by Dragana Nikoleti?
translation into english: ?or?e ?oli?
One hardly could think of a place more apt to serve as a setting wherein to hold a presentation of an audio and space reconfiguration workshop with the title “Historical Framework of Memory” and subtitled “Spaces for Listening to the Voices of the Past” inside a perspective spanning “From a Dionysical Socialism to a Predatory Capitalism” (as is the full name of the workshop project of the Centre for Visual Culture of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade) than the dilapidated ruin of the Inex-film building, Tito’s system’s “baby”, “squatted” and adapted to meet its artistic needs this summer by the collective “Ekspedicija Inex-film”. It is a vestige of the previous social system, but also a sign of emergent forms of self-organized use of abandoned spaces.
Taking as their starting point a view that history is neither merely a pre-given reality nor a “property” of the historians, and bearing in mind that artists as well as other researchers in the realm of artistic expression (art historians, art critics, curators) are increasingly putting into question notions of the historical context and the cultural patrimony, critically perceiving and creatively redefining them, two curators, Zoran Eri? (PhD) and Stevan Vukovi?, came up with a practical paradigm that would enable us to include the fragments of personal recollections of the socialist Yugoslavia’s artistic and cultural scene leading figures into musical pieces (workshop was led by composer Miroslav Savi? Mipi). These compositions were then to be “packaged” in carefully chosen spaces (under the leadership of Milorad Mladenovi?). Since, according to Eri? and Vukovi?, memory is “legitimately” translatable into film, the film workshop, left out from the presentation in Inex and due to be presented by the end of the year, was led by Želimir Žilnik.
The participants were divided into couples, each containing a visual artist transforming the voices of former politicians, cultural establishment notables and other VIP individuals from the recent past (e. g. from Radio Belgrade) into a musical performance and suggesting an architectural backdrop ideal for it’s presentation and consumption. That evening when the presentation (which, by the way, was conspicuously well-prepared in terms of budget spent) took place the audience was offered five versions of history (which is much less than the number of official interpretations). Five different rooms, not long ago in a state of wreck, were occupied by Pavle Popov in charge of DJ-ing the produced tracks (featuring Nikola Marinkovi? as supporting VJ), while Marko Salapura’s ideas were behind the spatial arrangement of the site – videos projected onto pieces of tin hanging from the ceiling, and cubes piled across the floor. Other spaces were exposed to historico-critical interventions by Luka Barajevi? and Luka Mladenovi?, Endre Barna and Zorana Mati?, Danica Vujoševi? and Iva ?uki?, Sr?an Popov and Nikola Andonov.
What the project had for its goal was to invite those taking part in the workshops to develop actively critical attitudes concerning the way the history is written, and to infuse their creative efforts in respective media with that attitude.
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