tra

Milena Dragicevic Sesic

Urban provocations

At times of dissolving values, raising of nationalism, fragmentization of the country, loss of identity, disappearing institutions - the meaning of the independent art scene was not to provide another view, another reality, but primarily to produce new ideas, new concepts, which the established scene, dead, suffocated and turned to past, overflooded with nationalism, was unable to produce.

Therefore, the independent scene is not only the world of artists and art outside the market in a market oriented world, these are not only artists without galleries, without buyers and powerful institutional support. The independent scene brings together the aesthetical, ethical and intellectual positions and creates a united art expression.

In Yugoslavia, and specifically in Belgrade, this independent radical scene during 90` was not only countering nationalism and xenophobia, it was questionning the political system and specifically conservative institutional system in cultural field. That is why artist had opted to leave institutions, preferred not to perform and not to exhibit, as well as large part of audiences also have boycotted the public cultural spaces.

So, many projects that artists had organized in the first five years of 90`: Ice Art, Fia group, Dah Theater, Ister Theater, Sweet Dreams Baby, Urba-zone project, Absolutely Novi Sad, KART group, represented actually the engagement of the artists to find new forms of activities through art groups sharing similar sensibility and view of the world in unconventional places within the city. Thus art activities had been presented in appartments (Exhibition Private-Public), Tracks (Ice-Art), on the Green market (Skart), techno-rave clubs, underground passages, ruins etc.

The networking of these projects under the roof of Radio B92 within the Urba-zone project or Bitef theater within the small festival Airplane Without Engine, has strengthened the marginal scene which had not have any support except donatons from Soros fund Festivals such as Infant in Novi Sad and FIAT in Podgorica, then AlterImage, and finally Belef (Belgrade summer festival since 1997) helped implementation of the projects which otherwise would be very difficult to realize. Completely excluded from the world art scene, and deliberately self-excluded from Yugoslavian official art scene, artists and mediators tried alone to act, to provoke public opinion and incidental audience throughout city of Belgrade and cities in Vojvodine.

An important moment in development of independent cultural scene has been marked by creation of independent cultural centers.

In order to survive and develop their impact, artist had to look for places which have lost their primary functions and are unattractive for big business, in other words - places which were difficult to commercialize. Belgrade offers numerous examples:

Rex initiated by Radio B92 (summer 1994), and Center for Cultural Decontamination - Pavilion Veljkovic (1995), as well as Apostrof in Novi Sad and Konkordija in Vrsac. Those independent institutions finally ofered infrastructure and better conditions for production and presentation of art work in the second part of 90`. All of them had been created in unconventional spaces mostly in deserted and non-used buildings, such as nationalised bourgeois property (private gallery hall), or Jewish community hall used as cinema and then abandoned (Cinema Rex). Some initiatives had already some history, like Bitef theater in a church-made-warehouse, and only then made theater, old electric plant in Dorol, Paromlin, Remiza - depot at Sajmite, etc

But, there are also experiences connected with Powder magazine in Kalemegdan, Film City and its set decorations as a summer festival venue, and finally Sugar factory!But what do these other examples show? Old powder magazines in Kalemegdan, for instance. They show that it is not enough for a site to be discovered by experts, renovated with the help of city authorities and busy with programs for one summer only. The place stayed dead until the change within City government in 1997, who gave this space to Youth Cultural center.Or Sugar factory renovated luxuriously as Hyatt hotel, by president of Jul Ljubisa Ristic, theater director and politician, in spite of the fact that programs had been done by artist whose artistic achievements in 70` and 80` had been out of the question audience boycotted the space, as well as artist. Only small groups of very young, often provincial actors, accepted to produce and perform there.

It was obvious, that the place must be discovered by those who wish to use it. Those who have something to say. Rex, Center for Cultural Decontamination, Beton halla theater, etc. are evidence of that. These are the venues where true energy of the alternative, radical arts movements, strongly comes forward, this time also politically initiated. The thoughts and emotions of the artists, faced with war atrocities, with the closed, isolated society, bring about eruptions of unusual creative expressions, contributing to the implementation of a new art break-through.

Since that moment artistic and intellectual movement got the chance to gather together not only during ralleys, but in the same space. This is how the rhythm of action on this radical art scene, the rhythm of creation and development of concepts - production of meaning, has been established together with theoretical scene, both deeply connected to political movements such as Belgrade Circle, Women in Black, later Resistance (Otpor) etc. Together with publishing of the reviews (Belgrade circle, Word, etc.), books, CD`s

Those art activities had political, personal, living ethical position, they gave strong contribution to the constitution of civic life together with social movements and oppositional political parties.

Institutionalization of radical arts through specific alternative art institutions and festivals - film, theater, video-art, etc. contributed to the preservation of free spirit, political resistance, ethical stands, but also of experimental tendencies, in spite of the both political and market pressures (having in mind that public money was not given for such institutions and projects, that audiences had been on the edge of survival and entry was mostly free).

Therefore, the meaning of the notion independent, alternative art scene has been formed in this country in a culturally and historically specific situation, and it would be hardly understandable outside that context. That is the reason that such centers do not have often programs like dj`s evenings because those programs are linked to Belgrade clubbing events, often regarded by radical artist as part of evasive processes runaways of realities. Thus in the political turmoil in the streets (1996-7), when the citizens finally freely make their views known the alternative spaces were not only spaces of creation, they directly became the spaces of freedom of a civil society open for discussions and talks on the key problems of the present political moment. Even programs in Rex cinema open to the youngest audience from comics to rock, sales of fanzines to media-opera, was essentially a political debate on current reality.

But the important thing is that artist do not satisfy themselves with programs done only within those alternative institutions. The previous period teached them that real effects are reached only when in touch with huge, indefinite city space. That is the reason that manifestations like Belef, but even concrete art projects like Listen, little man of Center for Cultural decontamination, have been realized throughout the city. Theater director Ana Miljanic had planed 10 actions from 10a.m. to 7 p.m., spread throughout the city within one hour interval. Each of the performances was intended not only for a specific city quarter, but primarily for a different target group the retired, refugees without citizenship, consumers (those who are buying cheap glamour seeking to give sense to their lives), secondary school children, commuters on city buses, radio audience, newcomers in the city, and finally TV viewers those who wait to be given an opinion because who are they to have an opinion of their own In a word, to all those Reich`s book Listen Little Man is meant for. But at 9 p.m. in the evening, all the participants and inicidental audience, through local TV had been invited to come to final gathering in the Center for Cultural Decontamination, as symbolical place for debating daily experience.

Now Belgrade neighbourhoods are living different cultural experiences the new public authorities try to redefine old cultural centers (maison de la culture de quartier), cultural establishment tries to give life to classical forms of cultural institutions (libraries, museums, etc.), but truly creative forces still are in independent sector who had refused, even after changes, to be instititutionalized, fearing its own autonomy, and knowing that critical thought is still very needed. In the society poluted already 15 years through media and culture, blocked by embargo, different wars etc. creative, radical, indipendent ideas are still necessary to provoke a dialogue dialogue through projects, through art works.

Borka Pavicevic

CENTER FOR CULTURAL DECONTAMINATION

The Center for Cultural Decontamination has been established in the war years of 1993 and 1994, as a need to face what is really happening with the circumstances of the war on the one hand, and all that was being done to hide it, on the other. The Center for Cultural Decontamination (denazification and pacification) has been created out of belief that it is necessary, for the sake of future and todays children, to decontaminate and denazify the environment and terrain systematically polluted with nationalism and xenophobia. This, obviously, resulted in provincialism, followed by colonialism.

It is necessary to induce catharsis, to purify, purify.

In between the vulgarly destroyed vulgar Marxism and the Postmodern, the Center supports the Modern which brought us together and could link us with the world.

In the autumn of 1994, the CFCD entered the Veljkovic Pavilion. Nothing more truthful than that could have happened. The beautiful and semi-ruined building of the Veljkovic Pavilion is our reality and our destiny, ethics and aesthetics.

There was a time and a space where a family (Veljkovic) brought paintings from exhibitions worldwide and exhibited them. They gathered, built, invested something in the environment they were a part of. The construction which began in 1931 (arch. oki) was completed with the inclusion of four copies of Michelangelos sculptures, whose marble pedestals still decorate the Pavilion.

Then, there was the Second World War. They say that Moa Pijade entered the Pavilion after the war and painted. They say some other painters also worked there. Then there came winters and hot summers, and the painting stopped.

The CFCD reopened the Veljkovi Pavilion on January 1st, 1995. Exactly at noon, with an exhibition presenting the biography of the place.

We answered the challenge of the Veljkovi Pavilion with poetics:

performances, exhibitions, meetings, happenings, discussions

And then, there was the post-Dayton Serbia. The number of newly emerged peacemakers became proportionate to the negation of the ever existing war.

Therefore, the catharsis, decontamination, denazification and real pacification is only now really necessary.

I know it was important and it still is important - to take a position.

At the same time, everything that was done in the Pavilion has been and it is out of the spirit of the place and people who have recognized both the spirit of the place and themselves.

Nothing would have happened otherwise, as the constitution, construction, creation, determination and establishing are terribly difficult processes at times and in place when and where self-oblivion, blasphemy, trade, general phrases, treason and self-treason have become very comfortable, have become the way of surviving.

The idea and raison detre of the CFCD - the Veljkovic Pavilion is there to live and to create.

Jul Political party created by Mirjana Markovic, wife of Slobodan Milosevic, notorious as the party of extremely enriched people during transition period and embargo.