Follow Up: Context Studies Plenum “Context Studies – Diversity of Diversity”

07.11.2014. | 17:00

The Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade, in collaboration with partner organizations the Sent from Novi Pazar, the Active Region from Subotica and the Yurom Center from Nis invite you

A public presentation of students’ results within the framework of the program “Context Studies – Diversity of Diversity” – the Context Studies Plenum, Belgrade

7th to 10th of November 2014

Center for Cultural Decontamination,

Birčaninova street 21, Belgrade

THE CONTEXT STUDIES PLENUM – DIVERSITY OF DIVERSITY

The project Context Studies – Diversity of Diversity started various collective and individual programs in Belgrade, Subotica, Nis and Novi Sad during the year 2014. The meetings of the students with mentors, guest lecturers, partners, as well as their mutual exchange, led to different forms of public programs presented in students’ hometowns during the September and October 2014. All those programs became articulated into one jointly made conclusion of this experiment at the Plenum of Context Studies as the beginning of new experiments in future.

Friday,  7th of November 2014

5 pm

Biopolitics and Breast Cancer
Olja Nikolić Kia                                                          

The art project Biopolitics and Breast Cancer consists of an installation Eros and Tanatos (Marko Matić, Đorđije Milić, Olja Nikolić Kia, Ljiljana Bojanić), a photo-installation Empty Place (Maruška Beader, Olja Nikolić Kia) and a performance-discussion with lja Nikolić Kia. It tries to analyze sickness as an interior space of destruction and/or development, sickness as coming to terms with death and loneliness, as looking back at one’s own life and as the possibility of a change at the individual level. In broader social sense, the artwork deals with a critique of relations in the field of sexuality as a paradigm of human relations in general and especially of those with persons afflicted with an illness. The emphasis is on inquiring into questions like who does have the required resources (or does not) in order to be publicly visible in the struggle for the rights to be diagnosed swiftly and accurately, to be medically treated and cared for within this unjust system. The female body as an art project raises the abovementioned questions in a symbolical way.

7 pm 

A perfomance and video installation “Making Their Place” by Marija Kauzlarić

The initial inspiration for this artwork was my daughter’s paper origami-like toy that she made at her school. She called it Froggy, and claimed that it can tell the future. Most of the people made such toys during their elementary schooling. This particular one contained eight hidden “prophecies” for girls seeking to learn about the future with their boyfriends. The actual “prophecies” were: 1. You will kiss under the mistletoe; 2. He is not in love with you; 3. You will travel the world together; 4. You will be together only for six months; 5. You will have eight children; 6. He thinks you are ugly; 7. He will ask you to go together to the promnight; 8. You will marry you boyfriend and you will live together in Bora Bora.

The toy is made by folding a piece of paper that finally looks like a mushroom with its upper surface made out of four different parts. Those four different parts can move independently since they individually form pyramidal shapes connected by one of their sides. The toy is animated by sticking thumbs and pointer fingers of each hand underneath those pyramids. This allows the inner sides of the pyramidal shapes to be seen, and those have the “prophecies” inscribed at the other side of them. The movement of revealing these two sets of four different surfaces of this mouth-like (or even vagina-like) structure resembles a person speaking (or a body orifice opening and closing). Starting from those mechanical and symbolical characteristics, as well as from its aesthetic matrix, the artwork seeks to disassemble or to “unfold” this contraption, and then to transpose those elements spatially and narratively. The rearrangement of the elements follows purely formal patterns, mirroring those of a “closed” system of children’s (language) game.

The unconscious networks of (ideological) language are usually the strongest at the points that are the least visible, immersed in the everyday material practices. Those networks constitute female subjectivity through the everyday life routines, through the succession of generations and their social roles, and through the narratives of family history. The spatial and video installation seeks to create a hybrid space between the private and the public one, between the present and the absent, the visible and the invisible, between the inner and the outer space, the subject and the object. It focuses on the temporality of those silent and invisible systems of transmission, as well of the closed, cyclical mechanisms of reproduction – an unacknowledged heritage that is passed on from generation to generation of women.

9 pm

Miss Julie – A Forced Theatrical Play:

sad scenes from the life of a woman / montage of attractions / Strindberg Rousseau vs. Foucault Butler

Actors: Jelena Đulvezan and Mina Milošević; Directed by: Uroš Jovanović

Strindberg’s Miss Julie is often taken as one of the most important plays in the naturalist theatre. As a theatrical movement, naturalism has taken its ideals from Darwinism, equalizing human struggles for social status with the animal struggle for survival, therefore making the “natural selection” an acceptable mechanism in human societies. This is picturesquely made obvious in the play through Jean and Julie’s struggle for their own lives. Strindberg himself claimed that he found the inspiration for this drama in a true story of a young noble woman that slept with a servant. However, the woman did not commit suicide, unlike the character from the drama. Why? Because Strindberg wanted to deprive women of their right to freedom. That’s why we are staging Strindberg today: in order to confront Strindberg with himself, debunking his misogynic ideas.

Saturday, 8th of November 2014

3 pm

Film screening and a discussion on the Context Studies students’ production in Niš

Participants: Osman Balić, Turkijan Redžepi, Tamara Simonović, Kastrat Brijani

4 pm

Film encounters of the Context Studies

Film screenings

“Hands” by Emir Mehović (Novi Pazar)

“Barbeque in Nature” by Armin Šaljić

“The Museum of Revolution” by Olga Nikolić Kia and Vladimir Opsenica (Belgrade)

Discussion will be moderated by the film director Nikola Ležaić

5 pm

Lunch break and rehearsal

6 pm

Theatre play “Yes man and No man” as a result of the “Brecht as Method” workshop inNovi Pazar

Actors:  Aladin Škrijelj, Anisa Redžović, Irfan Preljević and Irhad Preljević

Razgovor sa Enesom Halilovićem o radu Studija konteksta u Novom Pazaru i sa Srđanom Veljovićem o izložbi fotografija polaznika u Novom Pazaru

Discussion with Enes Halilović about the Context Studies project in Novi Pazar and with Srđan Veljović about the photo exhibition in Novi Pazar

7 pm

Olga Simić

Performance “On the freedom of education”

Entitled after Victor Hugo’s speech in the French National Assembly from January 1850

7.30 pm

Presentation of the literary workshop in Novi Pazar and a video presentation of the photo exhibition of workshop participants in Novi Pazar

Literary workshop participants: Edin Turković, Anida Husović and Alma Zekić (Sjenica); Ajtana Dreković, Sabina Dazdarević, Seniha Pepić, Semir Kurtanović, Amela Halilović and Anida Selmanović (Tutin); Novi Pazar: Amina Ljajić, Birsena Džanković, Selma Hasanović, Haris Jašarević, Avdija Salković and Enisa Avdović (Novi Pazar)

Visual workshop participants: Azra Hamzagić, Emina Zilkić, Aida Camović, Nermina Zilkić, Aiša Šabanović, Irfan Ličina, Senaid Šarenkapić, Ilija Mirković, Ilda Koca, Hana Hadžibegović and Marijana Kulundžić

8 pm

Theatre play “Forgetting Hunger by Sleeping it off” by Context Studies’ students from Niš

The play “Forgetting Hunger by Sleeping it off” represents a common program of several workshops held in Nis. It stemmed out of an initial theatre project “One Way Ticket” by Jakuta Osmanović and of the KUD ROMA „Alija Jašarević“ coordinated by Dragan Osmanović, dealing with the migrant issues and the intolerable status of Roma people. The participants of hip-hop workshops have contributed with their songs to the play, making it a combined dramatic and musical form. Therefore, the outcomes made at the hip-hop workshops held in Nis within the framework of the Context Studies are presented by incorporating the works of two groups of students into the play. One group, coordinated by Turkijan Redžepi with the assistance of Kastro Brijani in conceptualizing lectures and practical exercises, focused on hip-hop music sound engineering and production, as well as public and on-line presentations of it. The other group coordinated by Tamara Simonović and the NGO INDIGO have worked on and recorded a common song at the Social Center.

Participants: Janko Vučić, Sava Sulejmanović and Marko Anđelković, Turkijan Redžepi, Kastro Brijani and Ergin Avdulahu, as well as the students of KUD “Alija Jašarević” workshop

Sunday,  9th of November 2014

3 pm

Jelena Paligorić

Performance: “What have I learned from my Childhood” a staged reading with music  
Participants: Slaven Dević, Svetlana Jakša, Danijel Bibić, Vladimir Milojković

4 pm

Lunch break

6 pm

Olga Simić

Performance “On the freedom of education”

Entitled after Victor Hugo’s speech in the French National Assembly from January 1850

6.30 pm

Exhibition opening of the Visual Workshop for Creative Writing (Subotica)

Theme: Writing in public, polemics and translation

Discussion about the Visual Workshop: Atila Širbik (Sirbik Attila), Vanja Subotić, and the workshop students. Moderator: Saša Ćirić

The Visual workshop for creative writing participants: Mihaela Mihajlović, Vladimir Milojković, Danijel Tikvicki, Viktoria Mak, Fizzin Olivér, Pap Katalin, Áron Száraz, Ištvan Sabo, Örs Poborai, Jelena Lučić, Miloš Purić, Kristofer Tokodi, Ema Bošnjak, Dejana Ljubišić, Marina Zovko and Ema Bošnjak, working under the supervision of visual artist Vanja Subotić and novelist and essayist Attila Sirbik.

Presentation of The Workshop for Researching the Everyday Phenomena in Urban Environment: “Magnetic poles”, an art project done in July in Subotica by Jelena Marković, a student of the Context Studies from Belgrade, in collaboration with her colleagues from Subotica

The Visual workshop for creative writing aimed to address the “immediate and pressing” problems of young people by conflating the specificities and different languages of literature and visual art. The problems that the workshop tackled ranged from local to global ones, from the objective issues to those subjective ones, from the individual concerns to collective ones, from social, political and cultural issues to those concerning the process of artistic creation.

The workshop stressed that the artistic freedom is not something that is given but reclaimed and accomplished by creativeness and talent that needs different methods, concepts, techniques and strategies in order to come about at all.

During the course of the workshop, the participants were empowered – through the process of acquiring both theoretical and practical knowledge – to find the most suitable and appropriate ways to artistically express their personalities and affinities, as well as being able to materialize those expressions in forms of different artworks or art projects.

The artworks that are going to be exhibited represent the outcomes of a collective process of thinking and creative work.

One part of the exhibition features finalized artworks like photo-novels, a photo-box as object-art, as well as a sound installation. The other part of it is more of a documentary display of tools and other things used during the workshop that acquire the status of artworks by the virtue of being shown in a gallery-like setting.

The “Magnetic poles” workshop took place in Subotica, and focused on researching of the everyday urban phenomena. Jelena Marković was the author and coordinator of the workshop, while Saša Ćirić was mentoring students. Students had the task of observing and analyzing different phenomena in urban environment, according to their own experiences, perceptions and personal preferences. By way of creative interpretations, students have individually made connections between the observed phenomena, and then collectively compared those with other students’ materials, making a collective selection whilst respecting the specificities of different approaches. The phenomenon of magnetic poles and its forces of attraction and repulsion served as a starting point of the workshop, as well as providing the background for analyzing the urban conditions in Subotica.

8 pm

Theatrical Play “PRECTAVA”

Theme: Brecht as Method

Participants: Milja Mazarak, Jelena Cvijan, Danijela Pinterić, Stefan Stojković, Milica Golubović and Oliver Blesak

Art support: Branislav Filipović

Friends: Daniela Mamužić, Ana Patarčić, Dragan Đurić, The “Deže Kostolanji” theatre, The Art Theater “Aleksandar Lifka”

The play features passages from Ildiko Erdei’s book “The Anthropology of Consumption”

 “Prectava” is not a usual theater play. “Prectava” is in fact an theatrical depiction of a silenced protest against the system that we are all forced to live in – the one enclosed by the imposed criteria, standards, norms and measures that the “majority” obediently except. It is us that are contributing to the reproduction of that system, since we are a part of it. Our protest is not directly expressed, but molded into an artistic form that we came up with through dialogues, discussions and rehearsals, as well as through observation and research of ourselves, of our fears, our struggles and our sense of freedom. This method led us to incorporate our personal stories into play, little pieces of ourselves, which aimed, accordingly, to caricature as well as to concretize and transfer the problems of a limitless consumer society characterized by the terrorizing free-market laws, experienced in a number of different ways.

The dramatic personae represent thus a combination of imaginary characters and actors – actors wanting to be characters and characters wanting to be actors, of actors wanting to be themselves and simultaneously whishing not be. In this way, various types of people under the burden of society of consumption’s material existence are seeking to make a change. The aims is to get by, to survive the coming times by transgressing the boundaries of what is offered as confortable, therefore doing away with the fear of extreme situations. Most importantly, the initial goal should not be the change of the social system, but of us, encompassing the development of self-consciousness and of the need for a change.

During the course of the project we got to know each other, we got to know ourselves. We developed the idea for the play and wrote a text. We rehearsed and we gave an important part of selves during the course of it. There is no other way but to “start from ourselves”.

Discussion on the workshop in Subotica – moderator: Branislav Filipović

Monday,  10th of November 2014

6 pm

Presentation of the project “The Open School of Economy”

“The Open School of Economy” is a paticipative art project realized within the Context Studies group “Brecht and Method” that was menthored by Zlatko Paković and initiated by Danilo Prnjat. The project’s aim is to create and promote a platform for research and practice of the alternative economic models that strive to go beyond the contemporary neoliberal system. The focus is on the researching into theories of economy that offer potentialities for developing and establishing a model of exhange that would not be based on the indivdual profit-making principles (as the capitalist neoliberal theory would have), but to be guided by the interests of the community as a whole. The project is realized through a series of workshops or, more precisely, open reading and discussion groups that take place in public or working spaces, therefore immediately testing the applicability of a certain model of alternative economy. The project in itself is conceptualized a form of self-organization and self-eudcation, as well as a practical intervention in the field of economic exhange within a local context.

The presentations will consist of a short expose on the workshops and of an exhibition of documents (books and articles) used during the workshop that the audience can browse through. All additional information will be provided by the coordinator and artist Danilo Prnjat.

7.30 pm

Geeking for a medal – a conversation with Bojan Đorđević and Aleksandar Konjikušić about the Nikad Robom collective – an independent cassette label, concert promoting agency and a hometaping organization from Belgrade active on the Yugoslav alternative music scene during the second half of the 1980s.

Program editor: Nenad Vujić / A hogon’s industrial guide

The topics for discussion with Bojan Đorđević and Aleksandar Konjikušić will focus on their Nikad Robom association, active from 1984 to 1996 in various shapes and forms, dealing with different kinds of post-Rock-in-Opposition (RIO) music – from art rock and alternative jazz to contemporary classical and the so-called New music. The duo behind the Nikad Robom collective was at the same time an instigator of the eponymous cassette edition, which was one of the first independent cassette labels in the former Yugoslavia. Under the same name, a concert-promoting agency organized concerts of numerous post-RIO and New music bands in Belgrade, as well as a home-tapingproject that multiplied, catalogued and distributed releases which were unavailable on the Yugoslav market. The result of it is a lively and open archive of Western alternative music of the times.

9 pm

The Zazor group

Remove the Faces from Your Masks (Michel Foucault)   

Psychoanalysis – a discourse based on Freud’s “Introduction to Psychoanalysis” – is founded on two crucial ideas: (1) the unconscious that dominates the conscious and (2) sexual desire as the prime mover of human will. The first one bring into connection the fact that nowadays psychoanalysis is dominant over other schools of psychotherapy with an observation that in the psychoanalytic discourse happened a transfer of certain class power in bourgeois society. The other one can be associated with “pervert” and queer sexuality that disturb the “norm” or “normal” as the normative. These two instances will be brought together and questioned within a psychoanalytic group situation of queer people (in this case the members of the Zazor group). They will talk about their personal problems, as well as about the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis and the critique of them, starting from their own experience or taking over the identities of different theoreticians (for example Foucault, Deleuze, Popper, etc.), even the one of the founding father of psychoanalysis, Freud himself.

The audience is welcome to join in this pseudo-psychoanalytic post-drama performance and assume an identity. Since noting is scripted in advance, the talk advances by way of freely associating, meaning that every performance is unique without the possibility to be repeated.

Project team of the Context Studies in Belgrade:

Project coordinator: Ana Isaković

Media editor: Ivica Đorđević

Guest lecturers: Dejan Kršić, Nebojša Jovanović, Zoran Pantelić, Iztok Osojnik

Project team of the Context Studies in Subotica:

Project coordinator: Branislav Filipović

Guest lecturers, project partners and friends: Daniela Mamužić, Ana Patarčić, Vanja Subotić, Atila Širbik (Sirbik Attila), The “Deže Kostolanji” theater, the Art theater “Aleksandar Lifka”

Project team of the Context Studies in Novi Pazar:

Project coordinator: Enes Halilović

Guest lecturers, project partners and friends: Srđan Veljović, Maida Gruden, Igor Filipović, Elma Halilović, Zehnija Bulić, the “Dositej Obradović” library

Project team of the Context Studies in Niš:

Project coordinator: Osman Balić

Guest lecturers, project partners and friends: Kastrat Brijani, Greg de Cuir, Predrag Radovančević, Muha Blackstazy, Vladimir Đorđević;  Turkijan Redžepi (Romaworld); Tamara Simonović (NGO Indigo), Marko Anđelković (Naopak Ništarija), Dragan Osmanović, Petar Todorović, Ana Đorđević, Sadik Saitović

The Context Studies’ aim is questioning the meaning of the “public” in different senses, as well as opening a space for critical practices in relation to our immediate social environment and the heritage of the civil society. The Context Studies courses took place simultaneously in Belgrade (CZKD, coordinator: Ana Isaković), Subotica (coordinator: Branislav Filipović, Aktivni region), Niš (coordinator: Osman Balić, YUROM Centar) and Novi Pazar (coordinator: Enes Halilović, SENT) during the period from February to June 2014. The students enrolled in the “Context Studies: Diversity of Diversity” program, in collaboration with their mentors and lecturers, had the opportunity to prepare the programs that will be publically presented in their own cities as well as on the collective event in Belgrade.

The Context Studies team:

Art Director: Borka Pavićević

Mentors: Zlatko Paković, Ognjen Glavonić, Saša Ćirić

The project team:

Project manager: Aleksandra Sekulić

Coordinators: Ana Isaković (CZKD), Enes Halilović (Sent, Novi  Pazar), Branislav Filipović (Aktivni region, Subotica), Osman Balić (YUROM Centar, Niš)

PR: Ljubica Slavković

Media editor: Ivica Đorđević

Administration and organization: Slavica Vučetić

The Council of the Context Studies: prof. Milena Dragićević Šešić,  Dejan Ilić, Srbijanka Turajlić, Mladen Đorđević, Saša Ilić, Attila Sirbik, Branislav Dimitrijević,  Predrag Brebanović, Snežana Skoko, Ružica Marjanović, Ana Vujanović, Vesna Milosavljević Nikola Dedić, Ivana Aleksić.

The project is supported by

European Union – Program “Civil Society Facility” (EU –IPA)

Secretariat for Culture, City of Belgrade

Open Society Foundation Serbia

Charles Mott Foundation

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