Year of the Dragon

When I think of the days of Milosevic's rule, I have to give them one credit. They taught me how to take care of myself, how to establish a functional methodology of survival in a system that is unfavorable and does not work for the majority, and also of establishing an autonomous, growing and fruitful author's production, de facto deprived of the conditions and resources that create them under normal circumstances. It was a learning process that was almost unimaginable in socialist self-management, you had to be nimble and adaptable, understand and react to the changes that happened around you on a daily basis without a clear indication of what tomorrow would bring. From today's perspective, those 13 years seem unrealistic to me.

They began in the summer of September 1987, while I was sitting in the gallery of the Dečani monastery and watched the broadcast of the Eighth Session on a black-and-white portable television, and ended on October 5, 2000, in the ceremonial hall of the Thessaloniki Hotel "Makedonija". Immediately after my entrance, after several hours of walking with Sokolja Bećiri and unsuccessful attempts to get a house from the phone booth, applause and ovations erupted from the palms and throats of European curators and artists who had gathered at a conference on the further development of contemporary art in a markedly changed world. , letting me know that the regime of the professor of sociology from the Faculty of Social Sciences and her husband in Belgrade has finally fallen.

That '87. I enrolled in the Academy and solved two important problems for myself: what will I do in life and unlimited free entry to Rupa, from which I didn't get out at night anyway, which were important points of support for a 23-year-old, mostly dekinted and not overly ambitious guy from Chubura until then carelessly led life. That summer, as well as the previous ones, I worked as a draftsman and restorer on fields in Serbia. I started at Gordana Tomašević's place, with a one-day adventure at the ancient site of the former National Library on Kosančićev venc, overgrown with sour trees, which we uprooted in the worst sun and polysalized. I quit right away the next day, it wasn't worth the effort.

Then Rade Petrović called me to join him in Nikolje Rudnički in Donja Šatornja, and it seems that I did a good job hemming the frescoes of the archbishop in the altar area, and a few days after the shooting in Paraćinska barracks he called me to join him in Dečani until the end of September. I quickly understood why - no one even remotely normal wanted to smell Kosovo after Keljmendi's brutal massacre, but there is always someone who likes to piss in the wind. On the train from Kosova Polje to Pec, I was chased by Albanian cops, one of them was particularly annoying, even though I had a proper order from the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the SR Serbia. It was a needless show off and show who's really the boss, but I think they were most annoyed by my complete curmudgeon and appearance, with all leather jacket, semi-Cherokee hair a la Brian Gregory from the Cramps wrapper and a silver earring in my left ear; that was too much even for Belgrade at that time.

In the less than a month until the start of regular freshman classes, while I was working during the day with the Ljokaj brothers under Radet's supervision, in the afternoons I would wander around the area, and on the weekends I would trudge around the foothills of Mokra Gora. I saw and experienced a lot that was deeply etched in my consciousness. It's old ground and that feeling fills you at every turn. Meanwhile, at home, there was a change in the ruling bureaucratic structure, which fatefully determined the course of our lives in the coming post-Cold War world.

The eighth session was not only a change of government, or a factional struggle, it was a change in the previous pattern of understanding politics. Instead of management activities for the welfare of the community and the general development of society, even declaratively, politics has become the scene of continuous calculations as a mechanism to divert attention from the pre-prepared redistribution of public goods into the pockets of interest groups and prominent individuals. This is what we have been seeing in the bar for the last 35 years, in cooperation with the geopolitical wishes of world players.

When the year 2000 began, I was still living with my wife and child in a co-tenant relationship. Hana had just walked, I had a driver's license but no car, I was working in my room, I was addicted to Napster, I bought Pampers diapers for baby brands at a verified scheme at the stall of the Kalenić market... I remember that before the bombing I was buying baby clothes in Mitros in Mutapova , to this day I still don't know why powdered milk for babies was sold in the butcher shop, but at least it was available for dinars. Banks existed pro forma, but except for the payment transactions of employees in state-owned companies and deferred checks, everything looked like a farce. Ninety-two worked like B2-92 and I returned to the program - that meant a safe 150 marks per month that went to the babysitters, so that Milena and I could work at all.

I was called upon the recommendation of Mileta Prodanović from Šumatovačka to take over the class of students who are preparing to enter the Academy. I did everything that was offered, it was enormously difficult to get an income, I have no idea how I achieved it all. We started the Remont Association for Contemporary Art in the fall of 1999, and soon after that, at the end of December, we opened a gallery for a monthly rent of $250 in Staklenac on Republic Square, on the same floor as the Media Center.

The dynamics of activities and events that were intertwined was unreal. During the nineties, we built an entire parallel world and learned the business flawlessly. It's incredible when I think about how we managed to achieve everything with a minimum of funds. Whatever we did, we were trained in that poverty at the world level, we acquired skills, we had clear paradigms and attitudes, we knew how to embody them. The independent cultural scene - be it art, music, performance, literature, clubbing, media, as well as film, TV production and publishing - was vital, widespread and fertile. We all knew each other and helped each other and there was a unique spirit directed towards the establishment of a different, self-aware, self-sustaining, orderly, just and free society, which will treat and respect all its members equally. We fought for the establishment and respect of the social contract, the abolition of the terror of the traditional autocratic rule in this area, we deeply believed that it was possible. And not least, we were truly witty, far wittier than our opponents. An empty pocket moves the mind.

Immediately after the end of the bombing, the rise of a few of us from the Belgrade scene to the international scene began. Naskovski and I performed at the Palau de la Vireina and the Tekla Sala center in Barcelona at the magnificent exhibition "Garden of Eros" at the invitation of Jean-Jacques Lebel, Milica Tomić exhibited independently at Silvia Ablemeier in Innsbruck. After a successful performance at the Manifesta in Luxembourg in 1998, Tanja Ostojić was invited to the Biennale in Venice. At the opening of the Remont gallery, curators Marija Hlavajova and Katrin Romberg appeared and took Škart to the Manifesto in Ljubljana. I exhibited and traveled non-stop. I would never have more than 200 marks in my pocket, I would usually take my works with me, packed, as hand luggage, by bus, train and even by plane, it was the time before September 11. Most often, I would sleep with someone, I got my visas in Budapest and Sofia because most of the embassies had not yet opened their representative offices. The Center for Contemporary Art, led by Dejan Sretenović, Branka Anđelković, Branko Dimitrijević and Marina Martić along with Borut Vild, was a key factor in gathering and distributing information about all of us, they had a high reputation and good networking. That's where Bob Horwitz found me and arranged for me to have a solo exhibition in Prague at the Behemoth Gallery on the day of the start of the fierce five-day anti-globalist demonstrations against the IMF and the World Bank. I flew to Ruzinje on Sunday, September 24, leaving at 8.45:9.00 a.m., the polls opened at XNUMX:XNUMX a.m. I didn't vote.

I got married at the end of May. The service broke into the premises of B2-92 in Beograđanka, interrupted the broadcast and closed them permanently. Zoza told me that the atmosphere was very tense with maximum restraint on both sides. At that moment, I was in Subotica, where I realized an art workshop as part of the program Varos Szabadka of the Open Club there. I went to watch Spartak - Čukarički and see what I have to do, I remember Francisković's goal from 40 meters. In June, I am with the Paris gallery 1900–2000. performed at Art Basel, the largest contemporary art fair in the world, I already had a Swiss visa approved and I thought that if the arrests started, I would need a letter on the basis of which I would get Milena and the child out of the country. She started working for TV production B92 in an apartment in a secret location in Miročka near Tašmajdan. We could expect everything. When Arkan was killed in January, I called Stevica Markuša and told him that we should attend the funeral. We went to the Novo Groblje during winter, it was a nice sunny day, around -10, all kinds of people came. I felt intuitively that this act was burying an entire epoch and I wanted us to bear witness. We survived all the adversities and at that moment it seemed as if we were chosen.

A month before Sloba's downfall, nothing looked as if there would be a major turnaround. I happened to be in Copenhagen at the beginning of September at a conference on the independent culture of Europe. I was met at the airport by Čirilo and Bulidža. They stayed in the refugee asylum there for over a year and in the middle of the night they took me straight from Kastrup to see The little mermaid and a performance by Anka Bogdanova, her accordionist husband and the accompanying band in a club in Christiania. I stand and watch Bulgarian folk songs in a post-punk setting. Local freaks in leather jackets, with piercings, play a round, while my good compatriots change their color and facial features right before my eyes after smoking freshly bought hashish from the stall in front of the entrance, wrapped in a thick joint under the White Zombie brand. During the day, the summit of cultural workers was held in the representative hall of the Danish government building, and somehow before my performance I managed to box out the projection of the documentary Borders of Art, which Ćirilo worked on in co-production with Free B92 and Danish TV STOP. After the end of the film, in my address to the participants I said: "...You expect us to send applications for financial support of projects at least a year in advance, and we don't even know if we will exist tomorrow." The order in Belgrade can collapse as soon as tomorrow, but over the years it has shown exceptional strength and holds all the levers of power in its hands, just so much that it can comfortably rule for decades."

Returning by plane from Thessaloniki on October 8, 2000, while we were climbing over Pelagonia, I had a strong panic attack that lasted until landing at Surcin. I fell apart. Although apparently everything was over, what remains is the mentality of the environment, which is the most difficult to change and in which we have to fight to raise awareness both by personal example and by association and joint activities to improve living and working conditions. Which is the basis of survival. A life worthy of a man. But let's face it, I'm relieved. One less shit. I went home and took my daughter to the park. Exhibitions in Warsaw and Bratislava were waiting for me for a month, I had to stand in line again for a visa, pay money for travel, stay, all kinds of expenses, production of new works, everyday life. Husein Alptekin, who did not have a direct flight from Thessaloniki to Istanbul, also came. I took him to gourmand claps, kiosks and parked cars in jam-packed Slavia. At dusk, while standing on the walls of Kalemegdan, looking at the panorama of the mouth, he suddenly said: "Man, here is the center of the world."

I do not know.

I guess.