A week ago, on Thursday, February 7th, the opening of the exhibition 'Exception: Contemporary Art Scene from Prishtina' in Belgrade’s Kontekst gallery has been violently interrupted and the exhibition was immediately closed. Since then, the curators of the exhibition, supported by various artistic and civic initiatives from Serbia and abroad, are trying to re-open the show and get the full support and protection from the Ministry of Culture of Serbia, City of Belgrade and Serbian Government.
The exhibition 'Exception' presents the works of young artists from Prishtina, who emerged after the 1999 war, during the times in which most of the Kosovo lived its own life aside and away from Serbia, and whose work is related to specific social, cultural, economical and political conditions of contemporary Kosovo. The artists taking part in the exhibition are Artan Balaj, Jakup Ferri, Driton Hajredini, Flaka Haliti, Fitore Isufi Koja, Dren Maliqi, Alban Muja, Vigan Nimani, Nurhan Qehaja, Alketa Xhafa and Lulzim Zeqiri. According to the statement of curators, Ivana Marjanovic & Vida Knezevic from Kontekst gallery and Kristijan Lukic & Gordana Nikolic from Napon.org, "The exhibition reassesses dominant cultural hegemonies of Europe, Serbia and Kosovo as well as the national or gender identities in the field of visual art that are defined by the Balkan particularisms, interest zones of global security alliances, doctrines of limited sovereignty, nationalisms, causes and consequences of Euro-Atlantic integrations and strengthening of the capitalism".
This blogpost is giving an insight into what happened in the evening of February 7th in the center of Belgrade, though the two 'subjective shots' of two witnesses of the event. According to the court of law procedures, for the verification of the “truth” about the certain event the two witnesses are needed. I invited Vlidi to join me in the reconstruction of the series of events related to the opening of contemporary art show called "Exception", in 15 minute time slots. This report does not pretend to present the truth in a legal or “professional media” sense of the word; it rather witnesses about the process of production of documents and formation of politics of memory.
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19:00 (or maybe a few minutes before)
vlidi: Aiming at my usual route to Kontekst gallery, below the building of the University of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and right trough Kapetan Misina St, I could hear from a hundred meters or so a very familiar noise of street demonstrations, so characteristic for 90's in Belgrade, and see the crowd placed between the behind of faculty building and the police cordon blocking the passage. This is worst then I expected, was my first thought - it was too early, the exhibition wasn't supposed to be even officially open yet, and too far from the gallery itself - yes, a tension around the exhibition grew thicker over previous several days, and fascist organizations disseminated the call for mobilization, but this was really exceeding my estimations... Approaching the crowd, I found no surprises there - a silent, we-act-like-a-meat-wall cordon of robocops was faced with a loud crowd consisting of 90% of sport trainers-leather jackets younger male suburban-type of people, and 10% of surreally dressed and masked men, resembling chetnik warriors from WWII, between two and three hundred of them... They switched between shouting "Kosovo is Serbia", "Treason, treason", "Death to [_fiil_your_own_current_enemy_here_- and you can choose from the menu: shiptars (Kosovo Albanians), EU, USA, Bush, Ahtisaari, traitors (anybody not in that crowd or not accused as war criminal)]", crying the names of Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, and singing of the recently rehabilitated national anthem, calling the God for justice (justice in this hymn meaning that God should take care of prosperity and prevalence in battle for "Serbian race"). So conveniently, a parole sprayed on the faculty wall behind the scene said "Stop the sects!", presumably the previous work by the likes of this group of "real Serbs". They were carrying a natural size (or a bit supersized, hard to say) image of a person called Legija, portrayed in uniform sprinkled with different insignia, medals and decorations. After trying to make a few photos between the cordon and the fascists, I cursed my cheap, old and crappy camera for being so slow and more or less unusable without daylight and went for a detour in order to approach the gallery from the different direction.
My first encounter with the setup of exhibition "Exception" happened a few weeks ago in Novi Sad, although I was acquainted for quite some time with the concept, and some of the works to be shown I know from years before. Actually, Novi Sad display of "Exception" I haven't had a time to check out properly - we were a bit late do to the interview with Geert Lovink ahead of Dictionary of War project's afternoon session, so we just paid a brief visit and I thought to come back later and to dedicate some more time to the exhibition (my plan failed, as the personnel decided to leave home earlier then the closing hour).
jelena: I'm slowly preparing to get out of the house for the "Exception" opening in Kontekst gallery. I say slowly, because I cannot concentrate properly on the causality of dressing up for the opening, since my first half of the brain is dedicated to the preparation of food&drinks for Chinese New Year celebration, while the second half tries to think about national and geopolitical representations in contemporary art, and my telephone is constantly ringing, and I'm already late. My friends-curators Ana Nikotovic and Zorana Dojic are coming tonight to party with us. Ok. drinks are ready, check. Ingredients for food are ready, check. A Second Half: what can be the conceptual justification for the representation of national scene? What the exhibitions like Contemporary British Art or New Art from France are telling us, except for the fact that there is some interest of sponsors to fund and promote a certain culture, jointed by some interests of curators aiming to present artist stars or to problematize the given framework of the exhibition and show a critical art? Of course, the case of the exhibitions which represent 'marginal' art scenes is different. Their politics are predominantly linked with geopolitical and gender perspectives. This is also the framework that Kontekst and Napon curators wanted to discuss about through the exhibition of young artists from Prishtina and the concurrent set of discussions. The announced panels were being reduced in volume in the meantime - a lot of colleagues from Prishtina couldn't come, either because they were busy or because they disagreed with the conceptual framework of the show. The politics of representation would certainly be a challenging topic for a talk in this context, especially in the light of formation of 'international art scene' and representation of marginal geographies of Europe. Some of the artists and artworks from Kosovo have offered quite of a persuasive answers to this politics of representation, and it seemed to me as interesting to discuss this with my colleagues from Belgrade and Prishtina. Exhibition "Exception" is definitely offering a material for such a debate; it is meticulously curated show and is a product of long research, followed by the series of presentations and discussions. "Exception" also deals with numerous sensitive questions set up in the fine balance of artistic humor and intellectual reflexion. The question of nationalism is, of course, the most fragile one, even though it appears in the form of irony, parody, joke etc. This question also lingers in between the competitive political options in the both Serbian and Kosovo actual political scenes, and the exhibition had been already tested on this slippery terrain. After the opening in Novi Sad it was immediately appropriated by Serbian political and media estrada for the goals of debate on Kosovo independence. Consequently, it became an object of debate in Parliament of Vojvodina, and some artworks were used [or more precisely misused] by the Serbian Radical Party during their presidential election campaigning. After this unfortunate 'promotion' all the nazi-fashist organizations in Serbia stood up and started to spread the propaganda against the show, threatening the curators, artists and Kontekst gallery. All those problems are somehow embedded in the representation of the national artistic scene, but they were precisely addressed through the autonomous expression of the exhibition politics [this is the fact which is completely neglected in the current open hunt for Kontekst gallery] and became completely diffracted and perverted, when observed through the yellow lens of political estrada of Serbia. I don't claim that it is uninteresting to involve the broadest public into the debate about art and politics, but the artistic framework conceived by authors of the exhibition should have been determinative for the course of the discussion. I've already seen the exhibition in Museum of Contemporary Art in Novi Sad and enjoyed the luxury of ad-hoc organized private guided tour by the curators of the show. But tonight's opening re-shaped the whole structure of the event, setting it in the framework of the solidarity of cultural workers vs. right wing political movements. Everybody expected some reactions to the exhibition in this particular moment, but nobody actually envisioned the dimension of the threat and amount of violence produced around this small-scale/low-fi artistic event.
Con etiqueta:
art from prishtina, belgrade, exception, kontekst gallery
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