on anthropological discourses about representation, identity and knowledge production, and cultural bordercrossers (Grenzgänger), for which she researched at MIT in Cambridge/USA in 1996/97. In 2000 she joined the foreign service of Konrad Adenauer Foundation and headed the Foundation’s country office in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2001 until 2005. Caroline Hornstein Tomić is member of the advisory board of ERSTE Foundation. She has a daughter and a son.

As a private Austrian savings banks foundation, we are committed to serve the common good. ERSTE Foundation also carries a special responsibility as the major shareholder of the Erste Group. This dual responsibility is part of our history and identity. Currently, ERSTE Foundation holds 25.3% of the capital shares of Erste Group. On the one hand, we use the profit from our shares to support the development of societies in Austria and Central and South Eastern Europe, where the banking group offers its financial services. On the other hand, we invest parts of our dividends into the growth of the Erste Group. The independence and success of Erste Group safeguards the future of its major shareholder and its commitment to the common good.

At ERSTE Foundation we foster a culture of independence and freedom when planning and selecting our projects. We are accessible, multilingual and international. We have a flat organisational structure, keep our working processes as simple as possible and place value on direct communication. As an active foundation, we develop our own projects within the framework of three programmes: Social Development, Culture, and Europe. Our working methods always aim to find a balance between strategically oriented concepts and their implementation by using region-based knowledge.

We believe in the concept of a common Europe. After 1989 a divided continent grew together again. ERSTE Foundation focuses its work on the cultural region of Austria and Central and South Eastern Europe. We support social participation and civil-society engagement; we aim to bring together people and disseminate knowledge of the recent history of a region where the Schengen area and the European Union have established new dividing lines, but have also given rise to new hopes and expectations.

www.erstestiftung.org

Katja Praznik is the project manager of the BIFC Regional Hub and vice-president of Asociacija, Association of Arts and Culture NGOs and Freelancers, based in Ljubljana. She holds an MA in Sociology of Culture and works as a theorist, writer and dramaturge in the field of arts and culture. From 2007 to 2009, she was the editor-in-chief of the performing arts journal Maska. From 2009 to 2010, she was the manager of the project “Networking and Capacity Building of NGOs in Culture”. Beside managing the BIFC Regional Hub, she manages various projects related to cultural policy issues in her work at Asociacija and is pursuing her PhD with a title Intellectual Domination: Contemporary Art Between the East and the West, at the Faculty of Arts Ljubljana. In 2010, she published the book Cronotopographies of Dance: Two Inquiries (Transition Series, EMANAT), together with Eda Čufer.

The BIFC Regional Hub, based in Ljubljana, provides advice regarding application criteria and application forms to project applicants applying for a grant at the Balkan Incentive Fund for Culture (BIFC); the Hub also assists in helping the project applicants to find partner organizations. The grantees are given advice with regard to project development and realization as well as with the solving of unexpected problems that may arise in this process.

The BIFC Regional Hub was founded in 2010 with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia under the aegis of the Platform for South East Europe initiative, the aim of which is to promote cross-border collaboration and cultural development in South Eastern Europe. The BIFC Regional Hub is hosted and run by Asociacija Association, a network of 60 NGOs and 39 independent artists engaged in the field of art and culture.

The Balkan Incentive Fund for Culture was initially founded in 2006 by the European Cultural Foundation along with the partners Hivos and the Open Society Foundations. Today, the BIFC Grants are supported by De BankGIroLoterij and De Lotto through the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds. BIFC is also generously supported by the Open Society Foundations, in particular by the Arts and Culture Program, and by the national foundations in the region, while the BIFC Regional Hub is funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.

www.bifc-hub.eu

Dunja Blažević, director of the University of Belgrade’s Student Cultural Centre Art Gallery in Serbia from 1971 to 1976, later took over as a director and head of programming at the same Centre from 1976 to 1980. In 1981 she began to produce and direct the TV programme, called TV Gallery, dealing with new developments in art and author’s video (the title is homage to Garry Schum) which was regularly broadcasted on Belgrade Television and on the National Network until 1991. From 1991 to 1996 she lived in Paris, France and worked as an art critic, curator and independent producer. Since 1996 Dunja Blažević has been a Director of Soros Centre for Contemporary Art in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (2000 changed the name in – Sarajevo Centre for Contemporary Art – SCCA).

Cross Border Experience video-film executive production by: KITCH – Institute of Art Production and Research, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Cross Border Experience conference venues and co-produced by: City Museum of Ljubljana, Gosposka ulica 15 / Scientific and Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Novi trg 2 / Škuc Gallery, Stari trg 21 / Slovenian Cinemateque, Miklošičeva ulica 38 / AKC Metelkova Mesto (Menza pri koritu and Klub Gromka), Metelkova ulica / Social Centre Rog, Trubarjeva ulica 72 / Kino Šiška, Trg prekomorskih brigad 3

Translations and proofreadings by: Veronika Bajt, Martin Berishaj, Ana Frank, Mirella Habr, Martin Jaigma, Zala Dragaš
Photographer at the events: Miha Fras
Camerawomen at the events: Urša Bonnelli Potokar
Installation of the exhibition consulting: Nenad Jelesijević
Exhibition photos printing: Luminus
Publications printing: Formatisk

Total desingn by: Saša Kerkoš and Neja Engelsberger
Web-programming: Motion Design

Thanks to: Peace Institute colleagues, Centre for Peace Studies colleagues, Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation colleagues, Mara Vujić – City of Women, Anna Ehrlemark, Jure Meden, Tevž Logar, Nataša Serec, Miha Zadnikar, Jasna Babič, Matjaž Manček, SC Rog collective, Jelena and Miran Rusjan, Nenad Jelesijević

“Cross Border Experience” project is supported by the European Commission. European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

DJ Chaspa’s music performance will include authorized live song performance that will extend into a DJ-set which will involve ethno-contemporary music from the countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia – the region formally known as the Balkans – and Turkey. DJ Chaspa will let this chain of wooded mountains to spread and crossover to the region known as Orient … and then he will let the God to help us save our souls.

Asmir Šabić / DJ Chaspa (1979, Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a musician with a big list of different projects, musicians and bands he has worked and played with: Alternativa Nova, Bezbrižni Rupert, Ultra Red Orchestra, Vuneny, Brain Damage, Fedayi Pacha, Alexander Hacke, Bülent Kullukcu, Daqui Dub, Tuna Trio and Ghost´s, Majmoon and others.

Asmir studied theatre pedagogy at the University Džemal Bijedić in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina and social pedagogy at the Jönkoping University, Sweden. He worked as a social worker at different NGO’s in BiH; he was also a program coordinator of the OKC Abrašević in Mostar (www.okcabrasevic.org). He was involved in many international and regional festivals and projects in the former Yugoslavia region, as Cross Radio Network; Short Film Festival Mostar; Vivisect Festival Mostar/Novi Sad; Exit Novi Sad; Mostar Intercultura Festival etc.

Asmir is currently based in Munich, Germany, creating music with Daqui Dub (Marseille, France), Majmoon (Munich, Germany), and is involved in projects of independent and subculture art trough events like Majmusical Monday, Balkan Lounge Glockenbachwerkstatt, Import Export Munich. Asmir’s sound art works have been presented at: Crossing Munich (sound installation, 2009), Not by Note (Steirsche Herbst international festival of modern art Graz, Austria, 2010), Cycling Wars (sound installation München Bayern Kaserne, 2011) and elsewhere.

www.myspace.com/chaspa86

Cripple and Casino – Straight outta Zagreb, Croatia! We have here a sound that’s best described as ‘Eighties vs. Nineties vs. Now’. Cripple and Casino are the only band on Radio Is Down (an independently owned and operated record label, Northwestern nook, Olympia, Washington) active roster to proudly list Phil Collins, of Genesis fame, as an influence. As much as they love Phil, you won’t find a lick of his influence in these sounds. Instead you’ll be enveloped in a late-eighties / early-nineties DC – by way of Chicago – sound.

The band – Petra Dražić (voice), Marko Knez (drum set), Danijel Zec (bass guitar), Darko Kujundžić (treble guitar) – released in 2009 at the Radio Is Down label an album which raised attention in noise rock circles: “CAC have their vision of noise rock, which is not in fact filtered noise, nor is it classic rock. … All in all, a certain ‘negative’ atmosphere created properly and without banal/transparent solutions. … it stands that Petra’s voice is functional and suits the musical background completely. She sings and holds the melody when necessary, goes into the phrasing of one Leslie Rankine or early PJ Harvey when the song requires it and it all has a very convincing effect.” (Vladimir Horvat, Terapija)

www.myspace.com/crippleandcasino
crippleandcasino.bandcamp.com

Replikas is doubtlessly one of the most acclaimed and popular alternative bands in Istanbul and Turkey. Their avant-rock, a combination of Anatolian music, post-punk, kraut rock, no wave and electronic music is a proven sound dialectics between local and global.

The band has been formed in 1993 by Gökçe Akçelik, Barkın Engin, Orçun Bastürk, Selçuk Artut and Burak Tamer. By now Replikas has published five albums. On their third album Avaz, released in 2005 under Doublemoon Records, they worked together with the producer Wharton Tiers who has worked with bands such as Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore and Dinosaur Jr. Their last album Zerre was recorded in a former prison on a deserted island, Gökçeada and released by Peyote Music in 2008.

Replikas has also been working on various movie soundtracks: for the film Maruf (2001) of the acclaimed film director Serdar Akar, and for Kutlug Ataman’s film Two Girls (2005). Replikas also participated in the music film Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (2005) by the film director Fatih Akın.

Replikas is simply a must-hear!

www.replikas.com

Reverie Falls On All is an experimental music project by Barkın Engin and Burak Tamer, musicians who are collaborating also with one of the most successful alternative bands in Turkey – Replikas. The sound processing improvisations in search for the direction of the collaboration evolved into various textures containing acoustic instruments with the real acoustic qualities of the building, where the sessions took place. Finally the music shaped into a structure that blend the duo’s guitar playing aesthetic with their influences on glitch, noise, 20th century music and classical composition.

Their debut album Clouds In Our Room has been released in 2006 and since then live performances are the focus of the Reverie Falls on All. The musical ideas interfere with sound wise coincidences throughout the composing process. Digital errors, ambient noises, leakage from other spaces become elements of the compositions, each introducing an actual code of framed time. Then these audible codes of the moments connect with the reflections of daily life and transform into musical structures. In 2007, the band participated as collaborative artist in the Istanbulmap project and supported the project with the piece İMÇ. The latest release of the band, the live album Passed Ones, has been released in 2009. All recordings are available for free download at the discography section: www.reveriefallsonall.com.

DJ duo Brat&Sestra
photo by: Nada Žgank (Memento)

Oleg Novković’s (1968, Belgrade, Serbia) sensitive film portrayals of ex-Yugoslavia’s ‘lost generation’ have won him the attention of international film festivals and audiences. Selected works: Kaži zašto me ostavi/Why Have You Left Me (1993), Normalni ljudi/Normal People (2001), Deca/Children (2002), Rudarska Opera/Miner‘s Opera (2005) and Sutra ujutru/Tomorrow Morning (2006). With his works Oleg addresses the problems of compromised morality in the post-civil-war culture, and harrowing choice between emigration and self-isolation that has tormented his generation. Serbian film critics proclaimed Tomorrow Morning for one of the most important Serbian films of the decade. The film White White World has been awarded at 63rd Locarno Film Festival, Switzerland for the best actress (Jasna Đurićić) and with the “CICAE Prix Art & Essai” by an international jury of independent cinema programmers, critics and distributors for the best art film; as well as at the Film Festival in Cottbus, Germany for the best film.

DJ BASIC

Eric is trained at the Experimental Theatre “Wing” at New York University. Since 1991, he has been making theatre in the downtown New York experimental theatre scene and has been a founding/associate member of a number of theatre groups and has worked with numerous “Obie-award” winning theatre-makers there. Since 2009, he has been living and working in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he performs his original works, directs plays and holds actor training workshops in physical acting, games and “Viewpoints” improvisation.

Olja is seen as a representative of the so called ‘lost generation’ writing for the ‘lost generation’: “Ever since we became conscious beings we’ve been waiting for some kind of a normal life, but it hasn’t arrived yet. In the meantime we’ve had some good times and some fun times, and of course we partied, fell in love, travelled, read and listened to good music, but we have never lived in a normal and more or less well-ordered society.” (Olja Savičević Ivančević)

In Ljubljana Olja will be reading from her novel Adio kauboju/Adios Cowboy/Lebt wohl, Cowboy.

Olja Savičević Ivančević, a freelance writer, poetess and columnist, was born 1974 in Split, Croatia where she also lives and works. She holds BA in Croatian language and literature from the University of Zadar, Croatia. Since her teenage years Olja has published several collections of poems Bit će strašno kada ja porastem/It will be tremendous when I grow up (1988), Vječna djeca/Eternal Kids (1993), Žensko pismo/Female manuscripts (1999), and Kućna pravila/House rules (2007, 2009) which won a “Kiklop” prize in Croatia.

For her collection of short fiction Nasmijati psa/To Make a Dog Laugh/Augustschnee (2006) Olja has been awarded with the Croatian prize “Vijenac” for the best new prose work of 2006 and 2007, and the “Ranko Marinković” short-story prize. Several of the stories have also been made into short films. With her novel Adio kauboju/Adios Cowboy/Lebt wohl, Cowboy (2010) which plays with the genre of spaghetti western and is a merciless portrait of today’s corrupted social reality in Croatia Olja won the “roman@tportal.hr” award for the best novel as well as the “Jure Kaštelan” award by the newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija. Olja’s work has been included in a number of anthologies and selections, and her writing has been translated into German, Czech, Italian, Slovenian, French, English, Slovak, Macedonian, Polish, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Ukrainian and Zulu language.

www.schruf.de/text_savicevic.html

“As Jeton Neziraj is an author with special contrapuntal sensitivity it doesn’t come as a surprise that in the most of his works he is playing with the mosaic model of drama. In his works, past and present, not unlike a fairytale, merge together, they mix, clash, embrace or intensify each other. Even when motifs, sketches or elements of folk stories and legends are taken as a structural principle, this ‘fairy-talness’ stays due to Neziraj’s creative skills and elegance as well as due to the usage of kontrapunkt – relocation of time and space, in tune and orchestrated with a spirit of urban poetic musicality. In his dramas we meet in front of a black&white background women who make love with and get marry to a snake, as well as women mudlarks or women burned by passion who pull hairs from bottoms in beauty salons, parents who eat their children, young men who kill the dragon, monks who fall in love with married women, girls who fall into caves, war veterans who play with weapons as if they are chess pieces, burned lovers or ‘maniacs’ who on the streets, boulevards and in parks of Paris take off veils from Muslim women, Talibans who in vengeance spectacularly demolish the Eiffel  tower, women who are scared to death by breast cancer etc.” (Bekim Lumi, Iz Prištine, s ljubavlju/From Prishtina With Love, Anthology of New Kosovo Literature, Belgrade 2011)

In Ljubljana Jeton will be reading from two of his plays: Shembja e Kullës së Ajfelit/ The Demolition of the Eiffel Tower, which has been staged in 2010 by Fabrique Ephéméride (Paris, France) and from Hipermarketi patriotik/Patriotic Hypermarket.

Jeton Neziraj (1977, Kaçanik, Kosovo) is a playwright and the Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Kosovo, Prishtina (www.teatrikombetar.eu). He has written over fifteen plays, which have been staged and presented in Kosovo and abroad – in Europe and the USA. His plays have also been published and translated into several languages (German, English, French, Spanish, Romanian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Serbian etc.). His play Liza po fle/Liza is Sleeping won First Prize at the national drama contest “Buzuku”.

Neziraj is also the author of several film scripts, which have been filmed by Kosovar directors; and dozens of essays on theatre, which have been published in local and international newspapers and magazines. He is also the author of several books, including a book on the famous Kosovar actor Faruk Begolli. Jeton Neziraj is the founder and leader of the NGO Multimedia Centre (www.qendra.org), focusing on contemporary theatre.

www.jetonneziraj.com

The poetry of Elizabeta Bakovska is “shaped with an almost simple poetic speech, which does not wander into naïve amateurism, but rather rises to the mastery achievements of the universal poetry words… Her poetics, free of the imposed pathetic, is quite her own, despite the universal themes (as well as in her prose): love, fatherland, but here, with a specific expressive procedure, quite rare in Macedonian poetry, far from the general unnatural Macedonian abstractionism, and strictly controlled when it comes to (dangerous) sentimentalism; however, it is engaged in a precise dosage when it comes to the treatment of the Macedonian historical irony by ourselves and the others…” (Pasko Kuzman)

In Ljubljana Elizabeta will be mostly reading from the recently published anthology Six Macedonian Poets.

Elizabeta Bakovska was born in 1969 in Bitola, Macedonia. She graduated from the Department of English Language and Literature from the Faculty of Philology at St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia and received her MA from the same Faculty. She has published two books of poetry: Житие на нашата љубов/Biography of Our Love (2003) and Состојби на духот и телото по триесеттата/Conditions of Body and Mind after You Turn Thirty (2005); one collection of short stories: Четири годишни времиња/Four Seasons (2004) and a novel: На пат кон Дамаск/On the Way to Damascus (2006). She is Editor for poetry in Blesok/Shine the first on-line magazine for literature and arts, published bimonthly in Macedonian and English in Central and Eastern Europe.

Elizabeta has also written essays and literary critiques. Her poetry has been included in several anthologies and published in Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and English. In 2010 she won the first prize at the 60th annual most distinguished national short story competition in Macedonia, organised by Nova Makedonija daily. Currently she is working on her PhD on Macedonian women writers with Euro Balkan Institute in Skopje.

The experience of childhood in a small Bosnian town in the times of the socialist Yugoslavia, troubled relationship with parents, passionate relationship between grandparents, teenager years and secondary school in a small industrial village at the Adriatic see, becoming a ‘national alien’ in the war years in Croatia and subsequent exile to Norway. Trying to get a toehold in Norway, lowliness, drugs, ambivalence in loving oneself and others, constant nomadism (in plot as well as narrative sense) between old and new homeland, only stops but no base.

Sejranović is a great observer and an unpretentious narrator. In Ljubljana he will be reading from his latest novel Ljepši kraj/More Beatiful Ending: “There is no hugging and kissing like in the Balkans. There you have to kiss even the people you see every other day. With girls I could somehow put up with it, but with men it really got on my nerves. The worst for me are the ones who take offence if, by their judgment, you didn’t kiss them passionately enough. And then you also have to be careful about which people you should kiss two times or three times, and there were also those who were sensitive about which cheek you kissed first. Just because of this kissing, I lost a few people who I had thought could become real friends.”

Rena Rädle (1970, Germany) and Vladan Jeremić (1975, Belgrade, Serbia) are artists, activists and cultural workers. Rena Rädle graduated at Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany. Vladan Jeremić holds an MA degree from the University of Arts in Belgrade. They work together since 2002 and are the founders of “Biro Beograd”, an association that provides a platform for critical practice that goes beyond conventional forms of contemporary art, cultural and political activism. Their artistic practice is placed in the field of intersections between contemporary art and political activism. The current focus of their research is the significance of modernist urbanism today, and the emerging social movements, such as Roma emancipation movements in Europe.

Rädle & Jeremić have had solo exhibitions in Belgrade; Paris, France; Hamburg, Germany; Helsinki, Finland; Trondheim, Norway and Novi Sad, Serbia along with many group exhibitions. Their works are in the collections of MUDAM, Luxemburg; the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands and Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain.

raedle-jeremic.modukit.com
birobeograd.info

Gazela – Temporary Shelter from 100 to 500 Years (2009), video by Rena Rädle and Vladan Jeremić together with Saša Barbul and Sali Kadrijaj, 24′

Gazela-Temporary Shelter from 100 to 500 Years researches the destiny of displaced people that lived in the Roma settlement at Gazela Bridge in Belgrade till August 2009. Some of the families of the over 1000 displaced were resettled to container camps in the outskirts of Belgrade, far away from the city. Others were returned to the poor south of Serbia they had escaped from, some built new barracks at alternative locations in Belgrade. The city authorities announced new demolitions of Roma settlements. All interviews and locations are authentic. The video was made in November 2009 in Serbian cities and suburbs: Belgrade, New Belgrade (Block 67), Makiš, Kijevo, Bojnik, Leskovac, Lebane, Novi Sad and Jagodina.

Belleville (2009), video by Rena Rädle and Vladan Jeremić, 22′

Belville is the name of a residential complex at New Belgrade being built on the occasion of the international sports manifestation “Summer Universiade 2009”. On 3rd of April 2009 in the early morning, diggers tore down the barracks of 45 families living in close vicinity to the residential units. Their violent eviction was assisted by police without giving time to the residents to save their belongings. Despite Serbia holding the presidency of the “Decade of Roma Inclusion” in year 2009, the authorities didn’t offer alternative housing to the families. The video documents the protest of the victims that set off to the city centre three times to demand shelter in front of the city hall.

Unfortunately today, in anti-communist Europe there is no strong left movement that takes solidarity action with the millions of deprived Roma, underprivileged immigrants and illegal workers. On the other side, neo-fascists are getting organized and nationalist parties are gaining votes with anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic election campaigns. The increasing number of attacks on Roma in our time is a consequence of the strengthening and consolidation of right-wing forces. These are using today’s economic crisis for the populist promotion of their racist and anti-migrant agenda. The demolition of Roma and migrant settlements in France in 2010 is just one of the indicators that institutional and state measures are becoming increasingly violent.

In this situation, political practice in art has to communicate its message at various levels. Its activity and reception cannot be confined to the privileged aesthetic gaze in the context of contemporary art. Formalism and references to aesthetic norms reassure the viewers in their self-perception, making the artwork become just another lollipop in the candy-store. Art is more than that, it can develop methods for putting theory into practice. The specific potential of art is based on the fact it can at the same time practice, analyze and criticize a method or concept. Art does not take place in a laboratory situation. The artist must be conscious of the consequences, implications and circumstances of production and consumption. Needless to say, the production of art is subject to the same relations of exploitation as other forms of production in capitalist society. But this doesn’t mean that we are condemned to reproduce the existing conditions in our society. Our task is to use artistic production against the matrix of exploitation and in this way to turn the situation upside down.

With our initiative World Communal Heritage (communalheritage.wordpress.com/), we currently look at the heritage of social housing and workers’ housing, and at modernist urban planning in Europe. How can experiences gained here be rethought and updated? What can we learn from 20th century social housing projects? Is it possible to produce sustainable concepts for the development of communal flats for Roma precarious migrant workers and other migrant workers?

His work has been exhibited in a variety of venues throughout Europe and the USA, including the Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art, Sarajevo; National Museum of Montenegro, Cetinje; Trevi Flash Art Museum, Italy; Centre for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade, Serbia; National Museum, Szczecin, Poland; National Gallery, Skopje, Macedonia; Kyoto Art Center, Japan; Palazzo Papesse Centre for Contemporary Art, Siena, Italy; Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, USA; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland; Tallin Art Hall, Estonia; Locarno Film Festival, Switzerland; Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary; Sammlung Essl, MUMOK Museum, Pallais Lichtenstein Museum of Modern Art, Wien, Austria and at the 50th Venice Biennial, Italy.

www.damirniksic.com

The Immigrant Song (2008), video-performance by Damir Nikšić, 10’28’’

With his artistic work as well as in interviews and book projects Nikšić critically addresses issues of orientalism and islamophobia, (neo)colonialism, nationalism and identity politics, fascism, privatisation, as well as possible ways of resistance, empowerment and emancipation. As a genuine conceptual artist, Damir is not afraid of ideas and ideology: he is working towards a Muslim-European Art issuing a book Caravan of Dreams – Of Course We Can! (2010) and bets on virtues generated by transnational communist idea, the legacy of AVNOJ, where the Yugoslav dream has been dreamt.

In his video-performance to be shown in the framework of the exhibition, Damir on the one hand sings about freedom and im/possibility of personal choice, on the other hand he is mocking about curatorial power and gate-keeping mechanisms in the international art market. “In Europe the picture is grey. Black actually. And this is another reason for us ‘children of the light’ to fight against this dimness. … I claim that Europe will be a better place, however the first and root condition is that WE roll up our sleeves and we make it better … that we take part in making a better Europe as equal partners, that we as Europeans build our new European home. It is not only about the colour of the skin, culture, religion. I think that Europe needs a soul. The Europe could be given this soul by the little, poor immigrants. ‘Soul Power’ as James Brown would define it.” (Damir Nikšić)

Alban Muja (1980, Mitrovica, Kosovo) is a visual artist based in Prishtina, Kosovo. Alban holds an MA from the Fine Arts Academy Prishtina and he also studied at the Santa Fe Art Institute, USA (master class).

Alban’s works cover a wide range of media including video installation, short film, documentary film, drawings, paintings, photographs and performance, and have been exhibited extensively in international exhibitions, festivals and shows including personal presentations as well. Mostly influenced by the social and political transformation processes in Kosovo and the surrounding region, Alban investigates the history and the socio-political themes and links them to his position in Kosovo today.

Alban showed his work in solo exhibitions in Able Kulturverein, Berlin, Germany; Siz Gallery Rijeka, Croatia; Centre for Contemporary Art Station, Prishtina, Kosovo; 1/60 Insurgent space – National Gallery of Art, Tirana, Albania etc. His group exhibitions include: Play Girl, Göteborg Museum of Art, Sweden; Word for Word, Without Words, Mestna Galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Qui Vive? Moscow International Biennale, Russia; Exception, Kontekst Gallery Belgrade, Serbia etc.

albanmuja.blogspot.com

Blue Wall Red Door (2009), documentary film by Alban Muja with Yll Çitaku, 32′

Over the last decade, street names in Prishtina, the capital of Kosovo have been changed many times so that nowadays people in Prishtina hardly find their way after the names of the streets. Blue Wall Red Door documentary film aims at analysing the way of how people in Prishtina orient themselves, and what is for them the main object or building which they use for their orientation. The camera follows taxi drivers, postmen, fire fighters who all face a lot of difficulties at their work – in a town “where the streets have no name”. In addition, in the film we hear politicians, permanent tourists/foreign people working for international companies and common people talking, which brings closer not only the topographical situation of the city of Prishtina but also different aspects of social reality.

See the film at Kosovo 2.0 portal.

Tonys (2011), photo by Alban Muja, 100 x 70 cm (photographed by Kushtim Ternave)

The old Kosovo tradition of naming new family members after the ones from the family who passed away has been gradually amended. This amendment was noticeable right after the Kosovo war in 1999 when some Albanian parents named their children on behalf of appreciations after people that were and still are alive. Alban Muja presents nine Kosovo Albanians, children that are named after Great Britain Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is considered a war hero in Kosovo for his help dedicated to achieve peace and freedom for Kosovo. All the boys portrayed next to the Prime Minister’s photo Tony Blair hold a first name “Tonyblair” and are born in 1999, the time when their country Kosovo got freed from the Serbian oppression.

Eduard Freudmann (1979, Vienna, Austria) is an artist, filmmaker and author, who researches and intervenes in the intersections of art and politics, power relations and social contexts, history-politics and media mechanisms, strategies of exclusion and the commodification of knowledge. He studied art in Vienna, Austria and Weimar, Germany and currently works on his PhD at the Department for Visual Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. Since 2007, he has been teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he participated in the education protests as a Squatting Teacher. He co-initiated Plattform Geschichtspolitik, an open collective that critically reflects and publicly deals with the institution’s participation in colonialism, (Austro)fascism and Nazism.

Ivana Marjanović (1979, Belgrade, Serbia) works as free-lance cultural worker in the field of contemporary arts and theory; she lives and works between Belgrade and Vienna, Austria. Ivana co-founded the Kontekst Gallery in Belgrade (www.kontekstgalerija.org). She publishes articles in books, exhibition catalogues, international magazines and online artistic and theoretical platforms such as Reartikulacija, Mute, eipcp.net, Kulturisse, Malmoe, etc. Ivana is a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

The film is a critical analysis of the interrelation of racism (i.e. anti-Romaism) and capitalism in the so called New Europe (Europe after 1989) but also an analysis of strategies of resistance to its necropolitical governance. The starting point for the film was the brutal demolition and fencing of a Roma slum next to Belville, a residential area erected to accommodate guests of the international sports event Universiade Belgrade 2009. At the same time Serbia was holding the annually rotating presidency of the Roma Decade, the international initiative that tends to represent an “unprecedented political commitment by European governments to improve the socio-economic status and social inclusion of Roma”. For that year, one would expect Serbia to make serious efforts towards improving the discriminated position of Roma and decreasing the effects of a policy of anti-Romaism that has lasted for centuries in the region. The opposite was the case: what we witnessed was the total disregard of the Decade’s objectives and even an intensification of discrimination by Belgrade authorities, citizens and media. Seen from the history of racism, this event appears to be a paradigmatic case of anti-Romaism in contemporary Europe.

The film was presented at the Cultural Centre Rex, Belgrade, Serbia; at the exhibition Between Identity and Ideology in Labour Gallery, Budapest, Hungary; at Wiener Festwochen Filmnight: Safe European Home? Architekturzentrum Wien, Austria; and as a part of the Roma Media Archive, the project initiated by Suzana Milevska in the context of: Call the Witness, Roma Pavilion Collateral Event, Live Testimonies 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Italy.

www.kraja.org/html/uglyville.php

Kristina Leko (1966, Zagreb, Croatia) is a visual artist based in Zagreb and Köln, Germany. Kristina works primarily in the medium of video, documentary film, photography, text, and object installation, with social interaction at the core of her investigation and activity, which is often placed in public space. She has initiated and realized several extensive community art projects in different countries, mainly in collaboration with deprived social groups (immigrants, farmers, elderly, unemployed…). Several of her projects refer to the societal transition in Croatia, such as Cheese and Cream (2002–2003), a research-documentary and activist project dedicated to the milkmaids of Zagreb; or Short History of Mining, a community project with a group of former mine workers in Labin, Istria, Croatia.

Kristina has exhibited internationally at solo exhibitions (NGBK Berlin, Germany; Bonner Kunstverein, Germany; Institute for Art in Public Space Styria, Graz, Austria; Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb etc.) as well as at group exhibitions (Wiener Festwochen, Austria; Muszarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary; The Kitchen New York, P.S.1, New York, USA etc.). Her works are included in public collections (Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb; Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig, Germany; TBA-21 – Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary Art Collection Vienna etc.) and she has been awarded several residency and working grants (Kunstfonds Bonn, Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Germany; ISCP New York, P.S.1./MoMA, New York, USA etc.).

www.kristinaleko.net

Zagreb Milkmaids on Your Right-Hand (2002/2003), video by Kristina Leko, 20’18” (a part of the Cheese And Cream 2002–2003 actions, events, research, archive, website, exhibition, roundtable and campaign to protect the milkmaids of Zagreb)

“While working on the project On Milk and People, I became familiar with many issues important to farming families. I learned a lot on issues related to agricultural policy, the dairy industry, and economic restructuring. I became deeply aware of social changes that would result from the process of accommodating to the European Union regulations in Croatia and, respectively, in my hometown of Zagreb. As I understood that one of the consequences would be the disappearance of the milkmaids in Zagreb open markets, I decided to start an initiative that would help the milkmaids of Zagreb survive, as they are a paradigmatic part of Croatian social reality.” (Kristina Leko)

In 2002, in collaboration with the nonprofit organization BLOK, Kristina Leko began an initiative aiming at protecting the milkmaids of Zagreb as a cultural heritage. Next to several happenings, Kristina Leko in collaboration with BLOK undertook a research on the condition of the milkmaids (448 milkmaids on 6 market places in Zagreb were interviewed), presented their situation in the exhibition Cheese and Cream; on three channel video installations; at the The Dishtowels of the Milkmaids of Zagreb installation; in the Book of Requests for the 22nd Century; as an open-office situation in PM Gallery, Zagreb; launched a website The Declaration on Milkmaids, a database on Zagreb’s milkmaids, and a media campaign. In order to influence the administrative and political decision making, ten officials from different institutions were invited, and participated in a round table entitled “Could Zagreb Milkmaids possibly join the EU?”.

www.cheeseandcream.org
sirivrhnje.mi2.hr

Staš Kleindienst (1979, Slovenia) holds an MA in fine art. His work consists of collaborations with Sebastjan Leban and groups Reartikulacija and Trie as well as his own artistic and theoretical research. He works with different media, from painting and photography to performance and film. He also regularly publishes theoretical articles about art systems and contemporary political issues. He has exhibited in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad. He lives and works in Ljubljana and Idrija, Slovenia.

www.leban-kleindienst.org

Sebastjan Leban (1976, Slovenia), based in Ljubljana and Kojsko, Slovenia is an artist, a theoretician and a curator. He is currently enrolled in the PhD programme at the Institute of Philosophy at Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Sebastjan is a co-founder and co-editor of Reartikulacija (www.reartikulacija.org), a platform for radical critical analysis, together with Staš Kleindiesnt and others. He is also a lecturer of Radical Critical Analysis at the Academy of Visual Arts (AVA, ava.si) in Ljubljana. He has exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions in collaboration with Staš Kleindienst, the group Reartikulacija and the group Trie, participated in many symposiums and have texts published in major national/international publications.

Newborn (2010), video by Sebastjan Leban and Staš Kleindienst, 48’9”

The documentary Newborn deals with the contemporary reality of Kosovo after its official declaration of independence. This condition of almost pure subjugation in economical, political and cultural terms shocks us with all its brutality, forcing us to think about the true purpose of the role of the International Community in keeping stability. It is a journey through contemporary forms of colonialism and a disclosure of its repressive and ideological apparatuses at work.

Kosovo demonstrates the form of colonisation typical of the neoliberal expansive logic, the contemporary colonisation strategy whose parallels are implemented in different parts of the world and to which different geopolitical plans and strategies are applied, thus conditioning all other segments of social dependency. This goes on simultaneously at three levels. Firstly, it is established through the mediation of Western values conveyed by the system through visual inputs imposed on to the colonized. Secondly, the system introduces the strategy of subjugation implemented through capital control, which means that capital investments, equities, and privatisation are the means of controlling the economy and consequentially the social structure in a given country or geographical area. Thirdly, the use of the army in order to establish ‘a state of exception’ and by this to force people to subjugate.

Gözde İlkin (1981, Kütahya, Turkey) lived in various regions of Turkey until her university years. She studied painting at the Fine Arts Faculty of Mimar Sinan University, Turkey and is studying towards a master’s degree at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey, where she is currently based. Gözde works with mixed media, mostly with what she calls accumulated things: images, stories, photographs, objects and clothes that help her describe particular situations that she is interested in. Her speciality is stitching. At her stitching paintings her figures appear as amorphous bodies attached to one another mostly at the head, stomach, or occasionally limbs. These bodies create an atmosphere for the surface on which they find themselves and look for an identity via the texture of the fabric. Emancipated from their social and sexual identities, these characters are transformed in İlkin’s work like the children of a lost planet. They resist their pre-conditioned lives.

Gözde has taken part in international artist exchange programs in the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iran. Her solo exhibitions include Refuge: Chorus of Voices from Inside and Please Clear the Dance Floor, artSümer Gallery, Istanbul and Body on Body, Wearable Art, Karşı Art Gallery, Istanbul. She has shown her work at group exhibitions in Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland; MUMOK, Vienna, Austria; Tobacco Warehous, Istanbul; Akademie der Künste, Berlin and Lothringer 13, Munich, Germany; Kibla, Maribor, Slovenia and elsewhere. This autumn her work will be on display at the 12^th Istanbul Biennial.

www.gozdeilkin.blogspot.com
www.anneannekutusu.blogspot.com

Cohesion Fund (2010), stitching in cloth by Gözde İlkin

Work was produced in 2010 when Istanbul was the European Capital of Culture. Next to the so called structural funds, the cohesions funds are financial tools set up to implement the cohesion policy of the European Union and to reduce regional disparities in terms of income, wealth and opportunities. By stitching an actual bank note of a cohesion fund, the artist referred to European regulations according to the cohesion funds Turkey had to adapt to. In this piece a 100 Euro bank note in its original size is printed and stitched on cloth with some different details. The artist changed some codes on 100 euro and attached some details to the stitched money, pointing to the adaptation procedures and the economic process.

Biljana Garvanlieva was born in Skopje, Macedonia in 1973. After studying drama in Skopje, in 1999 she received a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to study theatre and film at the Free University of Berlin. She currently lives and works in Berlin as a freelance author and director.

In 2006 she directed a ‘border crossers’ documentary for the TV network 3sat entitled The Accordion Player, which has won several awards, including the “Golden Lola” German Short Film Award. In 2009 she followed up her previous success with Tobacco Girl, which has received numerous awards for its direction. In 2010, Garvanlieva was awarded the “Heart of Sarajevo” Prize for Best Documentary at the 16th Sarajevo Film Festival, for her film The Seamstresses.

www.bosch-stiftung.de/content/language2/html/9168.asp

Shivackite/The Seamstresses (2010), documentary film by Biljana Garvanlieva, 30′, Germany

The author with her camera follows three women from Štip, Macedonia in their everyday life. In order to make the economic survival of their families’ possible, women work in a local textile factory that offers one of the few possibilities to work in Štip. In the times of the socialistic self-management the factory has been owned by its workers, now the factory is in private hands and syndicates and workers rights have become only (foreign) words without real meaning. As there are several international forces around the region, Štip women are sewing mainly uniforms as well as cheap T-shirts and handmade blouses to be sold in the West and for which Štip women should pay their month salary if they would like to wear it …

While the women are fully employed (working days and nights), their men have found themselves unemployed after the collapse of the socialist Yugoslavia. A situation full of conflict potential – changing gender relations on personal and political level where there are no winners. Talented women like artists or writers cannot follow their ambitions while their men dream to win in lottery. With the textile industry as its backdrop, this is the story of the children of the revolution in Macedonia. The Seamstresses casts a glance behind the curtain of globalization.

Igor Grubić was born in 1969 in Zagreb, Croatia, where he is also based. Igor studied philosophy and psychotherapy and worked as a producer, journalist and director at the “Fade In”, a studio for activist video and documentary.

One of his first artistic actions Black Peristil (1998), a re-enactment of the Red Peristil demonstrations in 1968 when the entire Peristil Square of the emperor’s palace in Split, Croatia was painted red in protest to totalitarianism, was made into a media event and paved the way for his future artistic/activist work. Igor often places his works into public space, works collaboratively and addresses issues, which concern local environment where his works are placed in or are happening. Igor mainly works with performance, public installation or video. Igor has exhibited internationally and was a part of acclaimed art events as Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt, Germany; Tirana Biennial 2, Albania; Creative Time Summit in New York, USA; as well as the 11th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey and Gender Check (MUMOK, Vienna, Austria and Zacheta, Warsaw, Poland).

Lana Čmajčanin was born in 1983 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she also lives and works as a visual artist. Lana graduated in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo and is a founding member of the Association for Art and Culture “Crvena” as well as a member of the Artists Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).

Lana works individually as well as collaboratively (mostly with artists Adela Jušić or Igor Grubić) with mixed media, manly with video, video performance and object art. Lana is doubtlessly one of the most promising emerging artists of BiH. She is not afraid to be engaged with even most traumatic issues of the space she is coming from. Her work presents an unbribable political agenda: giving voice to the most marginalized subjects as victims of sexualized war violence. However, Lana always succeeds to translate and transmit this local realities and experiences in a universal code, comprehensive for international audience. Lana’s work has been shown at The Biennale of Contemporary Art in Konjic, BiH; The Centre for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, Israel; at the Decolonial Aesthetics, Bogotá, Colombia; at the SpaPort Biennale, Banja Luka, BiH and elsewhere.

www.lanacmajcanin.com

A gallery visitor is invited to become a co-witness of an intimate struggle to come to terms with trauma and horrors of the war. On the level of composition and motif the video is built in a strong reference to baroque “women with candle” motifs from the European art history (Hendrick ter Brugghen, Matthias Stom, Dou Gerrit, George la Tour and others). In the light of the dawn, with sounds of a muezzin calling for the early prayer and barking dogs, the reflection of a mourning women’s face vanishes away. At the end of the night the candle dies out. Patience, persistence and strength begin to grow over deep scars from the horrors of war.

Bosnia and Herzegovina – Tailoring and Sewing (2011), installation by Lana Čmajčanin

Sixteen years after the Dayton Agreement which put the end to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995) at the cost of dividing the country into (artificially) ethnically defined cantons, the scars of this bureaucratic intervention provide still lots of problems on the political, social as well as on the intimate level. Some claim that BIH has a peaceful future only if united; others oppose the idea of unification. Lana Čmajčanin with her Bosnia and Herzegovina – Tailoring and Sewing offers a sarcastic opportunity to make a proper model according to individual’s means, desires, and needs, feelings of national identity, ethnicity, religion and political affiliation or guided by some others directions. By combining the entities, cantons, provinces, regions and districts / municipalities, anyone can create an individual territorial ideal BiH.

In his artistic practice grounded on conceptual and post-conceptual premises, respectively, Nemanja combines mixed media, techniques of visual and performance art (collective performance, installation and inter-active objects, video and new media, painting, photography as well as sound art). Thematically Nemanja is devoted to revealing and re-questioning the production mechanisms, and the manipulation and consumption of signs and meanings. His works are, as a rule, critical towards ideological and aesthetic structures of contemporary culture and society.

Nemanja has exhibited in numerous international group exhibitions (Steierische Herbst 2011, Graz, Austria; 52nd October Salon, Belgrade, Serbia; Un altro mondo e’ possibile, Sala Dogana/CHAN, Genova, Italy etc.) as well as in solo exhibitions (Don’t Fuck with Social Democracy!, Gallery Škuc, Ljubljana, Slovenia; NOT, Alberta Pane Gallery, Paris, France; Plaćam struju/I am paying electricity bills, MMSU, Rijeka etc.).

The Sweetest Dream (2005), a re-make of a readymade by Nemanja Cvijanović

In his work The Sweetest Dream, a re-make of a readymade – the EU flag, by manipulating the political or even cultural symbol of the EU, which supposedly stands for democracy and equality, Nemanja is relating to the immigration policies of the EU. His method is again grounded on juxtaposition. The reference to the Nazi-regime shocks and induces a de-sacralisation of the EU flag. However by doing so the work points finger to something far more shocking that any mud-slinging of political symbol could ever be: to the politics of de-sacralisation of a human life. If the bourgeois revolution of the late 18^th century and its “liberté, égalité, fraternité” gave birth to class and gender inequality, we must state that the process of the so called EU-ization re-articulates and materializes ethnicity, race and class in terms of necropolitics as described by Giorgio Agamben.

Enisa was exhibiting internationally and took part in residency programs in Belgium, Bulgaria, Sweden, Switzerland and Albania (Institute of Contemporary Art of Tirana – T.I.C.A.). She was awarded the “Onufri” prize in 2004 as well as “Marubi” prize for photography in 2005 and was a part of the exhibition Chosen Places (National Gallery of Arts, Tirana as well as in the exhibition Critique of Pure Image – Between Fake and Quotation in Center for Contemporary Art – PlovdivArt Today Lab, Bulgaria).

Welcome Dear Workers (2005), a photo documentation of a durational performance by Enisa Cenaliaj

As an act of resistance towards the past communist and present capitalist exploitation and appropriation of the working class, making workers and their rights invisible, Enisa Cenaliaj stood up. Literarily. Dressed as a worker, she occupied the pedestal in front of the entrance of Textile Combine “Stalin” in Tirana, where once stood a statue of Stalin monitoring mainly women textile workers going back and forth from work. Enisa stood there one morning long when workers were coming to their work and finally disappeared behind the entrance of the former Combine, current private factory.

“In connection with the slogan ‘Welcome dear workers’, I ironize the current factory owners, who see everything as a machine in function of their welfare … The placement of the worker on pedestal … beats the fact that this social class still exists and not only it does exist, but should require their rights or at least attempt to say: Hey people, we exist and we deserve more”, writes the artist on the performance.

While media have reported extensively on the performance in terms of a “post-communist live statute”, one worker commented: “We don’t need statues anymore …”. Indeed – the occupation of the pedestal functions as a fantasmic action “a scenario filling out the empty space of a fundamental impossibility, a screen masking a void” (Slavoj Žižek) – the social antagonism.

Privatization (2003), photo by Ozana Brković, 200×145 cm

“Privatization mirrors the personal, intimate self-observation of the artist, of confronting her own image, her own persona. … The symbolism (‘loquacity’) of a face marred by herpes as spoiled Beauty acts as a symptom of an organism’s negative condition, of damaged health. The floating caption, Privatization, is the name for one of the key, yet painful, measures for activation of a positive turn in societies dwelling in a transitional ‘purgatory’. This process re-contextualizes and semanticizes anew the entire scene. It works as an indicator or a ‘locator’ of the transfer of causes and consequences on the line between the individual and society. … Privatization thus becomes a marker of a general state of (un)acceptable flexibility, changeability of situations, rotation of meaning, transfer of causes and consequences on the line between private and public, individual and social. … That painful/ill condition requires a specific therapy and treatment for the healing of the organism. … Thus, a minor cosmetic treatment appears as an illusive act of ‘fixing things’ inside, as a simulacrum of bringing a situation back to normal, an illusion of the revival of former Beauty. In fact, it is only a game of self-deception or someone else’s propaganda because the body ‘felt it with its own skin’ and has become aware both of the latent danger coming from the outside and its own weakness and vulnerability.” (Svetlana Racanović, art historian)

Milijana Babić (1974, Croatia) is a visual and performance artist based in Rijeka, Croatia. She graduated in sculpture at the Durban Institute of Technology, South Africa and received her MA at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is a member of the Croatian Freelance Artists Association and the Croatian Associations of Visual Artists in Rijeka and Zagreb.

The starting point of Milijana Babić’s work is her own position as an individual and an artist, carried out in the context of transitional society. Her strategy is to transform an ordinary action or socially recognised icon into its opposite, creating a space for distance from the recognised perception of reality – a space for critical observation. Recently, her work has problematized the representation of contemporary art and the status of contemporary artists in (Croatian) society. It mainly takes the form of an installation and performance – often developed in direction of contextually specific long term works, and increasing actions in public space as a variation of activistic art.

In 2003 Milijana won the “New Media Prize” by NSA Gallery, Durban. Since 2004, she has collaborated in the organisation of the International Festival of Contemporary Arts – City of Women, Ljubljana. Since 2007, Milijana has worked as an associate assistant professor at the Department of Sculpture at the Academy of Applied Arts, Rijeka. Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions and festivals in Croatia and abroad (Dogma, Barrel Gallery, Zagreb; T-ht nagrada@msu, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb; FEM Festival, Girona, Spain; Trouble Festival, Brussels, Belgium; Critics Choice, Association of Visual Arts, Cape Town, South Africa; etc.).

Our Beautiful Homeland (2010), installation of readymades by Mililjana Babić

The work Our Beautiful Homeland consists of a readymade series, ingredients and products, which symbolize bare existence, stolen in supermarkets. Their exhibit is supported by basic information about the theft of individual items (date, time, trading chain, address). The title of the work – a reminiscence of the Croatian national anthem – ironically points to the betrayed expectations form the Croatian new state, which has been built on and lives by the inherited principle of “Find your way around, comrade!“ in its most corruptive sense. Simultaneously, the stolen articles such as flour, oil, toilet paper etc. touch upon the question of socially endangered groups, whose survival in the times of recession is pure art (like the artists’ themselves). Therefore, the slogan “Find your way around, comrade!“ could also be understood as affirmative. The work is based on a felony, and thereby it problematizes the idea of the moral, false moral and the loss of moral, in the framework of Croatian reality.

AKC Metelkova Mesto, for twenty years a squatted independent cultural location in Ljubljana centre, will host on 28. October in Menza pri koritu some of the independent and critical voices of the literary scene from Bosnia and Herzegovina – Bekim Sejranović, Croatia – Olja Savičević Ivančević, Kosovo – Jeton Neziraj, and Macedonia – Elizabeta Bakovska, followed by DJ BASIC (Slovenia).

At the opening night (25. October in the Atrium of the City Museum of Ljubljana) Muha Blackstazy (Serbia) will with his hip-hop report on an everyday life of Roma community, followed by the welcome party with DJ duo Brat&Sestra (Slovenia). In addition, at three concerts we could assure us that a self-determined local-global dialectics is possible: the experimental noise of Reverie Falls on All (Turkey) on 27. October at Defonija: Klub Gromka, AKC Metelkova Mesto as well as the rock noise Cripple and Casino (Croatia) and the Anatolian avant-rock Replikas (Turkey) followed by DJ Chaspa (Bosnia and Herzegovina/Germany) at the closing party on 29. October at Kino Šiška.

Welcome!

Katja Kobolt, Coordinator of Conference Art Programme

Europeans assume that democracy is under the threat of Islamization. When you look at it closer, this assumption is based on the perception that the culturally alien ones are a threat. The main question is “why these people are a threat”? Is this perception caused by the culturally alien ones themselves or is it a product of the cultural/ideological features of the host societies?

European perception of democracy is shaped around a homogenous society. There is place for different opinions, in the public sphere as well as the private one; but this is not the case regarding cultural differences. The public sphere is expected to be homogenous. Today “foreigners” living in these countries underline their communal and cultural differences in the public sphere as well as the private one. This is a problem for Westerners to which they cannot find a solution within the framework of modernism and secularism which is a pervasive ideology within the society. Secularism implies a “common lifestyle” in the public sphere. Such an understanding of secularism has difficulties in understanding cultural diversity within liberal/modern understanding of democracy and has difficulties with living together with the ones who do not coincide with its definition of “acceptable” ones. Therefore, European secularism and modernism produce and reproduce its own “other”.

While the most of the ex-Yugoslav republics are already part of EU, or on their way to become its members, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains to be the only part of „Yugosphere“ (Tim Judah) that still does not fulfil not even elementary premises for applying to EU. My contribution will map out what I see as the most symptomatic political and social antagonisms and blockages that not only impede the process of Bosnian integration to EU, but the very functioning of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign state.

Despite being the political Clochemerle ever since the end of socialism, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains the paradigmatic geopolitical space that prompts us to redefine the very notion of “border”. Far from being a line or barrier that separates two (or more) different entities, border is also a zone of interconnection and exchange that also connects entities, softening their supposed differences. I will argue that it is precisely this definition of border as a connexion zone should be activated if we are to oppose the segregationist and, ultimately, anti-European politics that still keeps Bosnia and Herzegovina in its grasp.

The current atmosphere of EU-Turkey relations is not promising mostly due to the ambiguity of the political will to accept and commit to each other on both sides. The pattern of relations, which have long been marked by unequal terms, not fulfilled promises, fears and prejudices and lack of profound knowledge about each other, are changing gradually. Here is what Turkish public sees the current picture of events: Turkey is engaged in a robust regional policy, developing a strong economy with and gradually fulfilling its democratization promises in line with not only the benchmarks set by the EU, but also with the demands of its newly emerging and growing civil society at home. Europe, on the other hand, is going through a severe economic crisis rendering the future of the Union uncertain, facing a growth of ultra-nationalist political parties and perished by its own mistakes in dealing with its migrants. European policy elite and public opinion analyze Turkey as a monolithic entity, a foreign policy actor to be precise, regardless of paying attention to the ongoing social and political change. Europe buys the Turkish Kemalist self-acclaimed idea of a modern secular (laic) country and develops tools for Turkey’s democratization accordingly. Europe sees Turkey as a homogeneous entity that shifts between centuries old modern Western binaries such as the East and West;  and the secular and religious while putting forth very little effort in contributing to a real solution of problems in its region such as the war between Turkish state and Kurdish guerrilla and Cyprus conflict.

My presentation will try to reveal the underlining foundations of the policies and attitudes taken up by both sides by focusing on much consumed frameworks of tolerance, secularism and multiculturalism. I will also analyse the current patterns of relations when democratization in Turkey’s region is becoming less of a top-down imposition and more of a ‘street’ imposition; and when European benchmarks compete with more authentic models and references of democratization for those countries that do not have a historical track of Western style modernization.

Moderator: Sebastjan Leban, artist and theoretician, Slovenia

Sunday, 30. October
Science Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Atrium),  11.00 – 14.00

Presentation and discussion of/with selected international foundations active in SEE region and Turkey.

The brunch discussion will engage with structure, agenda as well as consequences of (NGO) grants politics run by the EU as well as the role of independent foundations and private institutions in the cultural politics and NGO founding situation in the SEE and Turkey. By encouraging a dialog between NGO representatives and representatives of international foundations we want to critically reflect positive as well as negative aspects resulting from current grant politics.

After almost two decades of NGO grants politics in the SEE and Turkey we are still facing partly outdated models of (re)distribution, which are in many cases resulting in a dangerous stagnation of cultural and NGO scene in specific countries. If on the one hand newly established cultural politics developed new modes of collaborations, mobility and integration, we can clearly state that such politics has established also a certain mode of precarious dependency, which in many instances dictates structuring of sometimes whole cultural and NGO sectors. Departing from the Slovenian case we would like to expose some of the most endemic and symptomatic problematics deriving directly from the cultural and NGO grant politics and by this try to locate new possible modes of its restructuralization which could be applicable also to SEE and Turkey as well as vice versa.