"Some of the works are direct, some are poetic at first glance, but I think that each of them can make us wonder about something: for example, about the position of women in society, about the role of mass media, about capitalism, transition, religion, about the EU's policy towards migrants, about the limits of personal freedoms, the control society..."
"WEATHER": bunk bis works singled out kao characteristic examples reactions art na reality?
BOJANA PEJIC: It is difficult for me to single out some in particular, because in all the works of this year's Salon one can feel the relationship to reality. After all, that was also the criterion by which they were chosen. The artists in the exhibition respond to their social space in a critical, not apologetic, way. Okay, this attitude can be criticized at first because it is usually considered that engaged art is boring. I have to admit that I find many video works with a documentary structure concerning social problems, which I see around the world, really tiring. It was important to me that our Salon tried to show a variety of artistic approaches to serious topics; some artists use cynicism, some others are serious and sometimes moralize, but the works of many are based on humor, and I consider humor the most important critical method in the history of art. For example, three artists deal with the issue of religion in secular societies: Sarajevo-born Damir Nikšić reacts to the production of Islam, Živko Grozdanić to Serbian Orthodoxy, and Driton Hajredini tests the relationship of the Catholic Church towards the "other" (Muslim). The relationship to the past is an important theme in many works (Grupa Spomenik, Darinka Pop-Mitić, Chinese artist Liu Wei) and indicate that dealing with the national past is something we do today and here. History is not a series of events that happened once upon a time, but it is the attitude that we take towards those events today. Next, the video works of artists Pipiloti Rist, Nurhan Ćehaje, Ivana Smiljanić, Ana Adamović criticize patriarchal norms and the presentation of women in the media. Among the so-called women's topics at the Salon, I would single out domestic violence, a project by Sanje Iveković Female House, and the problem of sex work, i.e. prostitution, which is dealt with by several artists: the Slovenian artist Tadej Pogačar, the Italian Cristiano Berti, the German artist Judi Sigmund or Lina Dokuzivić, who as a foreigner supports herself in Austria by "selling" her body on the Internet.
U European the theater, saw smo na Bitefu, actualizes se engaged theater. Da li this year's October Shows na engagement u art?
Yes, and that's his risk. Due to the preparations at the Salon, I was not able to follow Bitef, but it seems that we are on the same line. Should this mean that artistic engagement has become a new trend? I'm not entirely sure. The question of today's actuality of engaged art does not only concern foreign or domestic production per se. I think it concerns the reception of such art: whether one community, more precisely the Serbian community, in 2008 became (finally) open enough to take such production seriously and accept it, rather than rejecting it at the start as political. On the subject of engagement in art, one should remember Picasso. His picture Gernika, which was first exhibited in the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris, became an icon of engaged art, and of course all normal people understood its anti-fascist message. In addition to the message, we should not forget that it is also good painting. However, when Picasso painted Massacre u Korea In 1951, and depicted the massacre that American soldiers committed in Korea, both in America and in Europe he was accused of meddling in politics, which an artistic genius was not allowed to do. His exhibitions were boycotted in the USA in those years, and many European critics of a modernist orientation condemned him for portraying a harsh reality, as this was not expected of a modern painter at that time, especially not in the times of the Cold War when America provided financial aid and lifted Europe to its feet. after the reign of fascism. Let's go back to Salon. I left Belgrade in 1991 and every time I come back, I hear stories that Serbian society is so politicized that it doesn't need political/engaged art. Despite this, such art existed in Serbia in the nineties, it still exists today, and it exists in the world. Of course, it cannot be said that engaged art is some new trend. Some art critics and curators deal with it, some others don't. There are no rules. It is a matter of professional orientation and sensibility.
Yours slika October salona ima several visible noticeable difference u relationship na curators the previous one four International salona. Na primer, na the list by author, more present su woman imena i works u kojima se recognize themes feminism.
Some of the authors are, and some claim that they are not feminists. If I ignore their intentions and try to read the works the way I want as a critic, then I would say that I recognize their art as feminist. A few weeks ago, I read in one of our serious daily newspapers the position of a journalist who means women with hairy legs by feminism! When I read something like that I don't know if I should cry or laugh. Along with that, of course, comes the platitude that feminists don't like men. For example, leading feminists who are art historians and theorists are mostly happily married with two or three children. It is clear to everyone that feminism today is not a social movement, that the togetherness, solidarity and collective spirit that was formed in the sixties and seventies, which was often very militant, no longer exists today.
In the last thirty years, there is no single patriarchy, but patriarchal models are constituted differently in different social conditions, and because of this, there are different forms of feminism both in theory and in practice. I see all the artists exhibiting at this Salon as persons/citizens who, sometimes openly and sometimes implicitly, criticize and point to the patriarchy that is at work in their midst. It can be the cult of innocence (Fitore Isufi-Koja), sex work (Dina Dokuzović), the nation's attitude towards the female body, the image of women in the media, etc.
Chosen th more video works nego what ih je bilo previous ones years, therefore one non-traditional art technique, ali none picture. Why?
Since I arrived, I keep hearing comments that, since it became international, October Salon bypasses traditional media, painting for example. My colleagues who were my assistants, Vida Knežević and Ivana Marjanović, and I discussed for a long time about the works of male and female painters, and finally decided not to include them in the exhibition. Not because they were bad artists, on the contrary, but because we did not recognize the idea of a citizen in them. Of the eighty, some 35 percent are video works. Some are based on a documentary approach and should be watched sitting down, and some are very short and do not take much time to consume. After all, we live in the age of moving images. Many artists are of course aware of this, but even among those who are very critical, no one believes anymore that the documentary video shown in the gallery will become an alternative CNN and tell the truth, as it was believed some ten years ago. There is no such naivety today. The artist decides on a topic, chooses the medium in which he will process it best, which is often video.
Impossible je ne to notice da je, again za difference od previous ones curator, u yours selection participants a large number domestic by author.
Since 2004, when the Salon became an international manifestation, the question that every curator should solve concerns our artists. When the curators are foreigners, they rely on their assistants from Belgrade/Serbia because they know the local scene better. I didn't have that problem because even though I can't see all the Belgrade exhibitions, I don't fail to read any catalog that is published in Serbia. However, I was not familiar with the youngest production, and my assistants helped me tremendously. The choice of artists at the exhibition is joint, I had to give up some of my proposals, it was not easy for me, but now that we have finished the work, I think that the combination of the youngest and slightly older generations can work. In any case, the number of local artists is not motivated by any kind of local patriotism. Simply, we had and still have a large number of artists who are oriented towards the current state of society and culture and who react to the phenomena around them with their works.
Ove years, on purpose je conspicuous architectural context Salon. Why?
All locations where the Salon is held have a memory of their previous functions. All the buildings in which the Salon is a guest for six weeks are not intended for the exhibition of art, so they are refunctionalized every year for the needs of the Salon. The architect who worked on the architectural design of the Salon, Slobodan Danko Selinkić, a passionate historian of Belgrade architecture, reminded us of this before we started building the walls for the exhibition. Architectural interventions are adapted to the found architectural context. It was important for both Selinkić and me to respect the architecture we found, and to set up the exhibition without aggression, in a non-destructive, I would say, positive way.
Explained th da Salon, without regardless na Question who sets, ne deli lessons. Pa however, provocativeness (directness, unusualness… questions insinuates na existence more naturalistic...
I don't see this Salon as a platform from which artists should give lessons to others. Some of the works are direct, some are poetic at first glance, but I think that each of them can make us wonder about something: for example, about the position of women in society, about the role of mass media, about capitalism, transition, religion, about EU policy towards migrants, about the limits of personal freedoms, control society... Simply, the question that is actually the motto of this year's Salon, seems extremely important to me, especially because this exhibition is being held in a post-communist country, a country that is still in the process of transition, but also to the state that was responsible for the war conflicts in the former socialist Yugoslavia. As in many other countries of the former "red Europe" that were, and to a large extent still are, allergic to the terms "socially engaged art", "activist art", "political art", "ideologies-in-art", these terms were also undesirable in Serbia in the nineties. I'm afraid the situation hasn't changed much today. Very few exhibitions or art publications from the nineties tried to critically point out the process of depoliticization of Serbian art. These projects were not censored by anyone, but were met - with silence. A common argument against art that works sa the context read: we don't need political art in our society because it is completely politicized. The only option that survived was the old, modernist one: art (mora) to preserve its autonomy, art is above reality. The position of artist-citizen and artistic activism in Serbia in the nineties was a position to which the professional public remained mostly indifferent. And as far as I can see, the nineties are over.
S. Ciric
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