My blogging for labforculture in the period between December '07 and April '08 obviously develops in the direction of research of different events, initiatives and practices, significant for analysis of cultural-political constellations within the region of former Yugoslavia, nowadays known as the 'Western Balkan'. In that sense, I find it important to introduce the outlines of the project which deals with this constellations in direct and elaborated way, and which carries the very bold title of 'Political Practices of [-post] Yugoslav Art'. It is an on-going project initiated in 2006 by the four independent organizations - curatorial collective WHW from Zagreb, new media centre kuda.org from Novi Sad, SCCA/pro.ba from Sarajevo, and Prelom Kolektiv from Belgrade. The project is composed of the clusters of micro-investigations and public events which have been vividly unfolding, up to now. For the April 1st we expect the first semi-retrospective exhibition and the follow-up panel discussion in Novi Sad, at the Museum of Contemprary Art Vojvodina.

The initial statemet of the project can be read here.

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What Yugoslavia means today? A simple historical fact? Just another past époque?
Is it a neutral geopolitical determination which we can freely use in whatever context and from whichever position? Or is it about political project worth of re-thinking and re-examination in contemporary political constellation?
These are the questions the project 'Political practices of [post-] Yugoslav Art' tries to deal with.

PPYUART project investigates the historical continuities and ruptures of the cultural-political space known as Yugoslavia – how this space was constructed, conducted and institutionalized; What was its operational language and critical terms; How the cultural practices were organized in the official state institutions, and how in the self-initiated spaces of alternative/marginal art production; Can we see this two modes of organization as clearly opposed and separated, or as conceptually and politically interconnected – all this questions still appear to be intriguing and unresolved, especially for those cultural actors who try to flee from the stranglehold of post-Socialist 'master narrative', which strongly determinated contemporary cultural production over the past two decades.

PPYUART project is initiated by the four independent organizations – SCCA/pro.ba from Sarajevo, WHW from Zagreb, kuda.org from Novi Sad and Prelom Kolektiv from Belgrade – all of them being actively linked to the progressive strategies of Yugoslav political heritage as well as to the contemporary critical practices in which arts and media overlap with activism, political theory and strategies of self-organizing. PPYUART is conceived as the long term, multidisciplinary research, which traces, articulates and debates about interrelationships of visual arts, intellectual production and socio-political practices in the given social conjuncture. It tries to give back the political voice to the art that has been taken from it, both actively [through the domination of 'cultural industries' approach] and retroactively [through the way it was historized]. In both versions art is understood as something which can only represent and not to participate in the surrounding reality, as something that appears after history has already happened. In that sense, the very title of the project that alludes to the possibility that something like political practice of art exists announces the methodology which changes this established opinion.

PPYUART project started in 2006, and the first phase of the research was publicly presented through the number of "case-studies" in the form of exhibitions, publications, panel discussions, screenings and debates. The way the content is organized and offered to the users aggregates the working methods and conceptual views of the four organizations which share the attitude towards culture as productive process rather then representative product. The micro-projects like 'Permanent Art Class', 'TV Gallery', 'Applied Public', 'Censored Without Censorship', 'Who is “Goran Djordjević”?', 'Vojin Bakić' etc. are some of the "case studies" that have been shown during the previous period in different cities in the region. This cluster of micro-researches and its mobile form of presentation unfolds around the notions of 'official' and 'marginal' culture inside of the Socialist state and discusses the institutional model which, from the perspective of today, could be named 'the bred margin'. On the wider scope, PPYUART operates with critical terms and situations such are: partizan culture, socialist consumerism, conceptual art and strike of the production, political context of ‘68 and innovations of student's culture, contemporary cultural production and politics of memory.