Category Archives: Artistic Initiatives

Art Biennial in Pančevo

Exactly thirty-seven years ago the organising of Art Biennial was started under the name Pančevačko Exhibition of Yugoslavian Sculpture. Several years earlier (1976), the organiser of Art Biennial, Cultural Centre of Pančevo, established the Gallery of Contemporary Art, which was located, all the way to 2011, in the premises of the Military Headquarters building, on King Petar the First Square. The exclusive gallery space suited the intention of founders of Biennial to organise big exhibitions and complex events of Yugoslavian character. During those years sculpture, as an art discipline was strictly determined in relation to other artistic disciplines. The beginning of this manifestation looked like this, while today it adopted numerous changes of the concept and the form. Geopolitical changes in Yugoslavian federation, changes in the development of contemporary art, and strong influence of modern technologies had an impact on Art Biennial as well.

The observation of several decades long success and importance, closely following the Biennial, a large archive was preserved including: documents, photographs, audio-visual material – rich archive material, and a solid collection of art works, today kept partly in the depo of the Gallery of Contemporary Art, on a new address, and partly, unfortunately, in an inadequate space that was offered as a temporary solution due to the lack of space in the Gallery. Over the decades of its existence Art Biennial has been successfully establishing clear articulation between contemporary art tendencies, audience and expert public. National, but also international importance of this manifestation, representing a contact with contemporary expression, was very well documented and archived, and available to researchers, thus being a significant part of contemporary art scientific material during the past three decades.
Visual identity of the history of Art Biennial was presented as a part of the Creative Europe Forum 2018 in the premises of the Kolarac Foundation in Belgrade. This will enable a visual overview of the Biennial to artists, but also admirers of contemporary art coming from abroad who didn’t have the chance to see this manifestation, and it will offer them an opportunity to follow the historical evolution of Biennial in fragments.

Vitesse

Vitesse is a musical duo from Brussels, part of Boutique Electronique, Plein Sud and Crevette Records. Polé and Guillaume have been working together since high school. Their cooperation started with playing records and DJ-ing in a youth club, bars, and small clubs where the shared interest in the music industry was developed and they started organising parties. They published the first EP videos in 2017 labeled under Crevette Records, and a few months later they received a phone call from the Red Bull Elektropedia to let them know they received the award for the most reliable artistic duo together with Témé Tan and Blackwave.

You can find out more about them here or on their YouTube channel.

Young Writers from the Region

We presented young writers from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia during the Creative Europe Forum 2018.
Edin Bajramović (Zenica, 1986), a writer. After quitting mechanical engineering studies, he enrolled to the departments of Comparative Literature and Literature of the People of BiH at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo. He received the first short story award of the magazine “Oslobođenje” in 2015 for his first published story “Miš”. He won the same award in 2016 as well for the story “Pismo iz Slobode”. For his story “Jutro kada su nestale lubenice” he was awarded by magazine “Oslobođenje” the second award for short story in 2017. He lives and works in Zenica, where he is currently completing three novels (“Kaputt”, “Crno ogledalo” and “Gradnja i rušenje”) while also creating his first collection of stories (“Hypermetamorfosis”).
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Luiza Bouharaoua, born in Split in 1985. She graduated from the departments of Croatian Language and Literature and English Language and Literature. She is writer and a translator. She translated Rachel Kushner’s novel The Flamethrowers to Croatian (“Bacači plamena” (Profil, 2017). She published short stories in The Split Mind, Fantom Slobode and portals Kritična masa and Nema. Her stories were also broadcast on Channel 3 of Croatian radio. She was enlisted in the regional collection of papers “Izvan koridora – najbolja kratka prica” (VBZ, 2011.) and in the anthology recent Croatian fiction “Bez vrata, bez kucanja” (Sandorf, 2012). She was a finalist of the Festival of European Short Story competition in 2016 and 2017. She also won the award Ulaznica for a short story and the award Prozak for the best fiction text of authors under 35.
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Slađana Kavarić was born on 15th February 1991 in Podgorica. She writes poetry and short stories. She published poetry collections “Sjećanje” (2010) and “Ljudi niotkuda” (Žuta kornjača, 2016). Kavarić’s creativity was translated into English. Her story “Odlazak” was published in the prestigious American literary magazine World Literature Today, and her poems were translated for the British magazine Balkan Poetry Today. She is a doctoral student of philosophy and the focus of her interest is primarily praxis philosophy.
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Marija Pavlović (1984, Leskovac, lives and works in Belgrade) holds an MA in English Language and Literature, she is writer employed as a Senior Copywriter & Digital Strategist. As the winner of the Award on the competition “Prva knjiga” of Matica srpska she published her first book, Horor priče svakodnevice (Matica srpska, 2014). She is a short story author (Američki san, Diskopolis, Disco inferno, Sve je u redu), author of the audio-visual performance Čudni slučaj Gospođe Džekil i Doktorke Hajd (UK Parobrod, Beograd), and a songs (Imperativi). Roman 24 (Partizanska knjiga, 2018) is her second recently published book. She participated in regional festivals and initiatives such as the short story festival Kikinda Short, UN project Writers for the Future realised in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the festival Literatorija in Montenegro.

Jovana Sudimac/ Love

I use every space available for promotion: the Internet, the street, my room, my house, gallery spaces etc., to promote the company Nike. I try to wear at least one piece of clothing branded as the company, bought or made, authentic or not every day. Results of this act are similar to an advertisement but they are also different because they don’t follow the demands of the market and political correctness, but instead they are created by free choice based on personal affinities. This is how a meeting point of different social groups linked by common interest in Nike products and identities was created through four years long collecting of various content related to this company. The entire process is recorded on my Instagram account.

Zvono Gallery

In 1993, at times of widespread economic and cultural crisis in Serbia, Zvono Gallery opened up its doors to young artists finishing their studies at the Fine Arts Academy and starting their careers. 

Goal of the gallery was to gather and nurture young talents, and help them make their first steps. 

The same students that have exhibited their work during the first years of Zvono Gallery are now acknowledged artists who have completed their post-graduate studies at various fine art academies throughout Europe, attained stipends and awards, and some have become professors at Serbian fine art academies. 

Today, Zvono stands for persistence, perseverance and dedication to art without compromise. 

It is still the only private gallery in Serbia mainly dedicated to young artists, but also a place that attracts renowned artists and institutions (it has provided space for eminent international exhibitions and workshops such as October Salon, Biennial of Young Artists, Real Presence, Long Night of Museums, etc).

YusYus

YusYus is audio/visual duo formed by Nemanja Stojanović (Neomodern) and Aleksandra Pavlović, which emerged from their mutual love for minimal synth music. Since their start in 2013, they’ve played at the Exit Festival and all over Europe, alongside likeminded artists such as Soft Metals, Xeno & Oaklander, Peine Perdue, Sixth June and Ron Morelli. Their visuals are works of the Ljubljana based designer duo Kitsch-Nitsch and photographer Filip Rađenović.

https://yusyus.bandcamp.com/

WoO and Incredible Bob

WoO experiments with mobile devices such as mobile phones, remote controls, media devices, computer equipment and similar to capture their frequency interference through guitar magnets.

“Amplifying the air” through his guitar, WoO creates a magical, frequency rich, oscillating and meditative sound world.

Incredible Bob is born in the late seventies in a country that doesn’t exist anymore. Bob walks a thin line between glitch art and show business. No matter what, Bob will continue to search for an answer to the question: What’s new in new media?

WoO & Incredible Bob were nominated to the SHAPE platform by SONICA festival.

http://shapeplatform.eu/artist/woo-incredible-bob/

VIS Limunada

Vocal-instrumental ensemble, (Srb. “VIS”) Limunada is a band that performs contemporary music inspired by the international popular culture of the fifties and the sixties.
In their live performances, VIS Limunada revives the spirit of this exciting period, through the specific prism of Yugoslav popular culture. VIS Limunada performs contemporary interpretations of schlager, festival compositions, early rock and beat hits, as well as original songs. At concerts this ensemble evokes the atmosphere of European festivals and rivieras depicted in films like Felini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) and Ljubav i moda (1961) by Yugoslav director Ljubomir Radičević.

VIS Limunada is a six-piece ensemble whose music arrangements are built upon a rich correspondence between two female and two male vocalists, a powerful guitar sound, enriched with organs, piano and lively rhythm from varying percussion instruments. In addition to this basic concept, there are leads on various other instruments like Hawaiian guitar (lap-steel), baritone guitar, ukulele, as well as string and brass elements. In a clash of melodramatic schlager and exciting rock and beat music in rich vocal-instrumental arrangements, VIS Limunada brings modern, elegant and expressive pop music. On their repertoire there are original songs as well as original adaptations and new interpretations of compositions in a variety of genres and languages (Serbo-Croatian, Italian, English, Spanish, and German, to name a few).

The artistic direction and visual identity of VIS Limunada are inspired by a time when “ensembles” and “orchestras” ruled the scene and “bands” were just emerging, when musicians and audience dressed in elegant dresses and suits and “numbers” were performed instead of “songs”, and when festivals and rivieras across Europe and the world echoed with the strong but gentle sounds of emerging, international pop music. Across the globe a new popular culture was being created, infused by new technological breakthroughs: technicolor film, transcontinental radio and TV broadcasting, supersonic flights and space programs. It was distinguished by a sound that brought together the melancholic tenderness of parlor music, flavored with the elegant decadence of bohemian parties. This particular moment at the end of fifties and the beginning of sixties was characterized by miraculous union of refinement and recklessness, merit and banality, and a perhaps naïve, but respectful, belief in a bright future.

This energy, which does not lose its value even in the light of complex contradictions that followed, is transferred and evolved by VIS Limunada, not with nostalgia but with zeal, as its own commentary on the challenges of the present days, as well as its contribution to current popular culture.

Streamlined / Na traci

Authorship & performance: Igor Koruga

Dramaturgical/choreographic assistance: Ana Dubljević

Production: Ksenija Đurović

Design: Jelena Šušnjar

Costume: Jovana Dimitrijević

Work explores role of public speaking within mediatized, neoliberal, capitalistic society through questioning the social statuses of pop- and contemporary art icons and new generation of contemporary dance and performance artists. As a hybrid choreographic performance of public speaking, dance and video, this work exposes different popular rhetorics within the artworld which reflects nowadays the conditions for art production, emerging artists continuously face with. By critical and analogical requestioning of such rhetoric’s statuses within wider context of popular culture, the aim of this work is to analyse a general popularised image of theartist within nowadays society and the space of his/her (non-)politicallity within it. On a formal plan, work also analyses choreography within sphere of immaterial form – language, producing the “language choreography” as an extended form of stage expression.

Co-production: Station Belgrade, Uferstudios GmbH / Berlin; Workspace Brussels & Rosas danst Rosas & PARTS / Brussels – within EU network Life Long Burning; Tala Dance centre & TASK program within PLATFORMA/ Zagreb; Bitef Theatre / Belgrade.

Financial support: Minsistry of culture and information Republic of Serbia; Tanzstipendium Senat / Berlin;

Thanks to: Nicolas Y Galeazzi, Charlotte Vandevyver, Barbara Friedrich, Nina Kurtela and Ana Vujanović

Le Cabinet SR:CH

Le Cabinet SR:CH is an association which aim is to exchange knowledge about design, provide experience and share cultures between Switzerland and Serbia.

Through organizing workshops, exhibitions and academy trips for students, the collective is playing an active role in education of future graphic designers. Students get the chance to use their knowledge in real environment working with students from different cultures on design and visual communication projects. The concept of these projects is to expand the existing knowledge (typography, illustration…), research local culture, to collaborate, to produce a final result and finally to present these results in form of exhibitions. Meeting new cultures and working together helps bringing prejudice down and builds confidence of young individuals.

Le Cabinet SR:CH is acting as initiator which exploits all creative possibilities and works on projects where culture and knowledge are combined into design for the benefit of young designers, local community and design profession.

U10 Art Space

U10 Art Space is an independent artist-run space dedicated to supporting contemporary art founded in 2012 in Belgrade.

It was founded with the purpose to be a platform where young local artists would be shown. By collaborating with similar spaces and initiatives, U10 Art Space actively works on creating a culture of artistic education, debate and exchange between artists, curators, art theoreticians, writers and the wider public.

The main focus of the program is to create solo and group shows presenting mainly young artists from Serbia. A few slots per year are dedicated to international projects whose concept is aimed at creating active exchange and collaborating with local artists; followed by presenting mid-career artists. An integral part of the program includes events such as: exhibition guidings by artists and curators, performances, sound and music performances, discussions and panels as well as parallel events outside of the space itself and abroad.

Since its founding, U10 Art Space is run by:
Lidija Delić
Nina Ivanović
Sava Knežević
Isidora Krstić
Iva Kuzmanović
Nemanja Nikolić
Marija Šević

Ewox&Tamarinsky

Uroš Radenković a.k.a. Ewox was born in 1984 in Belgrade. In 2001, he joined the Electric Factory crew, where he started his career as part of the team which was producing a radio show of the same name.

Tamara Bijelić a.k.a. Tamarinsky was born 1985 in Belgrade. She has joined Ewox on the DJ decks since the beginning of 2013. Now they are B2B duet, sharing love over various dance floors. For a very short period of time they’ve managed to make a real big deal on Belgrade electronic music scene. A tough, underground sound prevails in their sets, a fusion of techno, house, deep house, new disco and indie electronic music. In one sentence: They play only love!

Ewox already shared the decks with many internationally famous DJs, among them: Michael Mayer, Jennifer Cardini, Reinhard Voigt, Matias Aguayo, Robert Babicz, Sascha Funke, Jeff Mills, Dave Clarke, Carl Craig, Matthew Herbert, Swayzak, Anthony Rother, Coldcut, Marshall Jefferson, Cle (Maertini Broes), Funk D Void, Thiefschwarz, David Caretta, Mathias Schaffhauser, Dani Siciliano, Terence Fixmer, Misc, Human Tronic…

Since 2002 up till today, Ewox has spinned in almost all relevant EX-YU clubs, and beyond: Melkweg (Amsterdam), De Balie (Amsterdam), Las Palmas (Rotterdam), Friche La Belle de Mai (Marseille), A38 (Budapest), BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Black Box (Sofia)…

Ewox & Tamarinsky are currently working on their own production.
https://soundcloud.com/ewoxtamarinsky
https://x.mixcloud.com/ewoxtamarinsky
https://www.facebook.com/ewoxtamarinsky

String Quartet of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra

Since its foundation in 2011, the members of the Quartet Jelena Dragnić, Vladan Lončar,
Boris Brezovac and Aleksandar Latković are representing their resident orchestra through regular concert activities. In the 2012/13 season, the Quartet presented the acclaimed performance of the Concert by Erwin Schulhoff, with the accompaniment of the Belgrade Philharmonic and the chief conductor Muhai Tang. In the season 2013/14, the Quartet is performing five programs of masterpieces of chamber music, as part of its cycle titled Quartet+1, at the Belgrade Philharmonic Hall. Beside the concert at the Cultural Center of Pančevo, which opened this year’s Classic Fest, in June 2014, the members of the Quartet will also be recording a compact disc with the works of Beethoven and Brahms.

The Novo Doba Festival

The alternative, auteur or non-aligned comic book festival Novo Doba (New Era) provides its guests and participants with an intense program filled with various events, exhibitions, workshops, concerts and presentations. It also gives the opportunity to engage in printed editions exchange between selected authors, publishers and productions from the international alternative arts circle, which gives them insight into vivid and lively local scenes.

New Era is fast becoming a year-long festival, with its activities within the newly-established supracultural epicenter Matrijarsija, where its coordination team operates from, and where they organize workshops of absolutely all imaginable skills, at all times, even odd times. Matrijarsija has been established in 2014 with the aim of becoming a place for artists from various fields of audio-visual arts to congregate and it already has at its disposal suitable capacities for housing and working.

These kinds of artist residences have already been practiced in 2014 at the initiatives of individual artists and collectives. Such programs allow various artists, theoreticians, curators and other creatives to immerse themselves in a space and context that may seem outside their regular surroundings and activities. It provides them ample time to reflect, explore, produce and present, as well as face them with presenting their practices to other/different communities, by meeting new people, using new materials, and experiencing life in a different location. The emphasis is on a multi-layered cultural exchange and the experience of other/different. New Era Festival is part of a network of similar festivals across Europe and it had participated, presented itself and left its mark in France, Italy, Sweden, Croatia, Romania, Germany, Slovenia, Hungary and Macedonia.

Visitors from the region and a wider European context mingle with the authors, authors mingle with the organizers, guests with hosts, cats with dogs. It is impossible to present all guests, comic book authors, musicians, experimentators, graphic artists, distributors, discographers, bookshop owners, comic book collectors, welders, pushers, shovers, dancers, theoreticians and essayists, activists and agitators, volunteers, directors, circus performers, media archeologists, silkscreen
printers, imrovisers, children from our house, children from other houses, projectionists, overseers, cameramen and photographers, professionals and amateurs, chefs and gourmets, actors and on-lookers, ecologists, street artists, mural painters, gusle players, DJs, VJs, CJs, MCs, cassette tapes collectors, tailors, writers and screenwriters, cyclists, cavemen, people from the future, the new era. The Newerists.

www.novodobafestival.net