Friday, 6 October
VISUAL ARTS PROGRAMME
Art is a Struggle: A Discussion on the Exhibitions stUUdenti
As part of the ongoing exhibition-platform To Be Political, we have dedicate one segment of the programme to the exhibitions stUUdenti, jointly organised by students from all four faculties of the University of Arts in Belgrade (the Faculty of Music, the Faculty of Fine Arts, the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, and the Faculty of Applied Arts) at the end of December 2024 in the Gallery of the Faculty of Fine Arts and in February 2025 in the Kula Gallery in Belgrade.
Friday, 17 October
VISUAL ARTS PROGRAMME
Guerrilla Film: Threnody for the Victims of Marikana by Aryan Kaganof
The film Threnody for the Victims of Marikana by Aryan Kaganof, first shown in 2014 around the world and at the CZKD Cinema, has received numerous awards, critiques, and associations. It “seized” and returned the alienated academic discourse to the site of the massacre of striking miners in South Africa in 2012, naming this killing a ritual and shedding light on the social truth of the “new democracy”, relying on the poetics of remix to expose imperial social, media, and cultural mechanisms.
We discussed how it is perceived today, in a space (and time) of challenges to political thought, in conversation with the artist via video call, moderated by Aleksandra Sekulić. This programme is realised within the exhibition-platform To Be Political.
THRENODY FOR THE VICTIMS OF MARIKANA
Aryan Kaganof
South Africa, 2014, 26 min 30 sec, colour
Arjan Kaganof – African Noise Foundation project
A theorisation of the Marikana massacre as a ritual murder – victims on the altar of capitalism in a newly established democracy.
Monday, 20 October
SONGS OF FREEDOM on FREEDOM DAY
Choirs and non-choirs sang new songs of resistance
Horkestar
Hor-ruk
and you
Wednesday, 22 October
Saturday, 25 October
Who is the Political Subject Today? Guided Tours through the Exhibition To Be Political
On 28 June this year we posed the question: Who is the political subject today? Since then, hundreds of participants – artists, artistic collectives, historians and theorists of art, and our dear visitors – have contributed to articulating, questioning, and reinterpreting this concept.
In this fifth exhibition-platform, through the interrelations between artworks and discursive programmes, a dynamic structure has been formed, in which the elements collectively constitute an open, processual, and participatory exhibition concept.
Participants who presented their artworks, discussions, and research include: Bojan Fajfrić, Darinka Pop-Mitić, Ana Vujović, Siniša Ilić, Darija S. Radaković, the duo Doplgenger, Biljana Jovanović, Irfan Ličina, Srđan Veljović, Raša Andrić, Simona Ognjanović and Dejan Vasić (UNZ), Mladen Miljanović, Barbara Matejčić, Branislav Dimitrijević, Jelena Jureša, Black Sheep Academy, Silven Žorž, Pavle Levi, Koštana Banović, Dragan Stojmenović, Igor Grubić, Milica Pekić, and Aryan Kaganof.
The exhibition is realised within the programme Diversity as Persistence: Creative Perspectives and Collective Insights.
Friday, 24 October
Shuttle Diplomacy: A Discussion on the Work of Darinka Pop-Mitić
Participants: Jelena Vesić, Sonja Biserko, Darinka Pop-Mitić, and Svebor Midžić
Approaching the discussion from the perspectives of art history and theory (Jelena Vesić), diplomacy and human rights (Sonja Biserko), and law and philosophy (Svebor Midžić), together with the artist, the participants look at the artistic work of Darinka Pop-Mitić as a continuous process of thought. Contextualising it not only within the diplomatic and historical circumstances to which it refers, but also within the contemporary moment, they raised questions of continuity and discontinuity of certain processes, including those of (selective) remembrance and memory.
Thursday, 27 October
Lecture: The End of the World and Art
As part of a programme realised in collaboration between the Center for Cultural Decontamination and AICA Serbia, art historian and theorist Dejan Sretenović gave a lecture via video link on the topic “The End of the World and Art.”
Thursday, 30 October
XVII INTERNATIONAL FAIR OF THE LIBRARY XX CENTURY
Alongside a large number of previously published books, five new titles were presented for the first time:
Teofil Pančić: URBAN BUSHMEN (Second, expanded edition)
Dejan Ilić: GROWING UP IN SERBIA: Leaving the Comfort of Immaturity
Justine Lacroix: EUROPEAN VALUES: The Question of Democracy
Ivan Čolović: AT THE BIRTHDAY OF THE REPUBLIC OF SRPSKA: Notes of an Uninvited Guest
Bojan Spaić (ed.): PROTEST IS A TEST: Professors’ Notes on the Student Protests 2024/2025
Friday, 31 October
Book Launch
Women and Partisan Art: Aesthetics and Practices of Resistance in Yugoslavia and Carinthia
(Edited by Elena Messner, Cristina Beretta, Goran Lazičić, and Markus Gönitzer; publisher: transcript, Bielefeld, 2025)
Participants: Olga Manojlović Pintar, Ivana Pantelić, Tatjana Rosić Ilić, Stanislava Barać, Aleksandra Momčilović Jovanović, Elena Messner, and Goran Lazičić
This academic collection focuses on art and cultural practices that emerged within the Yugoslav Partisan movement during the Second World War, as well as later artistic interpretations and ideological narratives concerning the partisan anti-fascist movement in Yugoslavia and Carinthia.
