Mentors Mentors of WCSCD program so far included: Dorothea von Hantelmann (Bard College, Berlin); Antariksa (co-founding member of KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, Yogyakarta, Indonesia); the Flash Art Magazine editorial team (Flash Art is a bimonthly magazine focused on contemporary art, based in Milan); Elena Filipović (director of Kunsthalle Basel);Tara McDowell (director of curatorial practice at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia); Maria Lind (director of Tensta konsthall, Stockholm); Matt Packer (director of EVA International); Hou Hanru (artistic director of MAXXI Rome, Italy); and What, How & for Whom (a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, Croatia), Branislav Dimitrijevic ( art historian based in Belgrade), Ares Shporta ( Lumbardhi Foundation, Kosovo), Zdenka Badovinac ( Moderna Galeria Ljubljana), Nikita Yingqian Cai ( Times Museum, Guang Zhou), Charles Esche ( Van Abbe Museum), Sinisa Ilic (artist based in Belgrade), Ekaterina Degot (Director and Chief Curator of steirischer herbst), Lisa Rosendahl (Associate Professor of Exhibition Studies at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and Curator of GIBCA—the Gothenburg biennial in 2019 & 2021), Luca Lo Pinto (director of MACRO in Rome), Suzana Milevska (curator and a visual culture theorist), Lejla Hodzic (cultural worker) , Xiang Zairong ( scholar), Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez (independent curator, editor and writer), and ruangrupa ( artistic directors of Documenta 15), Lejla Hodzic ( art practitioner, Sarajevo), Jelica Jovanovic ( architect), Skart Collective ( Belgrade), Katalin Szekely ( OFF Biennale, Budapest), Massimilliano Mollona ( Institute for Radical Immagination), Manuel Borja Villel ( Museo National Renia Sofia), Amelie Aranguren ( INLAND), Aslihan Demirtas ( architect). < How to Apply Educational Program Events >

< Back Corena* Musings Addis Ababa 15 Apr 2020 Sarah Bushra I am writing this text safely tucked in a studio apartment in Basha Wolde Condominium , Arat Kilo, Addis Ababa. Although the city is not in total lockdown, I barely leave my home, except for sporadic coffee breaks at a café downstairs. At least once a day, I make my way down from the fourth floor – pausing at the balcony of each story to look out at the city and check if it is still there and indeed intact between my climbs down each staircase. The pauses get longer with the passing days, and my gazes more unsure and less futile. Balcony Series – Addis Ababa, Sarah Bushra. There seems to be so much time stretching between the sips one cup packs, to embody all the possibilities the coffee’s dreamy color alludes to. Yet, sitting on a low stool and staring down the road, the day suddenly dusks and I realize there’s no time at all. It’s been 4 weeks since the first confirmed case was announced in Ethiopia, 3 weeks since the government banned all public gatherings, 3 weeks since schools and universities shut down, 5 days since the first reported COVID-19 death. There are new languid movements my limbs have adopted as they move through the day – in stark contrast to the lilting anxiety that sits at the opening of my throat. I think of my eyes and imagine how this lethargy translates into my vision. I see a wave, a certain dissolution and emergence of communities – as the physical spaces fade and the virtual appears. Among the many articles, listicles, memes, and mantras I encountered online that urge us to reflect on the changing times brought about by the global pandemic, one stood out to me, captivating in its subtlety. Tamrat Gezahegne shares on his Facebook account pictures of his stone carving installation. These images are less of a call to action as they are a solace, inviting us to the tranquility the artwork offers. My mind wanders to the meditative act of carving a stone, remembering Louise Bourgeois as she says: “….the thing that had to be said was so difficult and so painful that you have to hack it out of yourself and so you hack it out of the material, a very, very hard material.” Selected stone Carvings, Tamrat Gezahegne. Images shared with permission of the artist. Thinking about the physicality of the rock, despite what it refuses to do, Gezahegne has carved it to fit his imagination. Empathy is my entry point to his work. Reflecting on his perseverance and the repetitive force he used to hack, I ask what the thing was that has to be said that was so painful, maybe in this case, so alien and unprecedented. When the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia announced the first case of Corona in the country, I saw huddles of people, mostly mothers living in my apartment complex talking in hushed tones. I imagined at one point every conversation in the world dominated by Corona. All of us connected with this invisible string of whispers scuttling through our ears. Art makes this link apparent and visceral, as if we all are components of one physical body connected through the veins under our skin. Selected paintings, Selome Muleta. Images shared with permission of the artist. Scrolling down artist Selome Muleta’s feed is like peering through a hole into her private unraveling, performed beautifully and with care. We see the figure in her paintings shuffle in her bed from one side to the other, dressing and undressing through the day, cross-legged and ideally sitting facing the wall, before she melts into her surrounding, no different from the rigid and inanimate room she occupies. I imagine us, Addis dwellers engaged in a collective struggle to swallow the concept of physical distancing and self-isolation and I wonder what small things are letting them linger at the back of our throat floating in a thick fluid of uncertainty. We are now constantly attentive to where our hands might fall, as if they had not once freely landed on the brackets of our neighbor’s folded arm, or cupped a stranger child’s cheek, or hoisted the trailing corner of netela and flung it across the back of a woman rushing out from the neighborhood suk . These acts of intimacies that threaded people into communities are now replaced with static jerks as we remember that it’s no longer okay to hug, kiss or shake hands. As the government tallies the positive cases from a meager pool of tests, the real fear of most Addis Abebes come from imagining the impending fate, when the virus surges into our community in full force as it has done into other metropolises across the globe. On April 8, the Ethiopian government issued a State of Emergency, the fourth one in three years, urging citizens to take the necessary precautions, abide by the sanctioned laws, support one another, and nurture a spiritual relationship with God. Thus far Ethiopians’ strongest grounding against the unsettling nature of the virus has been a spiritual armor. On April 6, the Ethiopian Religious Council officiated the beginning of a one-month long prayer period among all religions represented in the country. The pandemic escalating in the middle of Lent, priests have been burning incense on the streets of Addis, to protect the city from COVID-19. The smoke in the air is reminiscent of the trash burning tradition on Hidar 12 (St. Michael’s day), of each year to commemorate the Spanish flu that took the lives of many Ethiopians in 1918. Alula Pankhurst draws our attention to this correlation in his post that includes his picture of a hazy Addis as the city celebrates the pandemic’s centennial by burning trash. He cautions those that criticize this traditional and historical practice and asks if we remember COVID-19 in 100 years, how will we commemorate it? I noticed my mind wouldn’t trail to memory-scape pressed by the immediate curiosity of how all this is going to end. But I imagine the post-COVID world will be defined by the company we keep now amidst the storm. This pandemic challenges and disrupts our understanding of community. It confronts us with our loneliness, unveiling the true nature of our ties, not only as we exist confined alone or with a select few, but also by unveiling the true nature of our ties to people, places, and ideologies. * Corona virus as it’s commonly pronounced by Ethiopians. It echoes sentiments of breaking/disrupting language as a form of resistance, reminiscent of Maaza Mengiste’s words in her war novel, The Shadow King, “the deliberate mispronunciation has spread across the country, started by those who did not know better and continued by those who do. It is another sign of [Ethiopians’] rebellion, another sign that they are trying to fight in every way that they can.” (Mengiste, Maaza. The Shadow King. W W Norton, 2019.) Sarah Bushra is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, working primarily with a hybrid of text and images. Previous Next

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Reading of the biggest image in Belgrade Wednesday, 20th of November from 4 pm, Generalstab building and November 21st 6pm Ostavinska panel discussion. The event “Reading of the biggest image in Belgrade” will mark the end of the three-month international curatorial course “What Could/Should Curating Do?” starting on Wednesday, the 20th of November in front of the Generalstab building at 4 pm with a public performance led by Nemanja Boskovic. On 21st of November at 6pm in Ostavinska a panel discussion will commence. Participants will be members of The School for History and Theory of Images and curators of the project. During the event, an artist intervention by Bojan Đorđev i Siniše Ilić will be presented. The curatorial team of this final project of the WCSCD course, which is running for a second year in Serbia and gathering young curators from all over the world, includes Sasha Puchkova from Russia, Aigerim Kapar from Kazahstan, Martina Yordanova from Bulgaria, Mateja Smic from Croatia and Zulfikar Filandra from Bosnia and Herzegovina. They point out that the final event is the outcome and of their three-month stay in Serbia. Through the research of the School for History and theory of images, they had an opportunity to get to know the art scene in Belgrade. “Our research of The School for History and Theory of Images remains the signature of our time spent in Belgrade. Through it, we got to know aspects of the local art scene and its historical and geopolitical context. They were the first ones to, through this alternative educational programme, attempt to encourage critical thinking, questioning and critique of ideology, political situations and problems of the academy, with the goal of improving the quality of visual culture studies. The School soon became some sort of a forum and epicentre for discussions which ‘by their range define new modes of interaction between culture, politics and theory in the broader social field.’ (Editorial, Prelom Magazine #1, 2011). Somehow, we felt that the situation of that time and the one of today have a lot in common and thought that there are valuable lessons we could take from the past, reflect on them in relation to the present, and try to project the learnings onto the future.“ The young curators add that the research of the school opened up new views and served as an inspiration for the final programme of the WCSCD course: “The two main discourses of the School – Critique of Ideology and Reading of the image, have inspired us to think about the current situation in relation to that of 20 years ago, revive the School’s approach and attempt to apply it to the current setting. To mark the School’s 20th anniversary and test their methodologies in the contemporary context, we have decided to curate ‘The reading of the biggest image in Belgrade’ in relation to the image covering the Generalstab building. Surprised by the quantity and nature of the political discourse in the public and media, startled by the presence of armed defence bodies in the city and prompted by the fact that the biggest image in Belgrade promotes army recruitment, we felt that this would be an interesting and urgent topic for research.” The event is organized as part of WCSCD 2019 curatorial program

< Back Seeing the Invisible: Documenting and Interpreting China’s Cultural Presence in Uzbekistan (Part 1) 25 Aug 2020 Alexey Ulko From the beginning, I saw the primary objective of my research was to document and interpret the different visual signs and symbols of China’s growing presence in Uzbekistan. I began writing notes and taking and collecting photos; trying to categorise and interpret the evidence with the help of different conceptual approaches, from visual anthropology to object-oriented ontology. The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing quarantine, however, have interfered with this intention in more ways than one. As I was thinking about how the Belt and Road Initiative has influenced Uzbekistan, the pandemic struck and very visibly changed the rules of the game. Beginning in Wuhan, it was a clear illustration of how China can affect the world – though I have serious reservations about calling this influence “Chinese”. The more I thought about the asymmetrical political and cultural relations between China and Uzbekistan, the more disjointed and fragmented the picture became. Not fragmented in a stylish postmodernist way, but rather, uselessly and helplessly mixed up and confused. I had set myself the task of researching “the politics and aesthetics of the visual representation of China-Uzbek relations, through documentary photography and film,” in order to provide anthropological perspectives on these. But typing those words on a keyboard made in China, sitting in an armchair produced in China, drinking tea from a china cup, and seeing the plastic letters HUAWEI on my modem connecting me to the world, made me question whether I could aspire to produce any meaningful research on something so intangible – the world or flow that is literally everywhere – and whether I could make any meaningful statement about China as a hyper-object , all while I remained within it. “The Chinese invented gunpowder, tea, silk production, the compass, paper, mechanical clocks…” – ah, thank you very much. This list of inventions probably isn’t as long as the one of all the objects around me which had been made in China, but it tells us an important story. If today’s narrative is that the Chinese are good at adapting and replicating something that has been invented (usually from the so-called “West”), it was obviously different in the past: things were invented in China and adapted for future use by others. Peter Greenaway’s mesmerising film, The Pillow Book (1996), tells the story of a Japanese born model living in Hong Kong. Her aunt tells her that when she is twenty-eight years old, the diary of a Japanese woman (Sei Shonagon), known as Pillow Book, will be a thousand years old, and that she (Nagiko) will be the same age as Sei Shonagon when she had written the book. The film made a profound impact on me and made me want to learn calligraphy (which I never really did). However in 969, exactly a thousand years before I was born, two generals serving the Song Dynasty invented a fire arrow which used gunpowder tubes as mini rocket engines, enabling them to fly much further, and cause damage to any inflammable object by setting them alight. This was the year rocket artillery was invented and utilized for the first time. Later, the Chinese produced the first cannons, but these would be vastly improved by the Europeans who would go on to use them many centuries later to subjugate China in the 19th century. These kinds of reverse loops seem to characterise much of what is going on between China, Central Asia and the West, and there is little in popular literature that can describe it better than the books on the Silks Roads by Peter Frankopan ( The Silk Roads , 2015 and The New Silk Roads , 2018). I will return to Frankopan’s texts later, but for now I would like to explore the issue from a very different angle. *** What are my earliest memories of China or anything Chinese? It could be a conical straw hat I played with in my early years (though that could also have been Vietnamese). The very delicate porcelain tea set which our family used only on special occasions. (We still have some of the cups, very Victorian by design, not bone china judging by its colour, but still very fine and translucent.) My father’s white shirt with a label I think saying “The Great Friendship”. The stories my father told me about the Chinese students he knew while studying at some in-service artist training course in Moscow in the 1960s. A painting by Qi Baishi similar to the one I had in my childhood Left: Remembering Qi Baishi and Tajik territories conceded to China Right: Qi Baishi’s seal and a letter to the Chinese government asking it to reconsider its actions against the Uyghurs by Marie van der Zyl, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews Beautiful facsimile prints of Qi Baishi’s watercolours. I remember Red Morning Glories and some similar pieces hanging in my little room as late as 1996. (Where have they all gone?) An exquisitely printed book on him by Evgeniya Zavadskaya ( Tsi Bai Shi , 1982). (Is that still with my sister?) I have just downloaded it in .pdf. Evgeniya Zavadskaya’s superb book on Qi Baishi In Uzbekistan, the growing Chinese presence had been relatively low-profile and pragmatic. It can be broadly categorised into being culturally and visually marked (e.g. the Confucius Institute, Chinese restaurants) or unmarked (Chinese investment projects). At the same time, there have been few, if any, noticeable cultural projects involving Chinese artists, curators, writers, musicians or photographers. The establishment of the Confucius Institute in Samarkand marked a shift from the earlier invisibility towards a more spectacular and confident Chinese cultural manifestation. The statue of Confucius and the belfry of St. Alexey’s Cathedral in Samarkand One of the main buildings of the Samarkand State University The statue of Confucius in front of the Samarkand State University that hosts the Confucius Institute As the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) seems to have regained momentum after its setback in 2018, I thought it would be interesting to follow the dynamics of China’s visual presence in Uzbekistan and reflect it through photographs, videos and texts. What is the BRI? How large is it? Like China, it can also be seen as a hyper-object that encompasses nearly half of the world’s population, a multitude of resources, and 50 percent of the global GDP. About 150 countries, including the Central Asian states, have reportedly joined the BRI in one way or another. Its infrastructure is accompanied by large-scale investments from Chinese companies and institutions (such as the Silk Road Foundation with funds of US$40 billion), and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), with funds of US$100 billion to provide development aid to the countries who participate in the BRI. The Chinese writer Zhenqing Zheng, claims that “more and more people see the BRI as an incremental China-driven project to develop international and regional public goods in terms of economic cooperation, free trade, infrastructural connectivity, international security and mutual trust. The BRI advocates the mutual docking of development strategies between participant countries and China. The aim is to build large-scale, high-level, deep-seated and high-standard international and regional economic networks.” If so, why is it then seen by many as a threat, rather than an opportunity? A snapshot of Chinese government’s influence One possible reason is the sheer might of the Chinese economy. Another reason is a deep distrust of Chinese intentions, which often borders on Sinophobia. As Sebastian Peyrouse claims, all Central Asian experts on China express concern about the silence cultivated by the authorities in their countries about their partnership with China. They worry that the true extent of China’s grip over the region has been concealed. They criticise the authorities’ incapacity to make decisions for the future of Central Asian nations, and are concerned about the atmosphere of suspicion, generated by the lack of information. About ten years ago I spoke to a driver and a junior officer working for a Chinese company with a large office located on the same floor as the educational centre I was visiting at the time. I asked them if they spoke any Chinese and they said no. “In fact, the Chinese do not encourage local employees to study Chinese, and do not recruit any local Chinese-speakers. We have an interpreter to translate any important negotiations, and the junior staff are learning Russian and Uzbek. All decisions are made only by the senior Chinese officials, and they do not want servants to understand what their masters are saying.” *** As a child, I liked Chinese fairy tales and often wondered why many of them featured young officials sitting exams, carrying documents and seals, performing various administrative functions. I liked stories about the huli jing (vixens), but my favourite was from Yao folklore, called Red Maize . Later, I read Journey to the West by Wu Cheg’en, and became most fascinated by the character Sha Wujing with his gourd and staff. Li Bai and Du Fu were my favourite poets at a certain point, especially the former. Li Bai was born in a Silk Road city known today as Ak-Beshim, some 30km from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. He started writing poetry before he was ten, was well-travelled, and skilled at riding, hunting, and fencing. From a pot of wine among the flowers I drank alone. There was no one with me – Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon To bring me my shadow and make us three. Alas, the moon was unable to drink And my shadow tagged me vacantly; But still for a while I had these friends To cheer me through the end of spring…. I sang. The moon encouraged me. I danced. My shadow tumbled after. As far as I knew, we were boon companions. And then I was drunk, and we lost one another. …Shall goodwill ever be secure? I watch the long road of the River of Stars. *** Christopher Francis Patten, the last British Governor of Hong Kong, was denounced by some Chinese media outlets as the “whore of the East,” a “serpent” and a “wrongdoer who would be condemned for a thousand generations”. *** There are several Chinese restaurants in Tashkent, and many more Korean ones which also often serve a generic East Asian mixture. I tried Chinese food for the first time in Islamabad in 1998 and found it very unusual. The gluey, homogenous, chicken soup; heavily fried vegetables; chicken pieces in a sticky sauce which resembled mixed caramel, but had a touch of spice – all of these tasted strange and artificial. But I liked chopsticks. I do not remember exactly where and how I learned to use them – probably much later when I started visiting Korean restaurants in Tashkent and elsewhere. In the early 1990s I often travelled to Karachi where I developed a taste for spicy food, which I have eaten ever since, transforming even the simple Uzbek plov into some kind of biryani. Uzbeks are, of course, famously conservative in their cuisine, and in many families they eat little else apart from their own traditional dishes – and their food isn’t as spicy when compared to Indian, Chinese or Korean cuisines. However, Chinese influence remains evident in dishes such as laghman (noodles), which has been borrowed from the Uyghurs. The Uyghur food can be found in Tashkent, but it is not as abundant as in places like Osh in Kyrgyzstan. In other words, in different parts of Central Asia, depending on the type of restaurants, you can get different local varieties of Chinese food (of which I can count at least three). The first is the outcome of the above-mentioned cultural transfer from the Chinese to the Uyghurs, to the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. By and large, it is still determined by a geographical proximity to the Eastern Turkestan. The second type is more cultural. It’s the Chinese food you get at Korean restaurants usually run by local urban Koreans, who are descendants of the Korean communities deported to Central Asia from the Russian “Far East” in 1937. Unsurprisingly, the Korean restaurants that cater for the expats from South Korea are less exposed to Chinese influence, while those serving mostly local clientele, tend to be more relaxed and generic. Finally, there are distinct Chinese restaurants, usually run by the Chinese, with all the necessary attributes of Chinese restaurants scattered all over the world, though still rather rare in Uzbekistan. That being said, they seem to be more popular than Indian restaurants, which has always surprised me because of the apparently sufficient resemblance between Uzbek and Indian cuisines, which in theory would make the transition from one to the other smoother. While biryani does look like a simplified version of plov, Uzbeks have their own samosa, naan bread, and an indigenous version of raita called chalob. Still, despite the huge popularity of Indian films and other cultural parallels, Uzbeks have never really embraced curries. At this stage it is difficult to say whether Chinese food will spread all over Uzbekistan, but as two of its three local varieties are symbiotic, it makes Chinese dishes look much less foreign than the distinct South Asian cuisine. While the number of Chinese visitors to the country sky-rocketed in 2017-18, only the COVID-19 pandemic has so far hampered the growth of the number of Chinese restaurants, which were designed especially to meet demands from the tourist sector. *** What about US-China trade wars? What is going on and how does it affect Central Asia? So far, the impact of this has been rather difficult to assess. According to IFF China Report , 2020, a kind of provisional agreement between the USA and China was finally reached in January earlier this year. This included assent by China to move away from forced technology transfers and a willingness to offer foreign companies greater access to Chinese markets – plus a commitment to increase purchases of US manufacturing, energy and agricultural goods and services by US$200 billion over the next two years. Will China hold these promises? Simultaneously, the US cancelled its plans for the so-called “penalty tariffs” it had scheduled for $156 billion of Chinese goods, and cut the tariffs imposed in September 2019 on $120 billion of these goods from 15% to 7.5%. It also dropped its labelling of China as a “currency manipulator” as part of the deal. Will the deal hold? Will it force China to be more, or less aggressive? What turn will the events take if Trump is re-elected (or not re-elected)? All of these variables make the situation difficult to predict. Meanwhile, the huge letters of HUAWEI atop a block of flats above Oybek underground station nave been recently replaced with ZTE 5G . HUAWEI is a big name in the centre of Tashkent, one of those companies that have a marked presence in the city *** Another important name that indirectly links China with Central Asia is that of Julian Shchutsky, the first translator of the I Ching (“Book of Changes”) into Russian. His name first attracted my attention as an alleged member of themystical-anarchist group which included artists and many other Anthroposophists and esotericists. As a prominent Sinologist, he left an impressive imprint on Russian Oriental studies. Julian Shchutsky was a polyglot; he translated from about 16 languages. He was Professor of the Leningrad Institute of Oriental Studies, Professor of the Leningrad State University in 1936-37, and a research scientist in the Asian Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1920-37. Shchutsky was given bibliographical responsibility for the Dauism and Alchemy portions of the Asian Museum’s new acquisitions. He also did extensive translations from late Tang poetry. Yulian Shchutsky’s newly found musical score at the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art GARAGE in Moscow Shchutsky had various artistic talents but was modest about them. In his remarkable autobiography written in 1935, he says: “The greatest passion in my youth is music, especially Scriabin and later Bach. I was more interested in the theory of composition than performance. As a performer, I never achieved anything worthy of attention. Most of my music I wrote in the period of 1915 – 1923 – all of the pieces have been lost [1] . It is hardly possible to resume this work, since for this, it is necessary to live in music, and there is no time for that in my present life. […] Second in time and value in my life is of art and poetry. It began in 1918, but I do not treat my poems seriously. The only real result is mastering the poetic technique, which I use only as a translator. I was also engaged in painting, but I don’t have any real training in painting, except for lessons in the icon painting technique. I was also engaged in engraving on wood, but now I cannot continue these studies because of my poor eyesight. I participated in an exhibition at the Russian Museum in 1927. That’s all about my art.” In 1922 he met the poet Elisaveta Vasilieva (aka Cherubina de Gabriak) in St. Petersburg. On 3 March 1923 she wrote to her friend and fellow Anthroposophist, the poet Maximillian Voloshin: “Love came into my life, maybe I learnt how to give for the first time. He is much younger than me, and I want to save his life. He is both an Anthroposophist and a Sinologist. He holds music, poetry and painting in his hands.” In 1927, Vasilieva, who was an important figure in Russian Anthroposophical movement, was arrested and deported to Tashkent where she died on 5 December 1928. Before her death, Shchutsky visited her in Tashkent twice, on his way to Japan and back. On his first visit she wrote, inspired by him, 21 poems attributed to Li Xiang Zi, a fictional Chinese poet exiled for his “belief in the immortality of human spirit”. The name of Li Xiang, invented by Shchutsky, means “a philosopher from a house under a pear tree”, where Vasilieva indeed lived in Tashkent. It was also a phonetic play on Elisaveta’s first name. This literary mystification became her swan song. Shchutsky lived for another ten years full of professional achievements, as well as with fears of imminent repressions against him. He was arrested two months after defending his PhD dissertation on I-Ching in Pitkelevo, a village in the Leningrad province on 3 August 1937. He was charged with counter-revolutionary activities under articles 58-10 and 58-11 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, interrogated, tortured, trialled and finally shot on 18 February 1938. *** River… Here even rivers have green water, Like dense and lazy mica that has A shade of dust and wormwood … Ah, only in the North is the water blue … And here is the East. Between us, like a river, lies a desert, And tears are like sand. (Li Xiang Zi, Tashkent, 1927) Alexey Ulko , born in Samarkand (Uzbekistan) in 1969. [1] Some of his music scores have been found and displayed for the first time at the exhibition We Treasure our Lucid Dreams held in the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art GARAGE for which I conducted this research – AU Previous Next

Past Programs 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2019 Program Archive Call for applications: “WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO?” curatorial course 2019 February 5, 2019

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities WCSCD 2025/2026 educational program lecture series Assembling Land: Rehearsals towards Placemaking Marina Christodoulidou Time September 19th 2025, 19:00 Venue: SKUP Novi Sad Delving into pressing themes surrounding Land —particularly its ownership and use— de Appel takes curatorial practice as a means of commoning. Land represents the frontline for critical issues such as environmental crises, land grabbing, settler colonialism, and the erosion of affordable housing, among others. In the present context of late capitalism, Land has been reduced to a mere commodity, stripped of its intrinsic value and communal significance. Yet, we witness a surge of political and social movements worldwide fervently advocating for equitable access to and restitution of land and its resources. Artists, often at the forefront of these struggles, are not merely participants but conspirators, exploring and embodying new paradigms of shared ownership and reimagining the commons. Curatorial projects referenced during the talk engage with co-ownership, both as a structure and a concept, by learning from the diverse experiences, practices, and perspectives of/with lumbung. It further questions how crises of land and housing engage with an art institution, and asks: how could we co-own a place? How might an art institution practice co-ownership, both practically and poetically? In principle, de Appel anchors its inquiries in curatorial work: How can we curate exhibitions today in relation to concerns about land and urban crises? How might art institutions contribute to social housing movements and struggle against land grabbing and individual ownership? Following the presentation, there will be a screening of the collaborative film The Broken Pitcher (2022), which situates such questions in relation to a case of a home foreclosure, and by extension, debt and property, while exploring potentials for changing the script by interacting with it. Marina Christodoulidou is mentor of WCSCD educational program 2025/2026 and she the lecture is organized as part of educational program public encounters in collaboration with SKUP and Sok Cooperative The public lecture by Marina Christoulidou is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Belgrade. Lecture will be in English Marina Christodoulidou is a curator and researcher based in Amsterdam. Her practice traverses curatorial formats, often taking shape as discursive exhibitions, film, writing, and spatial interventions. During her participation in the 2023 de Appel Curatorial Programme, together with her cohort, she engaged in collective working methods that explored curating as a collaborative, situated practice. Their shared inquiry culminated in Hope is a Discipline , an ongoing curatorial research project named after the words of Mariame Kaba, who frames hope as a practice of communal labor. The research began with a series of gatherings at Broedplaats LELY in Amsterdam (October 6 – November 23, 2023) and continued at LMCC Arts Center in New York City (July 29 – September 29, 2024), with future iterations to follow. In October 2024, the cohort launched a vinyl record documenting the process and its encounters, published by de Appel Amsterdam. Marina continues her affiliation with de Appel as a curatorial fellow, working across various projects and initiatives, and as tutor of de Appel’s COOP study program at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI), alongside artist Noor Abuarafeh. Now in its third consecutive year, the COOP study group is framed under Rehearsals towards Placemaking , with public offerings by each year’s cohort as part of the DAI Summit, which travels across geographies—from Morocco to Cyprus and beyond. As part of the grounding of de Appel’s new home at Temple in De Pijp, Amsterdam, Marina’s collaborative project The Broken Pitcher was presented during the housewarming events in Spring 2024. Among other ongoing collaborations with de Appel’s team is Our People are Our Mountains , initiated in partnership with the 50th Jakarta Biennial. The project spans exhibitions, workshops, and performances in both Jakarta and Amsterdam, inviting artists to activate personal and collective transmissions in Fall 2024. At de Appel, participating artists and collectives shared instructions with the public and with their counterparts in Jakarta. This initiative centers on an act of transmission and trust—artists convey their creative directives to peers in Jakarta, who in turn interpret, enact, or respond to the instructions in place. While it includes exhibitionary elements, the project is fundamentally a collective, process-based endeavor, dependent on activation beyond the confines of presentation formats. In the upcoming exhibition calendar, December 2025 marks a new iteration of The Broken Pitcher (2020–), a long-term collaborative project that re-enacts an eviction story shaped by the colonial history of debt. For this occasion, Marina is working closely with artists involved in the original project, as well as newly commissioned collaborators, to draw from narratives rooted in the Dutch landscape. The work has previously been presented in public squares across Cyprus, as well as at Thkio Ppalies (Nicosia), Beirut Art Center, GfZK (Leipzig), and Lenbachhaus (Munich), among others. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

< Back On Bor’s Industrial Heritage 28 Aug 2020 Dragan Stojmenovic Introduction This year, two interesting research and art projects are being independently realized in Bor – and perhaps with a not so strange coincidence. One is international — “As you go. . . The roads under your feet, towards a new future” [1] , and the other is national — “Eighth Kilometer” [2] . With their topics, intentions and approach, they made me think about the reasons for their interest in Bor. Bor, as one of the most important industrial, mining and metallurgical centers in northeastern Serbia, is a city with an interesting history, alongside a specific natural environment and cultural heritage that is very difficult to summarize in a general article with facts that would show the current state – because this “current state” presents a stage within the perpetual change of all previous socio-historical, natural and cultural facts. Namely, these facts exist only in certain circumstances and contexts of their use, even when it comes to geological and geomorphological characteristics. Not to mention the ideological discourses of socio-economic formations of the different social systems, and the intentions of the politics of representation. Therefore, I could not write the kind of introduction that would simply describe the city of Bor. Instead, I would like to comment as a professional native who comes “from within”. We have yet to come to some relevant facts, though what is being offered to us must not be taken for granted. However, the aforementioned projects refer to, or confirm the fact that, the company for industrial production and processing of copper — Mining and Smelting Combine Bor , which was owned by the state – has now found its way to the New Silk Road , and that it has only been majority-owned by the new Chinese company for a year. The first mentioned international project is partly realized in Bor and will investigate changes within the aesthetics and practice of everyday life in the local environment, which have occurred with the arrival of Chinese investments. The second, is a project by the artists and architects who will represent the Republic of Serbia at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, responding to the question and topic of the International Architecture Exhibition, How will we live together? . It intertwines with the complex and comprehensive presentation of Bor, related to redefining the life-work relationship in the physical layout of the currently existing seven city zones, with a projection of common life in the future at the “Eighth Kilometer” (situated within the new circumstances of the minority strategic partnership with foreign investors from China, with whom we will live and work). As can be seen from the footnotes, the projects were well-timed and designed with flexible methodologies, which have adapted to our current global climate (primarily because they are based on planned ongoing research). In that sense, they are also interested in a more comprehensive understanding of local systems of definitions, classification and division – starting with the most impressive industrial landscapes, sections and developments of the city itself. Therefore, everything evolves from a singular starting point, which could have a zero degree of significance — from the old Bor mine…from the pit… Zero kilometer … fifth side of the world — for those whose level of understanding would require knowing the other seven points…kilometers…chapters. Industrial heritage in the heritage industry “The sublime words of Schiller’s Ode to Joy fell on the gloomy workers’ faces. No, no, no. Sorry. I repeat. They fell on the illuminated… Yes, yes… Illuminated workers’ faces.” [3] „Op mala, op, površinski kop!” (“Oi honey, oi, surface mining!”) [4] The term industrialization implies the use of techniques and technology for a mass, serial production of goods or raw materials; for personal or social economic interests of investors, with the distinct forcing of economic growth and development of organized production; often compared to some previous, technological, technical and “outdated” or “belated” organizational type of production, such as artisanal or manufacturing production. The precondition for performing the play of industrialization is the class privilege of those who possess and know certain techniques and technologies, and through applying them, some automatic authority is gained. In addition to the specialized class of engineers and investors, industrialization is enabled by workers and workers’ culture, with the direct interests of these two groups being realized from completely divergent ideological points of view — private and public, personal and collective. Industrialization brings certain cultural qualifications and processes of a modernization of “others”, and “underdeveloped and backward” areas, known today as “Eastern”, “Southern”, “Southeastern Europe” or “Third World Europe”. Unfortunately, such modernization qualifications and aspirations have long accompanied geographically oriented parts of Serbia that needed to be modernized; “discovered”, “renewed”, “introduced”, “developed”, “reborn”, “improved”. In comparison with their northern and western counterparts, the southern and eastern regions are considered corners of developed areas, or “appendages” of a healthy organism. Such a role was often imposed and lightly accepted, we assume with reasons, which we will look for in socio-political influences, existential impulses and the desire to play and learn. The starting point of the discussed topic is given by the content of the heritage institutions’ funds in Bor [5] and the facts, which in every respect, speak in favor of institutions based on workers’ culture and workers’ organization, logical upgrades and real needs for public institutions – not by the “modernization” and “industrialization” of exclusively privileged classes. We will not consider these initial positions important to show some progressive development of social institutions, but rather, to make an ideological distinction between the social potentials of real needs (necessities) and desires (aspirations). Do public social institutions fulfill the expressed necessary needs, or do they satisfy “desires”? In that sense, we will deal with industrialization and the industry, not only because of their specific material consequences and interests, but primarily because of their cognitive potentials that cause the fixation and recognition of a certain image of a city. That is, a certain, hypothetically derived, dominant attitude; expressed in public discourses surrounding the ideological predominance of the industrial over workers’ culture in Bor during the second decade of the 21st century. As an indicative example of the imposition of a new, distinctly dominant discourse, we will now examine the symbolic gesture of repositioning objects from the Park Museum along the main street in Bor during 2009 [6] , and the prevalence of a new public industrial discourse, at the expense of the discourse of workers’ culture and workers’ organization (which until then, as the dominant ideological formation, was clearly expressed in planned urban solutions and already arranged monuments as symbols of work and workers’ organization in the city center [7] ). We will consider these relocated and rearranged exhibits as a new discursive, syntactic structure that significantly changes the meaning of the exhibits and shows the processes of changing the politics of representation and shifting attitudes around cultural and historical heritage. More precisely, we will try to consider the influence of dominant ideologies on the configuration of the cultural and historical heritage of Bor within public space, alongside the materialization of expressed desires through that newly composed industrial heritage, and taking over the authority of institutions over that cultural heritage. In that sense, the implementation of a new representation policy in a symbolic formation, created by public monuments and redistributed exhibits, enables a new reading, an understanding and an attempt to revise historical facts, as well as expressing some “desires” of the presumed author of the new installation of exhibits and monuments. Firstly, the intention is to expose the “affirmative power” of discourse (Fuko 2007, p. 52) through the representation policy expressed in the mentioned symbolic structure; to use criticism as a “style of learned ease”, as opposed to an expressed genealogical “happy positivism” (Ibid.) (changing the image of the city through a campaign, “For a better Bor” [8] ) in order to understand what we’ve been “told” by the formation in public space. It would be sad if we admitted at the very beginning, that the recently experienced reality showed us the origin of such a materialized exhibition “expression”, so instead, we will further interrogate the topic by explaining and conceptualizing it in the form of a text. In the introduction to his lecture Order of Discourse , 1970, Foucault clearly states his hypothesis, which we will try to understand and apply here: “… in every society, the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its power and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality ” (Foucault 2007, p. 8). We should emphasize the implementation of the process of “taming power and danger” within the already existing historical and ideological discourses of workers’ culture and workers’ organization of the past decade, as important for understanding the current suppression of these discourses. From a broader perspective, in creating a new “image of the city” based exclusively on the campaign strategy of “public relations”, the aim was to construct a new “collective identity”, which marginalizes or completely excludes the materialized ideology of workers’ culture from public space and life. What did the author of the aforementioned installation want to achieve, and what are the origins of their expression, which was subsequently materialized within a public space? Such a “general” image or display will be placed in direct relation to the creation and existence of real images or displays, such as photographs and films, as well as institutional and organized visualizations of Bor — which can lead to the identification of certain “commonplace” or locus communis (local “topoi”). In this case, this works to connect the obvious structural organization of urban areas marked by kilometers [9] (which represents the linear historical and communal development of the city) with the narrativization of the topic we will present. Knowledge on the topic of this paper, in that sense, is not limited exclusively to the effects of constructing positive or negative attitudes/images. It is also largely based on responsibility, and the experience and interpretation of the facts surrounding the disinterested and aimless wandering (for the sake of upholding a preventive way of maintaining the health of critical consciousness), in order to “discover the author or authors” of this kind of “optical hygiene”. The very topic of industrial heritage in the heritage industry was chosen to most effectively describe the current state of industrial heritage in Bor from the position of a “native ethnologist” [10] – perhaps more precisely: “professional native” – to explain one of its many possible perceptions. Such freedom of interpretation, of course, does not imply arbitrariness in approach, but obliges to the responsibility of understanding and interpreting real positions and facts, to produce a meaningful “self-critical” structure. It would be necessary, for example, with modern librarianship (due to the existence of an important institution, or the principle of desideratum in acquisition policy, i.e. planned and strategic replenishment of funds with missing materials or rare disciplinary approaches to certain topics). The topic is approached from a critical position precisely because the funds are systematically filled with historical material, while the prevailing expectations are directed exclusively towards the uncritical reproduction of historiographical and contemporary social facts by “innovative technologies”. From the professional obligations of the librarians of the Local History Department of the Public Library of Bor came the motivation to explore this topic; to understand, and to present a part of the industrial heritage preserved in the Library. This motivation not only emerged from the professional obligations of a local history librarian, but also from a collaboration with prof. Slobodan Naumović, (which takes place in several related and intertwined thematic areas through many years of his field work in Bor), on the analytical processing of photo documentation from the point of view of visual anthropology. This has inspired and encouraged multiple approaches, potentials and perspectives for new interpretations, focusing on the cultural-historical, labor and industrial heritage preserved in the mentioned institution. This “key resource” (Naumović, 2013, p. 75–111) with numerous implications in contemporary everyday life, reflected on contemporary creativity and discovering the approach to photography as a continuous practice of visual recording in Bor; pointing out the need to understand and reveal intentions, methodologies and messages that the authors convey with their visual projections. By introducing collaborative (shared) anthropology [11] into the process of interpreting photography – an integrated methodological approach to interpreting “inside” and “outside”, “mirrors” and “windows” – a necessary balance is established, and an essential connection between differing, subjective, and social views, evaluations and meanings is achieved. (See more in: Naumović, Radivojević, 2015). It is precisely the connections between “ life and work ”, “ collective and individual memory ”, “ different types of applied photography and industrial heritage ”, “ institutional and non-institutional visual recording ” that inspired the search for balance between industrial heritage and workers’ culture (Ibid., pp. 126-182). In the joint intention with prof. Naumović, during the elaboration of the topic Visualization of working culture and industrial heritage in Bor , the foundations of the view “from within” were to be established, in order to balance the relations between our current contemporary position of interpretation, and use of visual material. Thus, this text should articulate, set, and describe the reflective state, conditions, and perspectives of the interpretation of industrial heritage and workers’ culture in the “mirror” of modern local society and culture. On the other hand, the impetus came from the domains of librarianship and museology (museum studies), heritology (derived from a critique of museum studies and the need to create a science of heritage skills, and learning about memory skills) and thinking about strategies for selecting and representing cultural goods for the purpose of redefining identity elaborated by prof. Dragan Bulatović. (Bulatović, 2004, 2013, 2015a, 2015b.) The topological narrative of this paper, and the text that accompanies the division of Bor into kilometers, is incorporated into the well-known linear origin of the beginning and end, with minimal historicization to obscure, retain, and evoke “self-understanding” (not to mention environmental pollution) of authentic local expression and condition, that is interlaced into a kind of constitutive mythology. In that sense, it will be important to maintain a balance between the description of the condition and the process, accounting for the frequent slips and sudden braking caused by clumsy driving of a “heavy truck in reverse” – or by dancing “kolo” (circle dance) on the serpentine paths of Bor mines – so that we can “safely” park or dance with the topic. The blue cinemascope in the movie Op, mala, op! Centar za neformalnu komunikaciju – Nemušto, Bor, 2001. The First Kilometer The processes of the industrialization of Bor could be characterized as modernization during the administration of the French Society of the Bor Mines (the Concession St. George) from 1903 to 1941. It was then the intensive exploitation of ore began: metallurgical plants were built, and with a sudden influx of workers, a mining colony was subsequently formed. It is important to note that following only the interests of production, there was only the controlled development of the town and communal structures deemed necessary, in order to maintain the administrative status of the mining colony. “The French built what they had to in the settlement, but they resisted that Bor gains the status of a city, because then they would be obliged to build a lot more (primarily underground sewerage)…” (Jovanović, 1987–1990, p. 196). Until the liberation, and shortly after the Second World War, Bor was known exclusively as Bor mines. Although Bor gained the status of being a city in 1947, but the old name had already been in use for some time. However, it wasn’t until the next cycle of modernization (during the period of the First and Second phases of reconstruction [12] ), in a completely different socio-political system of self-managing socialism, that a new society was established – new metallurgical plants were built, new mines were opened and the city was urbanized. The recent process of industrialization and attempts at modernization can be characterized as a process of “retraditionalization”: the discovery of industrial heritage and local history from completely different political and ideological positions of liberal capitalism, in the period of transition and “reconstruction” during the second decade of the twenty-first century. Therefore, we focus on the trend toward deriving certain cultural characteristics of the dominant economic activities (mining and metallurgy) from certain natural determinations, i.e natural resources (forests, rivers, ores), in order to show historical depth, continuity, permanence or a certain “tradition” (see more in: Romelić, 2017). At the same time, we emphasize their constitutive potential related to modern understandings and uses of the terms “industrial heritage” and “workers’ culture”. Keeping this in mind, we will pay attention to the essential connections between this industrial heritage and workers’ culture, but also to the emphasis on the differences between them, or their tendentious division into two isolated categories. Their essential connection is in the fact that cultural heritage exists as a reality in the balanced interdependence of its tangible and intangible components, not in the selective interpretation of individual contributions. Therefore, we use this connection with a deliberate ideological implication — a “thread”: with industrial heritage as a material, and labor culture and organization as an intangible component of a unique cultural and historical heritage. It is a “thread” that is untied from either the “left” or “right” side. Considering the current situation of the predominance of material industrial heritage over workers’ culture, we can follow from which side, figuratively, the thread is untied – on workers’ boots or off the “fast” and comfortable sneakers of liberal industrial capitalism The thread is, of course, strongly tied on both sides, regardless of the footwear in question. However, according to the social position and responsibility towards cultural and historical heritage, preparation for work itself, (when it comes to work, we count on ambiguity associating the word “work” with the text you are reading) has shown that the most harmful thing for the local community is untying and taking off (visually unrepresentative) worn-out workers’ shoes. The real presence and potentials of industrial heritage and working culture in Bor therefore has a dark side; embodied in demagoguery, populist rhetoric, and the instrumentalization of cultural and historical heritage over the past decade. This resulted in the realization of the greatest fears of workers and citizens: the privatization of the company and granting concessions for the exploitation of natural resources. Privatization of important objects of cultural and historical heritage (e.g. an old building in which Head offices of the successive corporations were situated, or a memorial complex dedicated to the victims of the forced labour in Bor during WWII, which is in the vicinity of the new pit) happened at the same time. On this occasion, we aim to challenge, describe and analyze these different positions of the relationship between property and ownership of cultural goods within the “heritage industry”. The phrase “heritage industry” (Bulatović, 2015, p. 137) is transferred from the museological theory of prof. Dragan Bulatović, who mentions it in the “context of individualization of cultural property” for the development of, for example, cultural tourism, whose priority is to emphasize economic interest, and the main feature: serial production, based on models in the field of management within liberal economics and culture, aimed at construction of “desirable images” (Bulatović, 2013, p. 12) or a positive reputation. An adequate example of this selective conceptualization and instrumentalization of industrial heritage happened during the campaign of the company RTB Bor “For a better Bor”. In our case, to achieve this “desirable image” of the company and the city, we resorted to already defined and cultivated cultural goods and museum artifacts from the Technical Collection of the Museum of Mining and Metallurgy in Bor, as well as deliberately neglecting to show real and constructive contributions of workers’ culture and workers’ organization. However, at that very moment, when the company’s new public relations strategy indicated the need to produce a “positive reputation” of the company and the city, it reached for the “desired” component of the instant market economy — the already organized, systematically raised, and collected cultural and historical heritage in the Park Museum [13] . Why exactly that? Perhaps because in showing some “genealogy” or continuity of industrial activity, its “historical depth” revealed the enablement of a modernist, linear view of the “progress” of industry (as well as of the industry itself), emphasizing its constitutive contributions, (though while doing so, deliberately neglecting the contribution of workers’ culture and organization)? Because of the forced and unauthorized appropriation of industrial heritage, the imposition of only one option in the “managerial strategy” of the city’s representation (the marginalization and ignoring of the professional activities of local heritage institutions)? Museums, libraries and archives carry out their activities based on the belief that cultural goods, under the protection of heritage institutions (the “owners” who use and manage them), are inalienable. That is, according to Article 14 of the valid Law on Cultural Property, they can be “alienated” under the conditions previously determined by the Law, but the “right of ownership” cannot be acquired over them (Law, 1994, Article 14). In the case we will consider, there was an unauthorized alienation of cultural goods that had had a great impact on the development of society, culture, technology and science, which consequently were under the protection of the Museum (Ibid. Article 5). The alienated objects were rearranged and dislocated from the Park Museum to the main street in Bor with the intention of “telling the story of the development of Bor”. Given the obligation of a comprehensive approach to the topic of industrial heritage, choice of methodology, and manner of presentation, it would be necessary to pay attention to this process of unauthorized “industrialization” – this instrumentalization of heritage outside of heritage institutions, to consider the ways in which the heritage has been incorporated into market relations, and how a “positive reputation” of the city/company and their “branding” have been created. In that sense, the “heritage industry” was used to describe in detail the current state of manipulation of cultural and historical heritage, in order to construct an alternative public discourse on the more important characteristics of the city, and the possible influences on creating a new, more positive “city reputation” in 2009-2019. The use of tradition and retraditionalization are processes characteristic of societies in transition. “Having found suitable ground for a society with disrupted, but not completely stopped currents of modernization, for such a society that perceived its situation as a crisis in key areas of activity, such as economy, international relations, ideology or culture, the practice of using tradition as a means of adapting to consequences, and overcoming the causes of the crisis, has spread from the domain of politics to almost all areas of social life in Serbia” (Naumović, 2009, p. 10). On the other hand, in such a situation of presenting the public use of “alienated heritage”, we must resort to a certain cynicism in interpreting the problem. Primarily because in such a situation we must not allow cultural goods, although alienated, to be considered “property” (with exclusive rights to personal vision and their interpretation), whatever newly composed construction they should present in these emerging contexts. prof. Dragan Bulatović problematizes the processes of “branding museum heritage”, showing completely opposing positions of cultural goods within institutions (in charge of their upbringing and preservation) relating to market relations and market logic, which are increasingly applied in those institutions. Representative exhibition activities of cultural institutions are spectacularized thanks to marketing that offers “unique opportunities” for viewing — viewing and access to funds – but: “offered is not available (museum vaults are inalienable, unique, unrepeatable, and sometimes, unfortunately, untouchable)” (Bulatović, 2004. p. 146). “The usual metaphoricality of the slogan should grow into a condensation by which the subject expresses the repressed meaning of his desire (Lacan), and the chosen symbols would have to be replaced by a metonymic movement denoting what desire is – the desire for something else that is always missing.” (Ibid., P. 146). We therefore live the consequences of fulfilled desires (not the needs of social institutions) which we have expressed in recent history. Fulfilled by an unfounded, materialized, symbolic arrangement of cultural goods in public space (which should have a real “historical depth” and wider social significance) in fact, represents an unlit tunnel through a hill of accumulated problems, dug with a concrete intention and hope that in the end, we will be liked by the foreign investors who will allow us to be “reborn” from our womb. What kind of tradition and industrial heritage do we have if our heritage is a constant confiscation and appropriation of cultural and historical values, make-up, and temporariness, while we hold onto the hope that the rich inheritance will eventually be excavated for us? What happens in the end, when cultural goods are used as the “secondary raw material” of daily politics? We must remember that a period of just over a century is still young. Incredibly alive. Usable and dynamic. So paradoxical and brilliant, that it was possible for the miner, Paun Meždinović, who had discovered the ore in 1903 as a working boy, and retired in the 1950s to work as a security guard at the Museum in Bor [14] . Why are we “ashamed” of workers, workers’ culture and workers’ organization today? What led us to have the industrial heritage of machines and technical means collected for the needs of the Park Museum, only to be appropriated and instrumentalized for the purpose of selling what we thought we would inherit — what built us? Such dynamics of uncertainty, impotence of profession, negligence and misunderstanding of the founders of public institutions towards the public good, and active privatization of social property, can be important reasons why Bor is omitted from the review, analysis and strategy of presenting historically relevant potentials of specific (tangible and intangible) cultural heritage encompassed by this recently identified industrial heritage. We can continue to look for these reasons. But first, we must oppose the diminution of the authority local heritage institutions hold over public cultural and historical heritage spaces, as well abolish the ingrained prejudice that dictates places of heavy industry “have no history or tradition” – that they are young, artificially and forcibly created only for the temporary satisfaction of our basic needs (proverbial “to seek one’s fortune”). Living and working in the same place – a segment of culture related to the production, exploitation and the routine of everyday life, burdened by the noise of machines, and the smell of polluted air and land – contradicts the intended outcome of “market logic”. Of rational calculations of civilizational achievements, and an agreeable representational image. By that logic, this image should not seem threatening to foreign investors or tourists. The picture of everyday life in Bor consists mainly of fatigue, mechanically organized routine, hard labor, sickness, and vague and divided emotions, all laid out upon landscapes with serpentines on tailings, reminding us that we are only here temporarily, to earn and survive. This contrasts heavily with the “positive” and “beautiful” characteristics that would benefit the desired image of progress. Local authenticity is lost when the social needs met by public institutions become somebody else’s instrumentalized desires. The intentions of these desires are to be what we are not – or, if we adopt them, to portray us, just as we are. The processes of adopting desires can be silent and gradual, until eventually agreed upon; while the presentation or manifestation of intentions that fit into a certain social praxis, can be considered a “play”. The play itself can absorb and include us to be a part of it – but it also maintains a certain distance, so that the understanding of our spatial position relating to that play is framed by ourunderstanding of the relationship between positions of representation and real conditions; between adopted joint representation and the fulfillment of functions of compensating (or compensation) for certain expectations, shortcomings and needs. The director of such a play may or may not plan the audience’s participation, but he certainly counts on its passive observation. Therefore, a critical consideration of social needs is a corrective in the realization of the activities of public institutions, which, in part, regulate the realization of the expressed desires of individuals. Meanwhile, important facts are being hidden and forgotten. Something was left somewhere to be here. Something important was taken to be as it is now. We suppress and forget something important. Something constantly reminds us that things should really be better than they are – not just look better or prettier. Why must an “aesthetic” criteria be allowed to impose the polarization of citizens: if we are not “for a more beautiful Bor”, we are automatically destined for that “less beautiful Bor”? Additionally, a primary organic attachment – closeness to the landscape and homeland – has been silenced and suppressed. It is “self-evident” and quite obviously present, based on the very choice to be here, even if we have just left from an outdated train at railway platform. We are here, after all. Everyone around us came from somewhere. We are all “foreigners” — natives of “non-places” [15] . “This need to find meaning in the present, and perhaps in the past, is the price we pay for the abundance of events in what we might call the ‘super modern’, to express its essential quality: excess” (Ože M. 2005, pp. 31–32). Augé determines the state of supermodernity through “the figures of excess”. One of them concerns time — exaggeration in the sense of the abundance of time (Ibid., P. 32). Paradoxically, we find this “excess of time” in the already mentioned visualized assembly procedure: in the installation of redistributed industrial machines and public monuments along the main street, which vacuums the history of Bor and explodes in our contemporaneity and everyday life. More precisely, the abundance of “unauthorized alienated”, rearranged objects of the Park-Museum show us the desired state whose intentions we “do not read”. The second, important exaggeration that Augé points out, is spatial. Related to the accelerated crossing of distances and the transmission of images, only one image “possesses a power far in excess of any objective information it carries” (Ibid., P. 32). Meanwhile, Augé warns us of the “false familiarity” that images on screens, or in public spaces, can create. (Which, frankly and outside of the topic of this essay, everyone is currently relying on, to some degree). “The spatial overabundance” is expressed in the abundance of “images and imaginary references, and in the spectacular acceleration of transport (Ibid., P. 36). Such an abundance of images and traffic, we assume, may be a consequence of certain aspects of industrialization (such as the concentration of population in cities and increased population movement), with which Augé introduces us to the “non-places”: “The installations needed for the accelerated circulation of passengers and goods (high-speed roads and railways, interchanges, airports) are just as much non-places as the means of transport themselves, or the great commercial centers, or the extended transit camps where the planet’s refugees are parked.” (Ibid., P. 36). The aforementioned “liberating” phrase — natives of “non-place” — should allow the author and the reader to understand what is read, lived, interpreted, present, here and now in the text, or in the subject itself. It partly “liberates” the author as a “typewriter”, confirms and justifies his position, but paradoxically, also enables the recognition of the production of “commonplaces” (in the text or subject of study) striving to show the authenticity of a given culture and community. In that context, we do not forget that sociologist, Cvetko Kostić, pointed out in 1962 the existence of functional urban zones — “residential aggregates” within several categories of social aggregates – as “a characteristic of a modern city and city life” in relation to Bor. Besides residential aggregates, social aggregates also include crowds, masses, and audiences (Kostić, C. 1962, pp. 97–100), which points to similar characteristics with Augé’s “non-places”. Perhaps this kind of liberating cynicism of being a natives of “non-place”, based on the continuity of “residential aggregates” of workers / citizens, could offer us an adequate critical apparatus to be present in the text or subject, as we would be in our room or workplace. Based on institutional legal regulations and the “reflexive” approach to cultural heritage demonstrated in the texts of prof. Dragan Bulatović [16] (the mentioned balanced, discursive and comprehensive approach to industrial heritage); and the work of prof. Slobodan Naumović, inspired by anthropological and museological theories; as well as library theory and practice, we will use the local spectacularization of the “industrial heritage” in the era of “tourism and the renaissance”, as a contrast when scanning the current situation before setting out to “unwind the film” away from our contemporaneity. Industrial heritage as a “key resource” is still not recognized as a special segment of cultural heritage within the current Law on Cultural Heritage (Law, 1994), but it is a constitutive element and has been the basis of all heritage institutions in Bor since their founding. “One of the current definitions is offered in the so-called Nizhny Tagil Charter for the Industrial Heritage. The charter was adopted in Moscow in 2003 by the Assembly of Representatives of the International Committee for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH). According to that charter, industrial heritage can be considered objects and structures built for industrial activities, processes, and means used within them, as well as the cities and landscapes where they are located, together with their tangible and intangible phenomena, of fundamental importance” (Naumović, 2013, p. 76). As an example, technical heritage and objects of technical culture, that are kept in museums and universities, are most closely related to objects and the concept of industrial heritage. Due to the advancement of technology and techniques, more and more instruments, equipment and tools are being overtaken by newer, more efficient, higher quality, faster and more precise means; thus there is a need to preserve old technical objects that are no longer in use. The real fear of the transience and obsolescence of technical objects is equally valid for industrial heritage. Consider: cities and the geographical formations of landscapes and panoramas (as a broader term of industrial heritage which can move beyond a laboratory or factory and into ambient units) and the depths of their impact on people’s lives and their existence. Unlike the idea behind technical heritage, the industrial heritage, in addition to “transience”, implies additional fears related to the alienation of workers from the means of labor, the sale of resources, and the privatization of social property. Reflexive attitudes towards labor, means, and products and production, is the most important because it allows for the recognition of their social values. Such a reflective relationship can also be the basis for understanding workers’ culture and organization as an intangible form of industrial heritage. “Industrial heritage as a concept, and as a field of professional activity, arose when a number of emotionally interested people became faced with the rapid destruction of everything that would later be united by that concept; which was then understood as a set of ugly, naturally scattered waste, or as a remnant of old times that hinders the development of new forms of business, a new industrial cycle” (Naumović, 2013, p. 77). “Heritage exists only when it acquires the status of property in the consciousness of an individual. […] only good knowledge of one’s own property…an awareness of the values we ascribe to the material world, can help plan production activities. Then, a wealth of memory becomes crucial in strategic investment. The latter implies that any individualization of cultural property transpires in order to achieve progress within the life of the community, which [subsequently] forms economic patterns [from] the good sense of memory and inheritance of each other’s own cultural property” (Bulatović, 2015a, p.137). However, Bulatović further points out and warns that “culture is a matter of continuous construction and should not be inherited, as opposed to material remnants of the past that are necessarily part of the hereditary suitcase” (Ibid.), that by inheritance law is possible to have a titular “without culture”, without “sense of heritage”. We will remind you again of the valid Law on Cultural Property, according to which cultural goods are those whose laws and regulations prescribe the value which should be preserved for the public good, and that they are owned by the state, and the institutions who own cultural goods manage, preserve, and make them available under certain conditions. In our case, there is such a titular, or so-called local sheriff, who gives himself the right to participate in the management of cultural goods; placing himself above institutions, above the law, and above a powerless, decent culture “with a bun”, who ultimately has no strength to oppose the newly composed raw, political power. Of course, we can assume the outcomes of the interests of such a titular. Unfortunately, and due to institutional inertia, everything occurs with the newly composed verses “ne može nam niko ništa, jači smo od sudbine” [17] and representation policy of a dominant group of manipulators, so that only the darkest premonitions come true (and always in their favor), leaving us to think about what we have left and what is melted down, lost and sold out. “If it is clear that the civic museum offers a way of understanding time and its stock market value — the surplus value of the time of a capitalist economy – and it is clear that it is vulnerable to the inside, only if the reality whose image it generates changes radically. Any intention to situate the idea of intertwining the conception of reality within his own conception, comes as a side of the order of values which he follows” (Bulatović, 2015, p. 58). We must note that Professor Bulatovic considers “heritage industry” from the standpoint of cultural tourism in the context of the individual and family initiatives who see only the economic side of the economy. “Usually, small initiatives are taken as models of solutions in economically hopeless areas, and in that sense, they act as necessary – often the only – bridges in the current situation” (Bulatović, 2015, p. 157). It could be said that economically “hopeless situations” can befall industrial giants, and so a similar strategy of “bridging” (in fear of deindustrialization) was applied in Bor – only that the real fear of privatization was overcome, in part, thanks to a touristic “heritage industry”. Simultaneously, we could notice that cultural goods, in accordance with the transitional practices of the gray market, are “creatively” viewed as a “secondary raw material” suitable for recycling. This conceptual approach can be recognized, not only in every attempt at non-institutional instrumentalization, historical revision, revitalization, or reconfiguration of heritage, but also the occasional falter of heritage institutions on the waves of their modernization, renewal, and uncritical adoption of innovative technologies imposed by cultural industry agendas. Industrial heritage and the heritage industry, with their arsenal of control machines, are aimed at neglecting the workers’ culture, passivation of workers, and the workers’ organization, in order to achieve their final goal without resistance —privatization. Hence, the urgent need for a polemical view of the current situation, with the use of “contrast when scanning” our current situation, and these issues. — to be continued Photographer: Markovic N. Mihailo 1920 Bor Photo documentation French Society of the Bor Mines. Collection of Ljuba Markov. 18 x 24 cm COBISS.SR-ID512424632. Dostupno na:linku: https://plus.sr.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/nbb/512424632#full WORKS CITED Булатовић, Драган. 2004. „Баштина као бранд или музеј као економија жеље.” Годишњак за друштвену историју (2–3): 137–148. Bulatović, Dragan. 2013. „Kriza muzejske proizvodnje identiteta.” U Muzeologija, nova muzeologija i nauka o baštini, ur. Angelina Milosavljević, 11–25. Beograd: Centar za muzeologiju i heritologiju Filozofskog fakulteta Univerziteta u Beogradu; Kruševac: Narodni muzej. Available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dFlEOtEMVW1LyzgJAOd3YosM4aKD-wiA/view . Bulatović, Dragan. 2015a. Od trezora do tezaurusa: teorija i metodologija izgradnje tezaurusa baštinjenja [e-book]. Beograd: Filozofski fakultet, Centar za muzeologiju i heritologiju. Acessed 10. 2. 2020. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_S5L87l0-eMV9MUmYyRDVxUFYxWUdLZlNtVldtaUp2Rk9n/view . Bulatović, Dragan. 2015b. „Studije baštine kao temelj očuvanja humanističkog obrazovanja.” Andragoške studije(1): 41–64. Fuko, Mišel. 2007. Poredak diskursa. Loznica: Karpos. [Foucault, Michel. 1981. “The order of discourse,” translated by Ian McLeod. In Untying the Text : a Poststructuralist Reader, ed. by R. Young, 48-78. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.] Kostić, Cvetko. 1962. Bor i okolina: sociološka ispitivanja. Beograd: Savremena škola. Миленковић, Милош. 2003. Проблем етнографски стварног : полемика о Самои у кризи етнографског реализма. Београд: Српски генеалошки центар. Naumović, Slobodan. 2009. Upotreba tradicije u političkom i javnom životu Srbije na kraju dvadesetog i početkom dvadeset prvog veka. Beograd: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju: „Filip Višnjić”. Наумовић, Слободан. 2013. „Ресурс од кључног значаја: индустријско наслеђе Бора виђено из перспективе индустријске археологије, етнологије рударства, политичке антропологије и визуелне антропологије.” Добро је за мишљење али је компликовано за јело, ур. Драган Стојменовић, 75–111. Бор: Народна библиотека Бор. Наумовић, Слободан и Радивојевић, Владимир. 2015. Борски алманах – улична фотографија као заједничка антропологија. Бор: Народна библиотека Бор. Ože, Mark. 2005. Nemesta : uvod u antropologiju nadmodernosti. Beograd : Biblioteka XX vek : Krug. [Augé, Marc. 1995. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, translated by John Howe. London, New York: Verso.] Romelić, Živka. 2017. O rudarskoj kulturi u Boru: tradicija kao podstrek = The Mining Culture in Bor : tradition as a stimulus. Bor: Narodna biblioteka Bor. Available at: http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/index.php?query=ispisTextaIzKolekcije&idTexta=413#ad-image-0 . Sorenson, Ričard E i Džablonko, Alison. 2014. „Istraživačko snimanje događanja koja se prirodno odvijaju: osnovne strategije.” U Načela vizuelne antropologije, priredio Pol Hokings, 71–80. Beograd: Clio. [Sorenson, E. Richard and Allison Jablonko. 1995. “Research filming of naturally occurring phenomena: basic strategies“. In Principles of visual anthropology, edited by Paul Hockings. Berlin ; Mouton de Gruyter. Click to read Serbian version Dragan Stojmenović is local history librarian in Public Library Bor. [1] http://old.wcscd.com/index.php/2020/01/07/as-you-go-the-roads-under-your-feet-towards-a-new-future/ [2] https://www.gradnja.rs/bijenale-2020-osmi-kilometar-anketni-konkurs-iva-bekic/ [3] One of the leaders at the beginning of the film “Man Is Not a Bird”, by Dušan Makavejev, dictates to journalists the report from the concert of the 4th movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which the choir and symphony orchestra performed in the company’s metallurgical plants on the occasion of the smelter. [4] The author of the refrain and the title of the Bor “folk” song is Srba Stančić, first recited within a circle of friends in 2000. It was first filmed and performed publicly in the amateur film Op, mala op! by the Center for Informal Communication Nemušto (2001). The song was then developed, sung and arranged by the local band Duo trojica (2006) for the film Mining Opera (2006) by Oleg Novković and Milena Marković. The authors of the composition and the text under that title are Miroslav Mitrašinović and Saša D. Lović. [5] This is due to the fact that the institutions for the preservation of cultural and historical Heritage in Bor– the Department of Historical Archives of Negotin; the Museum of Mining and Metallurgy; and the Public Library Bor–have their funds mainly based on local economic, geographical, and culturally historical specificities related to workers’ culture, workers’ movements and the industrial heritage since their establishment. As for the Public Library Bor, within its fund organization and systematization is its Local History Department, which collects, processes, preserves and makes available library material created in Bor, and whose authors were working or living in Bor; or which is thematically related to Bor and its surroundings, regardless of the place of origin,. The Library and the Archive collect, process, preserve and make use of this movable cultural heritage, while the Museum, in addition to the movable heritage, also takes care of the immovable cultural heritage. See more about the funds: http://www.arhivnegotin.org.rs/news/item/34 ; http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs ; http://www.muzejrudarstvaimetalurgije.org [6] A systematized and illustrated overview of the working-mining culture in Bor and its current state is available in the publication of Živka Romelić The Mining Culture in Bor: tradition as a stimulus, Bor 2017. http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/index.php?query=ispisTextaIzKolekcije&idTexta=413#ad-image-0 [7] Later in the text, the old and new locations of individual monuments and exhibits will be described in more detail, but for this note we will single out the relocations of Miner with a Drill, and the monument to trade unionist, Petar Radovanović, as the main symbols which have been moved from their original locations to the beginning or end of the new outdoor setting along the main streets in Bor. This will be discussed in more detail in the text. Both sculptures are currently on the newly built roundabouts: Miner with a Drill was placed on the Fourth Kilometer, while the monument to Petar Radovnović was placed on the conditionally said First Kilometer. Photos from the ceremonial rally on the occasion of the unveiling of the monument to Petar Radovanović on August 6, 1981 can be seen on the following link: http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/index.php?query=ispisTextaIzKolekcije&idTexta=431#ad-image-0 A photograph of the monument Miner with a drill or Bor miner, photographed at the original location in 1960 can be seen at the following link that is part of the catalog description: https://plus.sr.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/512720056#full [8] The initiator of the campaign for social responsibility “For a better Bor” is RTB-Bor. See example on the link: https://kolektiv.co.rs/novi-rudarski-eksponat-u-park-muzeju/ [9] The division of the city into kilometers from the old surface mine (grope, hole, gaura or the commonly understood, zero kilometer) was probably conditioned by the first urban solutions that foresaw the further development of the city from the north to the south. The expansion of the colony began with the construction of the “New” or Southern Colony in 1928. At the end of the mid-20th century, Bor further developed urbanistically, generating the Second and Third kilometers, and by 1965, the Program of urban-technical conditions, for a detailed solution of the settlement on the III and IV kilometers in the city of Bor, formalized the framework zoning of the city. This division of the city is widely accepted in the informal communication of Bor’s natives, which, with the formation of the city cemetery at the 7th kilometer, produced a linear understanding of the development and life of the city and its citizens. There were several signs of this informal zoning, one of which is on the fountain at the Second kilometer, which was marked after its construction in 2002. This linear concept was used in the amateur film Op, mala op, Surface Mine!, 2001; 0 KM, 2012: an exhibition of photographs by Hervé Dez, Marija Janković and Vladimir Radivojević; and most recently, Eighth kilometer: Survey competition, 2020/21, that will represent Serbia at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2021, led by Iva Bekić. See more about the exhibition Zero kilometer: http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/index.php?query=ispisTextaIzKolekcije&idTexta=260#ad-image-15 http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/index.php?query=kolekcijaTekstova&idKolekcije=30 More about the Eighth kilometer project: https://www.gradnja.rs/bijenale-2020-osmi-kilometar-anketni-konkurs-iva-bekic/ [10] A native ethnologist (ethnographer or anthropologist) is brought up in the culture or environment that they study and to which they belong. (See more in: Milenković, M. 2003, pp. 255 – 259) [11] Also referred to as reflexive anthropology from Jean Rouch. The concept of collaborative (shared) anthropology in this context arose from a kind of “digressive search”, which is not programmed (with previously established goals) or opportunistic (unexpected or coinciding with events without adequate understanding), but complementary, to fill segments that contribute to modern understanding of photographing and presenting a certain environment. (On digressive search, see more in: Sorenson and Jablonko 2014, 71–80). It was used to emphasize the importance of researchers’ cooperation with the community they study and community members’ participation in the realization and presentation of research results. [12] The First and Second phases of the construction and reconstruction of the mine were preceded by two five-year plans from 1947-57, when the program of the first phase was adopted and launched, within which new equipment for pit and surface ore exploitation was procured. The transport of mineral raw materials was modernized. A new ore warehouse was built to meet the capacity of the mine to expand to the one in Majdanpek (which started operating in 1961): equipped with five fry furnaces, a new flame furnace and three large converters. A dam was also built to create a new artificial accumulation of industrial water – Lake Bor. A new sulfuric acid factory was also built, simultaneously with the super phosphate factory in Prahovo. The first phase was completed in 1961. The second phase began in 1966, immediately after the economic reform of 1965, which expanded the production capacities of sulfuric acid and precious metals in Bor and Majdanpek. The Bor-Majdanpek railway was built, alongside a new ore transport system, a new electrolysis, a foundry of precious metals, a new smelter, and two more sulfuric acid factories. The second phase of construction and reconstruction lasted until 1971. (See more: Erić, 1975, 113–130) [13] Opening of the Park Museum in 1997 in Bor (settings of the Technical Collection of the Museum of Mining and Metallurgy in Bor) Author of photos: Ljubomir Markov. See more on the following link: http://www.digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/index.php?query=ispisTextaIzKolekcije&idTexta=428#ad-image-0 [14] On the occasion of marking the fiftieth anniversary of the mine, a celebration was organized at which the first miners were solemnly sent to a well-deserved retirement. Plaques and letters of thanks were awarded to deserving miners, including Paun Meždinović. See more on the following link: https://plus.sr.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/512722872 [15] The phrase was created by merging the concept of the notion of the non-place of Marc Augé and the feelings of the author of the text, brought up towards important characters from the films of Wim Wenders. The inspiration for this “liberating” phrase can be found in Marc Augé’s anthropological essay The Near and the Elsewhere. [16] “Preservation has two faces: material (treasury) and reflexive (thesaurus). The distinction is actually drawn by the so-called boundaries of memory – representative (monuments) carriers of documentaries (sources of truth) – and they are embodied in national, state apparatus-protected, cultural vaults. The reflective face has the role of a window into the vault. Through which, every bearer of new life stares into or, to concretize, every material and spiritual activity that arises because of forgetfulness, works in favor of the adoption of a common linguistic and, consequently, lexical fund – thesaurus forgets to permanently preserve the cultural values of the past. ” (Bulatović, 2015, p. 48) [17] Part of the refrain of a newly composed song performed by folk singer Mitar Mirić. Translation: “no one can do anything to us, we are stronger than fate.” Previous Next

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Robert Bobnic and Kaja Kraner < Back cosmotechnics, modernity, RTB Bor, (data) mining, computer history, self-managing socialism Robert Bobnic and Kaja Kraner Previous Next

Madina Gasimi < Back Untitled Madina Gasimi When I finish my essay, I will become obsolete for the world. This is a joke that becomes the truth and concerns literally everyone. I am not able objectively to discuss self-isolation and the global consequences of a pandemic. I am not a politician, I’m a curator and most of the time I work at home. It’s kind of an isolation, but it’s a freewill. In this essay I try my best to describe my thoughts on the situation after the pandemic of COVID-19. There is an epidemic storm in Europe and the USA, and it is growing in Russia. Many people, among them my friends, believe that COVID-19 is harmless and there are different conspiracy theories that say it is built to destroy the economic system of the whole world. But the majority is still afraid to get sick and die. Then I have a question. What is the main problem revealed with the start of the pandemic? Is it a fear of death? But it’s not a problem, it is a primal feeling we always have, and it escalates in individual cases. I think that the main problem concerns the changes in relationships between people, and these changes are affected by fear. Fear to die, fear to get sick, fear to lose a job, fear to become vain. Different kinds of fear between people have become a driving force. The virus has changed our relationships and is changing the planet. In the face of a disease whose origin still causes controversy, globalization has proven powerless. Coronavirus gives a chance to individual nation-states and is a catalyst for the birth of dictatorship. For example, the state of emergency introduced in one of the European countries provided the current Prime Minister with almost unlimited power, which could lead to restrictions on freedoms and human rights. Let’s see what has already happened with freedom and human rights. I could never imagine such a thing, but the people of Europe instantly and voluntarily gave up their rights and freedoms in the face of an unknown disease and obvious danger. Museums, theatres, restaurants, cinemas, parks are closed, people are self-isolated and are waiting for the vaccine. In Moscow people only can go outside on passes and no further than 100 meters from the house, and they pay fines if they break their self-isolation. There is a new reality in which there is a coronavirus. People of the whole entire world are not used to living in a new reality. This is the reality where familiar and favourite places (bars, restaurants, cinemas, museums) have turned into places that can cause COVID 19 and therefore kill people. The urban environment is collapsing, and our usual way of life has crushed. It’s amazing how people reacted to this. What is happening now looks like a dystopia. It seems like people have thrown away several centuries of cultural development, locked themselves in their houses, have given all their rights, and are waiting good times. This is a manifestation of animal fear of an unknown infection, the symptoms and parameters of which change in the media every day. I am happy being alive and healthy. I appreciate free time that has appeared, I spend it with my family and, surprisingly, to work more. I am happy to see all the people who support the doctors, who are the true heroes of our time. If people still can help each other, then nothing is lost. But I think we should not forget the one thing. If we want to remain human beings and save mankind, one day we will have to open the borders, go to theaters again, shake hands and make friends. The one who first removes the mask after the quarantine is finished, and open the doors to other people, will be a hero. We just have to survive! It’s hard for me to imagine what activities will be void or unnecessary. We observe that digital support has appeared in every realm. It turns out that you don’t need to go to the office 5 days per week in order to work well, you have an ability to work directly from home, and it turns out that if you are a responsible one your efficiency is bigger. Utility and optimization are becoming the main characteristics of the work, regardless who you are – a programmer or a methodologist in a museum. We are fully transitioning to online life. Digital is possible everywhere, but should it be everywhere? Where, for example, will the Tretyakov Gallery collection go after it is digitized? Will offline museum occupations become online, and will other museum offline ones be excluded? That is the question. Perhaps after the pandemic people who create content will be included in the system, competing for the attention because the attention will finally turn into a new currency in the world. People will sit at home and watch Netflix, and screenwriters will tirelessly come up with new stories. People will be able to visit the museums not leaving their homes. There are online exhibitions curated online by online curators. And you absolutely do not need to make physical contact with anyone. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Honestly I am not worried what should I do as a curator when it’s over. A curator is a person who creates ideas and meanings, a curator can form an agenda for today. I’m sure the curator can do anything and work in existing circumstances. I am concerned more about the issue of how homeless people, people with disabilities stay alive against the virus, how the environment will develop for such people, what will happen with palliative care? So many questions, and so few answers. We live in interesting times, and only those people who are able to change and adapt will survive. We are now united in the struggle for life, but we have forgotten that dying and disappearing is normal. I would like to recall the concept of Timothy Morton: the world changes regardless of how a person wants to see it. We should not fear such uncertainty, but it should be perceived as something positive. No one knows what is going to happen next, but arts and culture always rise up after every major epidemic. Madina Gasimi is a curator and cultural project manager based in Moscow, Russia. Previous Next