Croatian / Bosnian artist Lala Rascic compares a Connecting Cultures project Art & Survival aimed at researching human rights, mental health and PTSD and Victims' symptom project in her post entitled Victims symptom
"As I said, my Milan experience was great, but the A&S project itself hardy holds water, as it is set up to do nothing, change nothing and is having a really good chance at leaving nothing behind. The initiative to get together in Milan was great, yet I just can’t put my finger on what were CC trying to do. Whereas Ana Peraica’s Victim’s Symptom (PTSD and Culture) is a concrete, elaborated project that has no pretense at futile humanitarian action, but rather taking an important occurence in contemporary culture art and studying it closely, from varying angles.
In Milan I tried to draw attention to the Victim’s Symptom project as well as The Land of Human Rights project initiated by Center for Contemporary Art, Graz. To me both of these projects seem a lot closer to bringing issues of human rights, PTSD, mental health into meaningful interaction with art. What these projects have and Art & Survial doesn’t is a clear idea of how to go about the ART bit.
In retrospect, what occurs to me that CC puts art in the last place, in a marginal position, as an acessory to position the project in the context of culture. This is obvious from the fact the way we (artists) were treated in Mostar and the fact that the only two artist speakers were scheduled for the very end of the conference day in Milano. My talk, of course was last and was interrupted for the reason that we should have gone to launch the video screening of the Bosnian selection of videos and mingle with the director of the Trienalle."
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