The Hotel Onogošt is in the very isolated and very depressing city of Nikšić, wedged between some very high mountains in Montenegro. I spent one night in this relic of socialist Yugoslavia. The poodle-haired ladies in reception told me privatization is imminent.
In the midst of my autumn of post-production for the project, I took a break from Belgrade and visited Zagreb. One of the many things I did was attend a press conference given by the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art (which opens its doors December 11th, by the way), at which the (famous) contemporary artists Gilbert and George spoke of the exhibit they are planning for 2010. The work will concern no less than “the same things that are inside of every person – death, hope, life, fear, sex, money, race and religion”. They also said that artists should have a sense of responsibility, that they’re not in the world to please themselves and that they should behave like people in the “medical profession or in the science world” – that is, they shouldn’t keep discoveries to themselves in their studio, but rather share them with the rest of the world. Artists should serve a purpose.
Word.
This male dance troupe debuted a week ago on Super Talent Hrvatska, a Croatian version of So You Think You Can [dance/sing/whatever]. Apparently, these guys are now super mega stars in Croatia. It’s one of the more bizarre things I’ve seen recently.
Pascal and I were in a fotokopirnica earlier this evening, photocopying something. Pascal picked up a Belgrade city guide, one of those 5×7 glossy productions, and started flipping through it out of boredom. And then he found this:
Pascal designed that graphic for a press release a month ago, we shipped it off to KIOSK and hadn’t thought of it since. How COOL to see this little synopsis of our project, randomly. The photocopy lady was a little mystified by our excitement.
Tomorrow we take to the road for 15 days, to do our part of the research/photography. Milica, Pascal and I decided that, aside from hitting a couple towns and cities that the other artists couldn’t reach because of money, time, geography or whatever, we would target people living in border towns, especially borders where ethnic tension still lingers (Croatia-Republika Srpska, an entity in the Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina) or where the influence of EU culture may already be in the air (the Croatian border with Hungary, the Serbian border with Romania and Bulgaria).
This is what our decision-process looked like:
Like military strategists.
And this is where we’re going (pink dots):
Yessssssssss.
Nearly three years have passed since Pascal, my husband, and I embarked on our project, The Culture Lobby. Three years. Yikes.
In 2007 we had an idea for a little project, which for one reason or another turned into a big project. A very big project. A thank-you-British-Council-Open-Society-Institute-European-Cultural-Foundation-Ontario-Arts-Council-Balkan-Trust-for-Democracy kind of project. Two years later, after finding our project soul mates in Milica Pekić and Ana Adamović, the directors of the NGO KIOSK, after asking our friends and relatives to read over grant applications, to translate, to proofread, to listen, to dispense advice, to lend us cars, to guide us, to feed us, after scouring the Western Balkans for partners, for photos, for ideas, after two years of seemingly endless grant-writing, we are finally, really and truly beginning. The end has arrived. Woot, woot.
So, what about this project. In a nutshell: visual artists from each of the countries of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia) will travel to another country and ask people there what they think will change or disappear when their country joins the European Union. Whatever the answer, the artists will find some way to interpret it creatively, documenting it as a photograph or as an audio recording. The artists will also mark the locations of what they photograph or record in a GPS system. Pascal and I will also do this, but free range style, covering the areas others can’t reach or don’t have time to reach. Artists-at-large, if you will.
The idea is to record the subjective perceptions of the process of EU accession, giving ordinary people a platform for voicing their expectations, concerns, fears, aspirations with regard to EU membership. The goal is to create an archive of the answers, paired with the photos or audio and a GPS point that will allow anyone interested to visit these actual spots and see for themselves what has or hasn’t changed, what predictions have or have not come true, if and when the countries of the Western Balkans join the EU (eventually). It is supposed to become an archive of cultural memory, an archive mediated by art, which has great potential to open a world beyond the empirical, to improve understanding and to create a source of alternative knowledge.
That wraps up this little intro, which I write from my sublet apartment in Belgrade, sandwiched between the Serbian Parliament and the Museum of Yugoslav History. The latter never, ever seems to be open (how fitting). The mosquitos are dive-bombing me, and Pascal is smoking up a storm while reading Watership Down (also fitting). Although now he’s stopped to watch a Discovery channel show about bed bug infestations. More dispatches soon. Until then here are three years worth of haircut self-portraits on the road.
