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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 >

Alumni Alumni 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 < Participants Educational Program Programs >

Idil Bozkurt < Back The Landscape of Unknown Idil Bozkurt I closed my eyes and saw the vision field. I listened to my breath. again and again, nothing but this very moment. I was here. Now, I open my eyes and see my vision field. Light and Shadow, almost seeing the particles in the air. here I go again. İdil Bozkurt, The Landscape of an Unknown, 2020 “Disturbance realigns possibilities for transformative encounters.” Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World I woke up this morning and remembered the dream I had, which, unlike others that slip away moments after waking, came back to me suddenly: I was walking around the city. There was no one outside but me. I ambled through the streets secretly enjoying the quietness. Empty streets, bare gardens and barren shops. While I was wandering in the streets of this ghost town, I suddenly spotted a huge billboard on the side of the building. There, I realized that the words on the sign gave a proclamation of good news:‘From the 20th of April, we will be elevating the recent restrictions about your social life. You will be able to go out and socialise as normal. We are working very hard on it. Everything will get back to normal.’ When I awoke, I had a strong sense of the emotion that was left with me after having read the sign within my dream. The initial feeling I had was disappointment, which was followed by a state of panic and anxiety. ‘Is that it? We haven’t changed anything yet!’, I thought to myself. And, here I am writing this piece with all those feelings in my mind vividly, distinctively. Is there something wrong with me that deep down I secretly wish this crisis to continue until it reaches its meaningful end? Meaningful end? What does ‘meaningful end’ even mean? What do I expect this crisis to turn into? I wonder if I’m thinking like Winston Churchill who believes the rule- ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’? True or not, this expression is now commonly applied to economic or diplomatic crises that can be exploited to advance political agendas. To support this argument, frighteningly, there seems to be many recent examples of it- an opportunity for authoritarian power grabs in Hungary, Israel, China, the Philippines and the US, with more to follow undoubtedly. This advice, of course, can be read as each crisis brings its own opportunity for a creative response. The matter of letting crises be wasted or not fills me with a sense of urgency. This urgency is followed by the fog of the unknown lingering in the air and it is hard to see what’s on the horizon, or even what’s in front of us. Although, staying put is hard especially while viewing digital totalitarian regimes rapidly take place, while healthcare professionals work in precarious conditions and society at large coping with social distancing during the COVID-19 outbreak. Millions of people have lost their jobs during this turbulence. In addition to this, I am also worried about the state of arts and culture, and especially art professionals who work independently with freelance or zero-hours contracts. For instance, in the city of Brighton, where I live, 40% of its revenue comes from festivals and cultural events across the year. The month of May is one of the best times to be in Brighton. There are four different festivals that are run throughout May. Of course, with the recent events, many of them are cancelled or postponed. Some festivals fund themselves through their ticket sales, and the cancellation of these festivals are not only affecting their ability for future participation, but also hitting the staff who intended to work with them. I count myself as one of those affected. I had two exhibitions cancelled along with many months of freelance jobs. I have not only realised the precariousness of my working conditions but I have found that I have started to reconsider the value of these works—what is the value of an exhibition? What does it mean to ‘go-online’ and continue producing content on digital platforms? What does it feel like to be in a virtual gallery? How does it affect our relationship with space, art and spectatorship? What is the role of the curator, here and now? How should we value public spaces now that we can no longer access them? How is this uncertain time going to affect artists? Galleries and museums may well be the last places to be reopened to the public—then, will things go back to normal ? It’s important to see the reaction of many galleries and museums during the COVID-19 crisis. As many of us whose independent projects and works were cancelled, we joined with the rest of our friends and families at home, who are not only locked down in their households, but also locked to their screens. Right after the lockdowns a number of museums, art organisations and galleries responded to this moment of crisis by ‘going-online’ where they have continued to produce and disseminate their content through platforms such as Zoom, Instagram, Jitsi and many others with which they can broadcast talks, live chats, workshops, virtual gallery tours and even virtual studio visits. They are still striving to keep us connected. We are quite grateful for this wide range of content being put in front of us while others are struggling to stay connected 24/7 and have started to suffer from digital ‘burn out’. Relevantly, for the last couple of years, there has been a rising debate on ‘ burn out culture ’, especially amongst freelance gig workers. I regularly hear from many colleagues and friends who are in a constant battle with this experience and struggle with burnout. As the majority of people all experience this endless exhaustion where work becomes an identity, capitalism becomes a religion and productivity manifests the way we measure human value. Here we are again, while everything has paused, we are still experiencing the digital side of burnout. I wonder what would happen if the whole art world stopped and went silent for a bit. If there were no arts content, what would it look like? If this is not a great time to slow down and reflect on the values of spaces that are dedicated to exhibiting art and the importance of our relationship with it, then when is it going to be? The Landscape of an Unknown, 2020 Let me explain myself here. My intention is neither to throw a stone at the art institutions, museums or galleries nor do I desire to see the arts and creative sector crumbling down. They are not the essence of the problem but they are the part of the globalised production systems. For instance, contemporary biennials are a way of signalling a city’s headway to enter the globalizing world of trade and culture through the use of art to encourage tourism, cultural ‘growth’ and international media. Hito Steyerl puts this very clearly in her essay Duty Free Art where she says, “…contemporary art is made possible by neoliberal capital plus the internet, biennials, art fairs, parallel pop-up histories, growing income inequality. Let’s add asymmetric warfare -… real estate speculation, tax evasion, money laundering and deregulated financial markets to this list.” I’m not talking about the creation of arts but rather the roles of museums and art institutions in the context of the globalised system of production. The consequences of the globalised production systems in contemporary arts can be seen today in the growth of a certain form of art that is now supposed to be seen everywhere at biennials, also in a marked decrease in the ‘specificity’ of regional cultural output. We are facing the increasingly blurred and confused role of art in contemporary culture. In the last few years, the ideas of transformative change, placemaking, the role of artists and audience, funding and diversity have been the subjects that are widely discussed in art institutions, in public art spaces and galleries. It seems to me that we all go around these subject matters, making mind maps, discussing and sharing stories but not feeling brave enough to delve into the essential questions about what the problem is with the state of art institutions in the contemporary art scene. How can we think of art institutions in an age of globalised production, growing inequality, climate emergency and digital technology? It’s important to rethink and reimagine many subjects like sustainability, diversity, equality and legacy here. Perhaps the answer lies not only in the act of looking to the past, but also in the construction of new conversations about public spaces, the formation of collective culture, and the future of art. Referring to Bruno Latour’s questions here, what are some suspended activities that you would like not to see coming back as an arts professional and/or an artist? It might be useful to visit the concept of curare here. To take care of. Curators are assigned to the job of caring in the art world. Over the years, various forms of caretaking have evolved from this root word, but contemporary curator’s work remains similar to the curare of growing, developing and seeking to help the art of people, their meaning, interpretation and commonalities flourish. Now, the desk of many curators is empty – at least for the time being. Creating art is not always a question of the moment, and neither is its exhibition; curating follows art. So where do we start the conversation now? What sort of time and space is required for the manifestation of contemporary art? The Landscape of an Unknown, 2020 “This machine is a master at collecting goods and people from around the world. It has the characteristics of an assemblage, yet it also has characteristics of a machine, a mechanism that is limited to the sum of its parts. This machine is not a total institution” as Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing puts it, we live and spend our lives inside of it. In my mind, I’m imagining the red button and the nice steel handle mentioned by Bruno Latour, and how the states, one after the other, can pull it to stop the engine. Here we are. Now.The engine has stopped, along with the noise it produced; the machine is not working -for now. We can start to hear things, other things that we could not hear or did not pay attention to before. As we all feel the somnolence that comes through adapting to our new routines, we should not lose the impetus for action. I have been thinking about my answers to questions posed by Bruno Latour*, below. Perhaps, now, we can all think and share some thoughts. So let’s not waste this crisis, instead think and ask ourselves some questions. — *Here are the questions posed by Bruno Latour in his article called What protective measures can you think of so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model? (translated from French by Stephen Muecke) (This article appeared in AOC on 29th March 2020: https://aoc.media/opinion/2020/03/29/imaginerles-gestes-barrieres-contre-le-retour-a-la-production-davant-crise/ ) Question 1: What are some suspended activities that you would like to see not coming back ? Question 2: Describe why this activity seems to you to be noxious/superfluous/dangerous/incoherent and how its disappearance/putting on hold/substitution might render other activities that you prefer easier/more coherent. (Write a separate paragraph for each of the activities listed under 1). Question 3: What kinds of measures do you advocate so that workers/employees/agents/entrepreneurs, who can no longer continue in the activities that you have eliminated, are able to facilitate the transition to other activities ? Question 4: What are the activities, now suspended, that you hope might develop/begin again, or even be created from scratch? Question 5: Describe how this activity appears to be positive to you, and how it makes other activities easier/more harmonious/coherent that you prefer and can fight against those that you judge to be inappropriate. (Write a separate paragraph for each of the activities listed under 4). Question 6: What kinds of measures do you advocate to help workers/employees/agents/entrepreneurs to acquire capacities/means/finances/instruments allowing for restarting/development/creation of this activity ? (Now find a way to compare your description with that of other participants. By tabling and then superimposing the answers, you should start to build up a picture composed of conflicting lines, alliances, controversies and oppositions.) Idil Bozkurt (1990) is a lens-based media producer and an independent curator. Previous Next

Program Participant Activities Program Participant Activities Tonight we invite you to encounter a collective archive of the 2022 What could/should curating do educational programme, which took place in Belgrade and other locations around the Post-Yugoslav region, between September and December this year. The departure point for this archive is a proposal by Biljana Ćirić, program curator and facilitator, to consider the means by which the discussions, events, inquiries and relationships developed during this time might be recorded or documented. Archiving is never neutral. Determinations are always made—by individuals, by collectives, by collecting institutions—about what knowledge is worth saving, the means by which knowledge is indexed, housed and cared for, who has access and on what terms. Within the framework of an alternative educational platform—with a loose and evolving curriculum, and no formalised method of assessment or grading—this exercise presents an opportunity to consider what alternative measures we might allow ourselves for the production of knowledge when freed from institutional modes of transmission and circulation. As such, these archives—both individually and collectively—do not simply record a series of shared (and at times differing) experiences. They include questions around how the embodied, linguistic, political, intimate, relational nature of experience and remembering, ranging in scope from the personal, to the national. Each contribution is informed by the “baggage” we carried with us, as a group of individuals from many different geographic and cultural contexts, many of whom had little relationship with Belgrade, Serbia or the Balkan region prior to this course. This “baggage” includes our different relationships to contemporary art’s infrastructures; our different fields of knowledge and networks of relationships; cultural and linguistic differences; differing relations to histories of colonialism, resource extraction and capitalist exploitation; and varying habits of thought, modes of making, inhabiting and formulating questions about the world. Through differing strategies of presentation and circulation, we hope to open up questions about what we have in common, as well as what separates us; what of ourselves is dispersed, and what is withheld. But the physical “archive” we share with you tonight is only a part of a wider set of relationships, experiences, idea exchanges, occasional encounters, gossip and experimenting. Tonight we celebrate the beauty and fragility of these moments. Be our guests at the two tables. Read silently. Read aloud. Whisper. Describe what you see. Share what you feel. Eat. Drink. Embrace. This archive is staged as something living, developing and transformational, ever evolving as our moments with you. Thank you for sharing this journey with us. We hope it’s not the end, but only a stop on the way. WC/SCD 2022 Adelina, Anastasia, Ginevra, Giuglia, Jelena, Karly, Lera, Sabine, Simon < Educational Program Participants >

Educational Program  Alumni 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO?—WCSCD was initiated in 2018 in Belgrade as an educational platform focused around notions of the curatorial and is a registered civic association. WCSCD’s education program has been run on an annual basis every year since 2018. Till 2022 it was organized as a three-month program for practitioners situated in Belgrade. From 2023 program is organized as biennial working with program participants over longer period of time. Our participants were young practitioners from different parts of the world including the Balkans, EU, Asia, Central Asia, Russia and Latin America making it a unique program in Europe. WCSCD educational program has been learning through recent years to think what kind of citation could actively produce.Through carefully created mentorship program we are committed to think and practice what kind of knowledge we consider worth and how it gets prioritized creating new citations from the margins. [1] [1] Sara Ahmed, “White Men,” Feminist Killjoys Blog, November 4 2014, www.feministkilljoys.com/2014/11/04/white-men < Participants Educational Program Programs >

2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2018 Alumni Agustina Andreoletti works within the realms of research, writing, discussion, publishing and exhibition making. Her practice reflects on the unstable overlap between material, social and political processes; especially as such relations develop over time. Andreoletti is currently a Postgrad fellow at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Ivana Čavić is an artist based in Serbia and currently studies photography at The Academy Of Arts Novi Sad. Her photographic practice is an exploration of narration and context, focused on creating visual narratives that question boundaries of documentation and fiction, private and public. With research based work she is often playing with photographic and textual narratives which trigger a dialogue about different readings of personal histories and memories. She participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions, and international collaborative projects. Jovana Vasić is a student of interdisciplinary doctoral studies at the University of Arts in Belgrade on the program Theory of Arts and Media. With the mentor Nikola Dedić she is working on the thesis – The critical institutional theory of the Museum of Contemporary Art. She writes and publishes papers in the field of art theory. In her previous work, she dealt with the issues of the transposition of personal narratives in the form of memories through the relationship between the public and the private. Karen Vestergaard Andersen is a curator and writer based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her curatorial practice explores alternative research methods though open artistic dialogue with the aim of generating new curatorial methodologies that are both critically engaging and context sensitive. Her research interests and methodologies derive from an intersectional approaches to queer / feminist discourse and New Materialist theory. Her writing has appeared in various artists’ catalogues and publications, including at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Nikolaj Kunsthal, as well as in Seismopolite Journal of Art and Politics, Danske Museer and Notes on Metamodernism. Kirila Cvetkovska is an independent researcher, curator and artist from Macedonia. After studying art history and psychology in Rome, Italy, she has been involved in the cultural programming of the non-profit Tevereterno (both in Rome and NYC). Currently, she is living in Macedonia, while also collaborating with artists in Italy on experimental art projects. Kirila’s personal practice dwells on the themes of collective memory, loss and detachment, analyzing the cross-cultural values that encompass these issues, while liberating oneself from the restraints of consumerism. She is attempting to bring art to a much wider audience, in places without a largely established art scene. Marta Saccavino obtained her MA degree in Art History, University of Leeds, UK. In her academic work she focused on artists coming from “relative peripheries”, a concept explored by Maria Lind. Her current researches focus at the close relationship between art and cinema, specifically on how television intervenes and shapes this relationship, which began with the invention of cinema itself, and it is often analysed without taking in consideration the latter element. She is currently working on an interdisciplinary project on sacred and profane relics with an emerging fashion designer and the Morgagni Museum in Padua. Milena Jokanović is a research-fellow at the Art History Department, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade where she obtained her PhD recently. She has also obtained MA diploma at the UNESCO Chair for Cultural Policy and Management at the University of Arts, Belgrade and Université Lumière Lyon. Her research interests therefore span the museology, use of the historical models of collecting in modern and contemporary art, theories of memory and identity construction and cultural heritage management. She curated several exhibitions, has written many papers and managed few cultural projects. Nina Mihaljinac is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arts in Belgrade in the field of cultural management and cultural policy. She works as a project manager for Creative Creative Europe Serbia at the Ministry of Culture of RS. She obtained her doctorate in Arts and Media at the University of Art in Belgrade in 2017. She has participated in numerous national and international research projects and has published several monographs and dozens of papers in the field of art theory, culture of memory, management in culture and cultural policy. Neva Lukić has completed her master’s degree in art history and archaeology from the University of Zagreb, and in theory of modern and contemporary art at Leiden University. She has professional experience in museum curatorship (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka), as a freelance curator (Croatian Association of Artists – Zagreb, Arti et Amicitiae – Amsterdam, See Lab – The Hague, etc.) and as an art critic (active member of Croatian section of AICA – the International Association of Art Critics). She has published four books (poetry & short stories) and one picture book for children. Ruri Kawanami is a Berlin based curatorial assistant working at the intersection of artistic production and critical writings. She studied cultural science at post-graduate level at Humboldt-University in Berlin, where she specialized in the museum epistemology of the early 20th century. From 2014 to 2017, she worked as a curatorial assistant at the Japanese literature museum in Berlin. Teodora Nikčević graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cetinje 2009. Since 2012 she has worked as a curator at the Center for Contemporary Art of Montenegro CSUCG in Podgorica. She actively exhibits at individual and group exhibitions in the country and abroad and participates in numerous residential and art projects. Her work at the CSUCG is focused on the promotion and affirmation of young artists. She was a curator of group exhibitions and led a series of interviews with artists – Artist talks. Tjaša Pogačar works as a freelance writer, editor and curator of exhibitions and discursive programs for various institutional and noninstitutional contexts since 2010. In her work she is concerned with systemic operations of contemporary art and the limits and possible further developments of institutional critique. Some of her recent curatorial and editorial projects look at how contemporary art practices and institutions deal with the current techno-capitalist conditions. She is a co-founder and editor of ŠUM, journal for contemporary art criticism and theory and is currently working as an assistant curator at the Škuc Gallery in Ljubljana. < Participants Educational Program Programs >

< Back Belgrade Calling 2 15 July 2020 Katarina Kostandinović Birdhead, April protests in Belgrade, 2017 When thinking about the title of this text, I thought of “Is Belgrade Burning?”, referring to “Is Paris Burning?” – the question Hitler is said to have asked on receiving the news of its fall. But I changed my mind; I did not want to dramatize the situation in Belgrade, which has, in the last week, escalated into several days of protests, police brutality and general dissatisfaction that threatens to be annulled by the authorities and the regime media. In a previous article that I wrote for this journal, through the form of diary entries, I dealt with the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This text is a reaction to the current situation caused by unprofessional management of the coronavirus crisis, by the state representatives and the Crisis Staff. I’d like to clarify the position I am taking in writing the following text. I am an academic citizen and cultural worker employed in one of the public institutions of the city of Belgrade. In addition to supporting my generation in protests and expressing our dissatisfaction and recoil in fear, I want to condemn the rhetoric of violence, to rebel against corrupt officials, to condemn sexual predators and take the side of their victims. I want to allow myself to tell for the first time what kind of future I want and where I (don’t) want to live. To get out of the media darkness that has been overshadowing us all for some time, to support my colleagues and professors in the fight against plagiarized diplomas, I want nepotism to stop and positions in institutions to be filled on the basis of competency and knowledge. I want to support the fight for human rights, the rule of law and justice! DOUBLE STANDARDS and SOCIAL MEDIA AS AN EMERGING PUBLIC COUNTER SPHERE On June 21, the citizens of Serbia voted in the first parliamentary elections in Europe during the coronavirus pandemic, and part of the opposition decided to boycott the elections. A little more than a month before the elections, the state of emergency was lifted and people were encouraged to return to “normal”. That meant the possibility of holding sports matches and celebrations again, re-opening clubs and conducting an election campaign, as well as the elections. The new COVID-regime was meant to set the conditions for the upcoming parliamentary elections and voting procedures. While president Vučić was preparing, the cracks in the healthcare system and state’s neglect of health infrastructure became even more obvious than before [1] . Although the fact that the ruling Serbian Progressive Party won convincingly was not a surprise, there were discrepancies in real and reported numbers. Shortly after, the number of infected people started to rise and this time the numbers of infected and deceased people from some cities did not match the official data coming from the Crisis Staff and the state representatives. New precautions had to be introduced; among other things, the president decides to evict students from dorms in the middle of the exam period, identifying them as a dangerous factor in spreading the infection. After the report on the president’s decision on the same day, July 3, students from Belgrade gathered in front of the National Assembly to protest – the reaction was spontaneous and urgent. On Tuesday, July 7, after President Vučić announced that a curfew should be introduced in Belgrade, due to the rapid spread of the virus, thousands of citizens took to the streets of the capital to express their dissatisfaction. It was the first of seven protests held so far, which turned into a brutal showdown between police and protesters for almost three nights in a row. The protest turned into riots and people were throwing rocks and garbage cans, containers were set on fire, as well as police vehicles. On the first day of the protest, according to the information by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, four vehicles were set on fire, while one was damaged. Shortly after the arson, a story erupted on social networks that members of the police a.k.a. trained hooligans controlled by the state were behind such deeds. Most social network users are convinced that the Ministry of the Interior burned their vehicles on their own, old and unusable ones, which they are trying to prove with photos. On the other hand, the representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs deny it. Social media, these days, is a serious channel through which information travels, people who protest from the streets report, and people who are not able to get to the streets share the content with incredible speed. Messages are of various content – from warnings about the movement of the police, mapping of suspicious persons at protests to articles of the law on protection of citizens and rights during arrests or police duties when using weapons, etc. Such mobilization through social networks was encouraged partly by footages of independent journalists who were the few to report on the protest, and largely by footages of protesters noticing police brutality and false statements by government officials denying the brutality in the media. Mass civil protests are a burning topic on social media and the public sphere. Numerous people have been discussing violence they have been witnessing. Thus, there is also fake news (both on social and TV networks) and corrupted media are now attracting even more attention – it is a matter of different content, and I will mention one. Reporting by a pre-written text, while people were sitting at the protest third day in a row, B92 TV news anchor states in the news at 11 pm that “the protest turned into violent demonstrations and clashes with the police”, although that was not true. The same reporter later joined the program live, saying that “there were no major incidents”. The fact that the “script” which anchor read in the studio was written in advance is evidenced by photos and recordings from the protest on Thursday, which, apart from a few minor clashes between the protesters, took place in peace and without clashes with the police. The mobilization on social networks gives the impression that the news from Belgrade is being transmitted outside the borders of Serbia. However, again, there are notable examples of biasing and altering news. Photo by Katarina Kostandinović WHO IS WHO and WHOM ARE YOU PROTECTING? For several days now, I have been witnessing a similar choreography of police and “hooligans” who are believed to be there to provoke incidents so that the government, supposedly, can blame the “organizers” of the protest for the violence and take violent steps to suppress the protest. People gather in front of the Assembly, the loudest and right-wing ones are in front of the entrance to the building, most of the other protesters surround them. Derogatory words are being shouted, the government is called out, Kosovo is mentioned, and specific demands are heard in some places. Some of the demands that can be heard are the following: the resignation of President Vučić; resignation of members of the Crisis Staff; overthrowing parliamentary elections; that the formation of Assembly and the Government should not be allowed on the basis of illegal and fraudulent elections, a law prohibiting party affiliation to employees in the judiciary, inspection, education, health, police and military; return open calls for employment in the public sector, without party employment; etc. Tension and dissatisfaction grow and after a while rocks are fired. The police came out of the Assembly and moved to the crowd in front of the building. Torches were lit, they flew towards the police, and at that moment, tear gas was flying from the other side towards the protesters who were fleeing from the police cordon that separated the group and continued to suppress it in the side streets and parks. It was the first time that my friends and I felt tear gas and its consequences. Later that night I saw the footage of the N1 television (one of the few that was on the scene that night).It showed the brutal beating of young men who were sitting in the park next to the Assembly. In the following evenings, from the terraces of apartments in the city centre, people recorded various cases of police brutality, and the number of arrested and beaten people on the streets grew from night to the night. It is undeniable that some police officers were hurt too, but the number of hurt unarmed civilians was much larger than reported. Revolted by the reaction of state representatives, whose speeches and announcements often confuse the Serbian public, regarding the protests and their violent suppression and final disintegration, people continue to gather next day at the same time in front of the Assembly. The next day, reactions to the police violence that happened the previous evening could be heard from the crowd. Then, after a couple of hours of protest, the situation escalated again into chaos and fleeing from tear gas and, now, better-equipped police forces, cordons, cavalry, and special anti-terrorist units in armoured vehicles. The violence on the streets of Belgrade which we witnessed opened the question of who are these people attacking police and whether there are those who are there to quell the protests from within “inserted” among us. This time, the aggression increased on both sides and the collision with the police continued. A huge amount of tear gas was fired, which was now coming to the apartments in the streets where people were fleeing and hiding. The denial of the fact that the police fired tear gas at all, by the prime minister herself, led the protesters to take the streets peacefully the next day, to show disgust with the police brutality while sitting in front of the Assembly. After two days of brutal clashes with the police, the protesters gathered under the slogan “Sit down – Don’t be manipulated”. Authorities withdrew the police and seemingly acknowledged the peaceful protests, which escalated with the president’s next public announcements. As usual, his aggressive rhetoric when addressing citizens and journalists, which oscillates between the role of a worried father and a frightening tyrant, encouraged protesters to take to the streets for the fourth night in a row. And the now well-known choreography is repeated with even stronger police forces, which this time arrest everyone who is on their way and take them to, as it is stated, the Assembly, where they interrogate the detainees, beat them, take away their phones and write reports. The media have been reporting that after the conflict in front of the Assembly, the police fired a large amount of tear gas into the mass of peaceful demonstrators, some of whom are 30 years old. The cartridges that were scattered on the streets near the Assembly of Serbia clearly show that the year of production is 1990. The current debate in media discusses the effects of old tear gas, which, apparently, after five years changes its chemical composition and the substance becomes stronger. This can imply that the convention on the use of chemical weapons was violated and human health was directly endangered. State officials and Ministry of the Interior denied these reports, stating that the inevitable was done in order to quell the violent protest and prevent greater damage. People are more and more scared and, consequently, there are obviously fewer people gathering, unlike the first two days of the protest. During the weekend the number of protesters almost halved, and this Monday (July 13) was immeasurably lower than the first few days. This is partly a consequence of the increase in police patrols, which have been on the streets of Belgrade, searching for people who get in their way, especially those with protest banners.Several arrests have been reported. On the other hand, reported cases of cell phone hackings and deleting of the protest recordings brought unrest and additional fear due to privacy violation. The police have arrested non-violent protesters, among them leftist activists. This prompted the protest movement from the Assembly to the Central Prison in Belgrade, where protesters are demanding the release of “political prisoners” [2] . Yesterday and today, July 14, people are protesting because of numerous arrested activists and students who were not violent during the protest –some were just passers-by interrogated by police whose statements were falsified. They were then sentenced to 30 days in prison, without the possibility to contact a lawyer and defend themselves in court. We are scared and disoriented, it seems that the expressed rebellion and anger did not get any political articulation and does not turn into a strategy in the fight against the current government or a strategy of clearly defined demands that would pressure the government to meet those demands. The role of the opposition, which has been left without the organizational capacity and credibility to address the citizens at this political moment, seems unwelcomed. How to articulate a rebellion against impotent representatives of the people, who confuse, deceive and criminalize their citizens? How to express dissatisfaction with public information and corrupt media? How to invite colleagues, professors, friends to join and not be afraid to withdraw from obedience to the perennial fear government? In the previous few days, perhaps the most serious protests were held during the rule of Aleksandar Vučić, who already after the first evening fulfilled the first and so far the only request of the demonstrators – a change in the decision to reintroduce the curfew. Some would say that no matter how these protests end, it is a big and serious thing, especially since the public, after the “One in Five Million” protest ended, speculated whether and when energy would be accumulated for new protests. It turned out, on Tuesday night, July 7, that only one spontaneous gathering of angry citizens, due to the announcement of a new curfew, was more fruitful than about a year of protests led by the opposition. The protest became a place where politically, ideologically diverse people gather, and how the day will look like depends on the current dominance in the number of some of them. The only thing that is constant and common to everyone in front of the Assembly of Serbia is dissatisfaction with the regime and the current situation in the country. For the first time since the April protests in 2017, when Vučić was elected for president, we see young people on the streets, mostly those aged 18 to 30-40. There were also sympathizers and activists from the oppositional Alliance for Serbia, Don’t Let Belgrade Drown, activists from the Roof (anti eviction organization), the New Social Democratic Union, artists and cultural workers, but also alt-right groups such as People’s patrols, Levijatan, as well as workers from the Private Security Agency Protector. Public institutions are still in the dark, no one has stepped forward, unions are silent too, and people are scared to join because they see no defined prospect. It is showed that those who stood against the current rule were criminalized and overshadowed, even silenced. I am afraid that any civil protest that will take place in the future in this way will be compromised. It seems to me that the public is confused by the number of young people on the streets. They are not seen at rallies of the opposition or the ruling party, the public is confused by the so-called orientation of people, which again, cannot be reduced to those political and ideological phrases that existed at the time of October 5th 2000, when the people rebelled against Milošević’s rule and finally overthrew him. This is a generational thing, there are young people left and right oriented, civic oriented and patriotic oriented, but the regime media impose their ideological phrases and criminalize what they do not understand. The notion of left and right is not valid at this political moment, we also have to rethink the terminology and its historical and/or current state. We wonder whether the right-wingers are the people who are advocating for Kosovo at the protest and its preservation in the constitutional and legal order of the Republic of Serbia, advocating for physical security and the right to property and the rule of law, both for Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. Is it a right-wing or liberal vocabulary? Is a leftist someone who stands for ethnically clean territories – for the policy of demarcation and, thus, follows the policy of the West? How broad is the political spectrum that we know, and how much do we know? Now, only a thin layer of educated young people from larger cities are on the streets (Niš, Novi Sad, Zrenjanin, Kragujevac, Novi Pazar, etc.). Those who still have a lot of strength and a lot of life ahead of them. But we fail to turn indignation into political demands, because the opposition is incapable of helping us, among other things. Our parents have been exhausted for a long time and are not ready to stand up, those who fought for the democratization of society in 2000, gave up. We live in Belgrade, in a bubble, without contact with people who vote for the ruling party and whose world and worries we do not understand. They are trapped in an authoritarian system that their children, WE, want to blow up. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but even this time it doesn’t seem that the uprising will be successful, the spontaneous civic protest is facing the question of “and then what”. It seems that our opposition, as it is today, is not ready and is lacking strong support of the people. We need an organic opposition that will be formed at the protests. We have to think long-term and offer ideas and policies, talk about solutions because it will be difficult to defeat the tyrant in his field of violence. Photo by Katarina Kostandinović ENDING NOTE It seems that the fight against the coronavirus will not end so quickly. It seems that the members of the Crisis Staff found themselves unprepared again in the fight against the epidemic. While the authorities have the responsibility to ensure public order and to respond to individual violent incidents, the disproportionate use of force against entire demonstrations is not justified. Heavy-handed measures of the kind we have seen over the past few days infringe the rights of those protesting peacefully and will only increase tension and provoke hostility, leading to an escalation of the situation. It is a matter of time before a state of emergency is introduced again, which in a way blurs some priorities and raises alarms about how human rights are being balanced against the risks posed by COVID-19. The last time Serbia was in the State of Emergency was in 2003 following the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić; on which occasion the government derogated numerous human rights, including the right to privacy, the right to freedom of movement, the right to freedom of expression and the freedom of media. P.S. THE LEGACY OF THE OCTOBER 5 This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the great demonstrations in Belgrade that ended Slobodan Milošević’s rule on October 5, 2000 [3] . The Democratic Opposition of Serbia called on the citizens to gather in front of the National Assembly on October 5 in order to oppose the great election theft that the Federal Election Commission carried out on the order of Milošević. The opposition ultimately demanded that Slobodan Milošević recognizes the electoral will of the citizens expressed in the federal, presidential and local elections held on September 24, by 3 pm on Thursday, October 5, 2000. It was also demanded that all those arrested be released, as well as that the arrest warrants and criminal charges filed against those who protested for respecting the electoral will of the citizens of Serbia be withdrawn. Currently, the then participants in Slobodan Milošević’s government are once again occupying the most important positions in the country. Katarina Kostandinović is an art historian and curator based in Belgrade, Serbia. [1] https://dversia.net/6026/serbia-mass-protest-vucic/?fbclid=IwAR2LDkBeUtiKHIfbMQxTnSo807MkULpu5VF3qKwjj7EUOURSJgHMd08mKQc [2] https://www.masina.rs/eng/beating-and-jailing-of-non-violent-activists-followed-by-protest-in-front-of-belgrade-central-prison/?fbclid=IwAR20g4iHhvUn5jA3mvNUfu91-5scgs_KODi3-rIZaOeMDZhgrOH5TZKIqds [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87 ; (See also: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/05/continuous/yugoslav-protesters-set-parliament-on-fire.html , https://balkaninsight.com/2010/10/05/timeline-the-bulldozer-revolution/ ) Previous Next

< Back Mask making and coffee drinking in Addis Addis Ababa 18 May 2020 Sarah Bushra Making masks in Temesgen studio “The idea of abundance and scarcity takes a constant shift. What seemed to be scarce has forced itself to become an abundance”, writes Robel Temesgen on his Instagram post announcing his communal mask making adventures. In a conversation over the phone, Robel relates he finds the confinement to his home studio stifling with consequent strains on his creative practice. In addition to escapades to favourite coffee spots around the city, a regular habit prior to the pandemic, in the past 7 weeks since the Corona lock-down he has taken up several new pastimes, one of which is making beautiful face masks. The collective mask making began organically. Tsedenya Abayneh, Robel’s close friend attempted to make a mask for herself and shared her process with Robel, who’s then reminded to call on Leayne Telahun, a friend with a sewing machine, to give their endeavour a fighting chance to succeed. Between the malfunctioning of said machine and the hunt for a new one, the task force grew to seven people in total. Kasahun Hailu, a regular at Robel’s studio, who also happens to be an industrial design graduate, took over the streamlining of the production and earned himself the name ‘Supé’ short for a supervisor. Shimeles Tadesse and Tesfaye Bekele, along with Robel, fill in the necessary gaps in the production line, while Naod Lemma, documents the process through pictures. Now, the collective makes an average of 60 masks in one afternoon and staggers their distribution rippling from their closest relations to members of their communities in need of a shield. Many pharmacies around town hiked the price for a single-use face mask by upwards of 200% on the day the first case of Corona was confirmed in Addis. What used to be available at 25 ETB (75 cents) suddenly started to be sold for 150 ETB (4,50 USD), way beyond what a majority of Addis Ababans can afford. When the fear of contracting the virus increased with the rising number of cases, unable to afford to buy masks, many invented make-shift solutions, covering their faces with the shawls they’re wearing or repurposing discarded Ethiopian airlines sleeping eye shields to cover their mouths. On the 16th of March, quickly after the breakout of Corona in Africa, Jack Ma, Chinese Billionaire, and founder of e-commerce multinational Alibaba announced his donation of 100,000 face masks and other PPE to each one of the 54 countries in the continent. [1] This donation was followed by a second batch containing 200,000 face masks and other PPE to be distributed among 54 countries [2] , and the third batch including 4.6 million masks and other PPE donated immediately to African Union, and Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) [3] . The Ethiopian government has also received facemasks form UAE, Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture, Korean Business Association and other local and international organizations [4] . Although it is generally assumed these donated masks go to, or are reserved for health workers in the country, there’s no system in place to track whether the distribution is indeed being made towards the right recipients. According to a doctor working at St. Paul Hospital in Addis Ababa, a hospital anticipated to become a treatment centre for confirmed cases when the current centre, Eko Kotebe Hospital, reaches its capacity, thus far she has to buy her own PPE from private pharmacies. Although, at the beginning of the pandemic many were lax about wearing a mask, in recent times members of the community have started to hold each other accountable. Now a person not wearing a mask is not allowed entry to the blue and white minibus taxis, the most common mode of private transportation in Addis. When entering public service areas like banks, security guards ask people without a mask to put one on. Ride, one of the most popular taxi-hailing platforms has distributed face masks and hand sanitizers to the majority of their drivers. Other mask making endeavours in Addis that stem from organizing like-minded individuals include a collaboration between Doctors in Action (DIA), an enterprise empowering doctors for social change, and Sabegn, a concept store for lifestyle products. They started Debo project that works to spread awareness about Corona, recognize and support the work of front-line health workers and spread videos on how to make DIY masks and distribute the masks they’ve produced. Many good-hearted business-inspired communities have also mobilized to make face masks available for sale on the streets of Addis, standing close by taxi lines and other relatively crowded spaces for a price of 10 ETB (30 cents). The price for surgical masks sold at pharmacies has also plummeted to 30 ETB (90 cents) from its sudden climb 7 weeks ago. With continued improvement in access to masks, many still walk the streets of Addis without a shield on their faces. Robel admits buying a 10 ETB mask from the streets is an easier way of providing protection for himself and many around him. It is not just the lack of masks on the streets that motivated the collective to gather at his studio. He speaks about the boredom that brought this group of people together, an interest in shared conversations that made them stay, the satisfaction in simple acts of generosity that entices them to come back. This impromptu artist’ collective is beyond a manufacturing line, they’re a conduit transforming what is scarce towards a perception of abundance. For many Ethiopians, the stay at home period for this pandemic is frequented with power cuts and water shortages. The severity of this problem varies in different parts of town. While the cuts are intermittent in some areas varying between one to two days per week, other areas have no power for days on end. The longer power cuts are caused by the malfunctioning problem rather than rationing tact. Although this may appear unbearable for an outsider, for a majority of Addis dwellers it is, unfortunately, business as usual. The understanding of abundance and scarcity is versatile in Addis society, its flow is seamless and uninterrupted. When there’s no electricity at Robel’s studio, for example, to power the sewing machine used to make masks, the group simply shifts towards activities done only by hand or simply playing cards, relishing in the sudden abundance of time to be filled with enjoying each other’s company. In these times, the productivity aspect of time is scarce, says Robel, while the idle and reflective space remain abundant. “Is it worth it to be an artist?” – he asks. “I am in my studio – suddenly forced to gauge my capacity: what is my actual reach, how vastly does my network extend, and how wide are the margins circumscribing the works I produce?” Although an avid consumer of art through virtual media, Robel expresses his hesitancy towards creating work for an online audience, he says he’s not interested in that capital right now. This sentiment refreshingly centres Ethiopian audiences as spectators of contemporary art that are coming from the country. Considering the very limited access to the internet, a work of art with output on a digital platform has little to no local reach. The resistance from Addis Ababans towards staying at home is not primarily a question of the economy, Robel says. Although the economy is a crucial factor, people defy stay at home sanctions from the government, unable to placate their needs to socialize. Long before the pandemic, Robel has been investigating the nature of communities around coffee drinking culture in Ethiopia, describing the resulting spaces as heavens for uncensored dialogue and fertile soil for growing deep-rooted connections. In a conversation with the Corpus Podcast about his exhibition RE:PUBLIC held at Circle Art Gallery [5] , Robel describes ‘jebena’ as a symbol of society. For his series, Floating Jebenas he has been looking at the disruption of social structures formed around coffee drinking culture due to rapid urbanization of the city. He notes the shift from neighbourly socials that were dismantled by aggressive construction to the emergence of informal small businesses that serve coffee at the many curves and crevices of the city. He iterates the way Ethiopians function as social fabric, and points at the various means we evade threats to our coffee gatherings. Robel’s creative practice continually probes at the nature of communities, the strands that form them, the bedrocks they stand on. His meditation with ‘jebena’ as a holding space for Ethiopian culture and identity has resonance in the space his studio has recently become, a host for labour of passion in the form of mask making. Within the folding, stitching, and pressing of fabric, there’s a strain of alchemy at play, morphing superfluous substances into one of the most valuable items of the times. Sarah Bushra is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, working primarily with a hybrid of text and images. [1] https://twitter.com/jackma/status/1239581509125726210?s=21 [2] https://twitter.com/jackma/status/1247014237303537664?s=21 [3] https://twitter.com/jackma/status/1252136657672790016?s=21 [4] https://www.trackethiogov.com/in-kind-donations-tracker [5] https://circleartagency.com/online-gallery/exhibitions/recent-exhibition/re-public/ Previous Next

< Back “Bor is burning” [1]: the political economy of IT in the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia 20 Dec 2020 Robert Bobnič and Kaja Kraner Back to the future! At the entrance to the Bor copper mining complex (RTB Bor) where one of the pits is situated, a large board reads, “Politics of security and protection of the environment: life first, we have to care for our environment.” The signage is in Chinese and Serbian (though not its Cyrillic script). Nearby lies a monument to the victims of a labor camp in the Bor mine during World War II. The Third Reich was one of many who had dug a mine at this location within the past 7, 000 years, and when the Kingdom of Yugoslavia capitulated in 1941, they took over the mine shortly after, establishing around twenty labor camps known for a special kind of torture. People had to work barefoot and naked – some were executed: hung with their heads towards the ground as if to be some kind of monument. It is very quiet – almost too quiet – for a mine. As we look at the empty halls (which in the socialist heyday would have been filled with workers dining and changing clothes), two young engineers – one of them emphasizing that nowadays more female engineers work at the mine – ironically say, “we are going back to the eighties. ” After the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia, during the isolation of Serbia (owing to the international sanctions during the 1990s) and their period of privatization, RTB Bor was sold to the Chinese state-owned Zinjin corporation in 2017. Bor mining facilities is now under the process of reconstruction and automation as a part of Chinese investment in the Balkan region. Is this the coming of another wave of modernization, another acceleration – another colonization – as suggested by the vague perception of a Chinese techno-capitalist entry (through the Balkans) into Europe? Discussing the question of Sinofuturism, Chinese philosopher of technology, Yuk Hui, claims it “runs in the opposite direction to moral cosmotechnical thinking – ultimately, it is only an acceleration of the European modern project.” [2] It is therefore a project, which according to the moral attitude in the current age of ecological thinking, cares neither for life nor for the environment. Monument of the victims of labor camp at the entrance in Bor mine (left). Zinjin headquarter in Bor (right). One mine, 7, 000 years of cosmos A penetrated surface – the hole in the earth. Mankind not only got to his feet and looked up to the sky where he was blinded by the sun, but also began to dig into the earth’s past to exploit it for his own (re)production and preservation . We could say that to enter the mine is to enter geological and cosmological deep time – [the] accumulated dead labor of the cosmic economy, accessible only by the technics of mining conducted by the living labor of humans, tools, science, and machines. The latter is quite clear in the case of RTB Bor, where copper and gold mining dates back to at least 5000 BC. Nowadays, we can only imagine the importance of mining in the formation of different cosmologies from surrounding cultures during the prehistoric and historic, or premodern and modern, periods. During the modern era, the technics of mining not only became industrialized, but functioned as the basis for industrial technological development – mining, and nature in general, is a standing reserve for energetic and infrastructural potential. The latter holds true both for the heavily industrialized 19th century and heavily informationalized 21stcentury, where mining and data mining came to form a particular synthesis. Strictly speaking, mining could be understood as one of the most fundamental practices underpinning cosmotechnics. The concept of cosmotechnics was coined by Yuk Hui as a departure from the epistemological, social, and material framework of the European project of modernization. The latter was based on the ontological difference between nature and culture by means of modern technological development and its corresponding way of technological thinking, in which technics is understood as a mediation tool between the order of nature and order of culture. In this regard, it is important to note that cosmotechnics (as a concept and methodology) emphasizes a cosmological understanding of technology, not an anthropological one. This fundamental change in conceptualization – the elimination of the basic human-centricity, characteristic of Western modernity – became possible when the whole world (nature and cosmos included) began to function as a giant computational machine. For this reason, Hui is not conducting a backdoor exit through some nontechnological return, but rather, suggests an exit through technics itself. In the middle of technological geneses – as is modern technology – lies an entire cosmos of the totality of nature and technics: a particular technological genesis as well as a particular cosmology, i.e., the way different cultures understand the universe and comprehend the order of things, be it in the form of myth, magic, or science. In the specific case of Europe, the entire cosmic totality of nature and technics includes understanding the technology which endowed particular nation states with their competitive advantage in the colonial and economic subjection of the rest of the world. These are indistinguishable from capitalist modes of production. While developing the concept of cosmotechnics, Hui’s initial question asks why there was no technological development in China as it happened in the West, given that China had material conditions for such a development. In embarking on an answer, he suggests that the reason lies in the different cosmology of Chinese culture. It is devoid of the concept of technology as operated and understood in the West (beginning with the famous Greek techne , until its synthetic finalization at the start of the 20th Century with the end of metaphysics by cybernetics, as understood by philosopher Martin Heidegger). In this sense, China’s current technocapital power, and corresponding Sinofuturism, is therefore based on the appropriation and acceleration of the Western concept of technology after the Opium wars and late socialist modernization. Cosmotechnics encapsulates diversity, however not in the form of cultural diversity (the idea of multiculturalism itself being the product of modernization and colonialism), but in the form of technological diversity. Thus, the question of locality is wedged open (again, not locality as a result of cultural identity, but locality as the product of technical means). However, Hui states: “Cosmotechnics is not simply about different ways of making things, for example, different techniques of knitting or dying,” it is above all, “the unification of the moral and the cosmic through technical activities. […] This cosmological specificity must be rethought beyond astral physics, beyond the conceptualization of the universe as a thermodynamic system; it also reopens the question of morality beyond ethical rules, which are added posteriorly as constraints to new technologies. Technical activities unify the moral order and the cosmic order; and by unification, I mean reciprocal processes which constantly enforce each other to acquire new meanings.” [3] This is one way to say that technology is not neutral – not only in the sense of its use but also its existence. Perhaps this also means that cosmotechnics functions more as a perspective and less as a concept, and for that reason cannot be transmitted from one place or history to another without alteration. Prehistoric mining tools in Museum of mining and metallurgy Bor (left). Zinjin flag at the entrance to the mining hole (right). Balkan, time and (deep) time again This is where our initial question comes in: can we reconstruct a specific Balkan cosmotechnics? The formulation of this question emerged precisely from the specific case of RTB Bor and is of particular importance when considering at least two distinct elements: (1) the extreme duration of mining activities and natural resource exploitation ranging through many different cosmologies, cultures, politics, and economies; (2) the period of modernization, which unfolded during the existence of socialist Yugoslavia. The latter is the focus of the current stage of our research. The modern history of mining in Bor started in the late 19th century, when a rich Serbian industrialist, Djordje Vajfert, was looking for gold. He [mostly] found copper, though some gold as well. French capital soon entered and the French Company of the Bor Mines, the Concession St. George, began mining in 1904. In Bor you can still see the old flamboyant French houses where French management lived. In comparison, workers were all living in wooden housing. But technological development and modernization in Bor came with the birth of socialist Yugoslavia. The mine was nationalized in 1945, and the industrial town was gradually built around it. Due to the importance of mining in modern industry and the resulting “cult of work”, Bor attained a special status within Yugoslav culture and its collective imagination. It is this status, and subsequent turbulence of the postsocialist period, that now leads it to face Chinese technological investment as the inscription of Bor in global technocapitalistic unification (which rejects cosmotechnical difference). This is the starting point for opening an inquiry of whether we can speak of a specific Balkan socialist cosmotechnics, i.e., a specific local understanding of technology. The question is important because it transcends the entrapment of Balkan and socialist Yugoslavia tradition in the form of cultural curiosity (from being part of the globalized multicultural world in which socialism ceased to represent a threat to the Western capitalist – and from the start, a technocapitalist – project). Still, Balkans is the name of a specific cultural and political locality where mainly South Slavs have resided for centuries under distinct mythological traditions and religious cultures. Due to its geographical position (and resulting unique political and economic position), the Balkans has been of special importance for many imperialist powers. The region as a whole also holds the position of the Other to either/both the West or the East, and besides that, has always been “out[side] of the world”: free-floating in space, endowed with a nonhuman and noncivilized imaginary. After the period of political unification in the 19th century and the consequently established Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century, the region fully integrated under the banner of [a] socialist project, which in case of Yugoslavia acquired a specific positionality between the Western and Eastern bloc – clear in the fact that they implemented a Western technoscientific (cosmotechnical) projection in a supposedly socialist way. If we propose the idea in this way, we must differentiate the alleged unity of the European modern objective based on a specific unifying concept of technology. In other words: we must consider – and question – the difference between the capitalist and socialist objective of modernization. The key question is therefore: are there any differences in how socialist projects enacted an understanding of cosmos and nature through technical means? Since there exists an overlapping sphere of technological thinking between capitalist and socialist alternatives – materialized especially in the totalizing science of cybernetics, which functions as an epistemic unified cosmotechnics without a specific locality – we can also pose an additional question: did socialism enact specific cosmotechnics when it implemented technological and cybernetic thinking? Since [the] Bor mine was one of the first industries in Yugoslavia where cybernetic thinking and computer technology had been installed (the earliest example of Yugoslav computational modernization), we can lay the basic methodological groundwork: contrasting Heidegger’s understanding of technology (which already totalizes the concept of technology on a philosophical level) with Marx’s understanding of technology. From this, and by referring to the implementation of computer technology and management automatization in the industry when examining the Bor mine, we can pose the following question: why did technological progress in the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia slow down at some point? Components from Univac computer, installed in Bor mine in late 1950s. Source: Visa Tasič, Principal Research Fellow of Mining and Metallurgy Institute Bor. Why did technological progress in the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia slow down at some point? By posing this question, we are directly referring to the development of computer technology at RTB Bor as explained by one of our colleagues, a researcher and a former employee at the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Bor, dr. Dragan R. Milivojević: When I wrote the article “Half a Century of Computing in the Serbian Copper Mining and Metallurgy Industry” [4] for a very reputable American journal IEEE Annals of the History of Computering… and – when you write such an article, you send it and it is reviewed by the peer reviewers [who] demand you correct something, etc. – the thing they asked me the most was to explain where this interruption of our development occurred. They remembered us in the rank of Finland and Czechoslovakia, because from 1946 to 1950 those three countries – Yugoslavia, Finland and Czechoslovakia – were technologically at the same level. This is what they were most interested in, and of course I had to explain it a little bit, I had to find the literature on what was in those other countries, and I found out we really haven’t lagged behind at all. We are suggesting that the answer to this question can present a good starting point to emphasize specific understandings of science and technology within the framework of Marxism – the official ideologic, economic and political basis of “real existing socialism”. In the first phase, Marx’s, or more broadly, Marxist understanding of technology (from which the socialist policies regarding technological development in Yugoslavia stemmed) must be differentiated from Heidegger’s (who is predominantly considered the key philosophical representative of the modern Western understanding of technology). The main difference emerges from the fact that Marxism perceives science and technology in its indistinguishable relation to the capitalist mode of production, marked with the broader move from the perception of natural resources as the main source of value towards human resources as the main source of value . Science and technology in Marxism are therefore not so much understood in its relation to nature, but in relation to human nature, whereby presupposing the context of (in Foucauldian terms) governmentality and biopolitics – characteristic of the (Western) modern period. The latter can be understood as a condition of the possibility for Marx’s labor theory of value; Marxist perception of science-technology relation; the linkage of scientific-technological development with the problem of alienation; and especially the ‘institutionalization’ of the split between the manual and intellectual labor – broadly speaking: class perspective on technological development. The establishment of “human capital” (if we would use the classic neoliberal term) as a fundamental of Marxist understanding of technology and technology-nature relations, inevitably led to the (self)limitation of potentially exponential, technological socialist progress. Socialist technological “catching up” since the mid-20th century, driven by the logic of economic rationality, at some point clashed with the logic of the development of social relations. In the specific case of self-governing, socialist Yugoslavia, the latter can be especially seen in the formal equalization of IT experts with all other employees, which led to difficulties implementing critical technological innovation on a micro social level. Dragan R. Milivojević explains this as: […] It was a time of socialist self-management. That period was very interesting. I am not qualified to talk about it, but I can talk about my experience of that period because I’ve lived and worked in [it]: we had terrible difficulty putting an expert idea into practice because at [the] time it was ideologically necessary for all the working people to agree with that idea – all those employed in [the] particular organization. […] The complex organization of the joint work RTB Bor had 23,000 employees, in each relatively autonomous unit of RTB Bor, an assembly of working people had to happen – an assembly of all of the employees – and more than 50% of them [must] vote for this idea. The voice of the lady who [made] coffee and my voice were considered equal. It’s funny but it was a reality. [5] The Socialist “monopole” of state politics/party over the economy, or more specifically, workers’ involvement in the management of factories and their development, in its first phase (at least in theory) tried to reduce established differentiation between intellectual and manual labor by including workers in the decision-making processes. In the case of RTB Bor, the latter can be explicitly perceived by (in all the big factories in Yugoslavia) the mandatory worker’s magazine which shared all crucial information regarding the company’s leadership; investments; its annual loses and profits, etc. The transparency of the factory’s management established this as a common matter, which effectively activated [the] worker’s sense of responsibility (worker’s self-management goes hand in hand with the production of their responsibility [i.e., moral training], which is specific to the socialization rather than individualization of responsibility), and presented that company or factory as a collective. Worker’s magazine “Rudar” (“The Miner”). Source: Bor Library (Bor, Serbia). Did socialism enact specific cosmotechnics when it implemented technological and cybernetic thinking? And could a Marxist understanding of scientific and technological development be the starting point to answer this question? At current stage of our research, we cannot fully answer to the complexities these questions unravel, and in general we see our outlined inquiry as relatively modest: primarily questioning the unification of modern Western cosmotechnics. However, we can further emphasize the Marxist determination of scientific and technological progress in four main goals and its consequences (consequences that can be also seen in specific case of RTB Bor’s socialist period). Those goals are: (1) joint control, (2) rational regulation, (3) minimum power consumption, (4) conditions that are most worthy of human nature and are best suited to it (i.e. demand creative work). [6] Technology itself is largely understood as a synonym for material production (and the opposite of a spiritual one), whereby the main idea is that a society’s material foundations (technical included) are closely related to social change. Technological and scientific development and progress are therefore potential tools for social development and progress; they are seen as a moving force of history, rather than mere liberation of humankind from nature. The industrial revolution of the 19th century, which established the idea of nature as a form of energy in service to the needs of humankind, is defined as a condition for the possibility of a higher form of society, i.e. communist society based on the ideal of creative work (for instance, as manifested in arts). Technology in Marxism is therefore not so much understood within the framework of the Greek techne (an activity that does not satisfy in itself and is, above all, the means of developing other activities. [7] For instance, ars as an activity where human freedom is manifested and this freedom is understood as freedom from the natural laws of necessity , or human’s general susceptibility to nature – including his own). Marxist understanding of technics and technology is not strictly instrumental, objectivist (nature as a means of supply for humans), or idealist. Namely, at least in principle and programmatic terms, Marxism eliminated the differentiation between techne and physis . Technology is therefore a means of human expression, a channel where human activity comes within proximity to the autopoietic creativity of nature, characterized by the merging of techne, poiesis and physis . Since the concept of cosmotechnics encapsulates the nature-technics relation, in this regard we could add that in a socialist society, the ideal of nature’s productivity is established as the very basis for [a] communist society ideal. Naturally, this is all theory, though it does prompt us to think on (socialist) practice or – better yet – real, existing socialist technics? Robert Bobnič is a Ph.D. Kaja Kraner is an independent researcher, lecturer, and curator. [1] The phrase is a reference to the Serbian alternative rock band, Goribor (literally translates to: Burning Bor ) originating from the town of Bor. The band got its name based on the impression of a large fire over the town due to the process of copper smelting slag being separated from copper. [2] Yuk Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics , Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2018, p. 297. [3] Yuk Hui, Machine and Ecology, Angelaki 25:4, 2020, p. 54-66. [4] The article “Half a Century of Computing in the Serbian Copper Mining and Metallurgy Industry” was published in co-authorship with Dragan R. Milivojević, Marijana Pavlov (Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Bor, Serbia), Vladimir Despotović (University of Belgrade, Serbia) and Visa Tasić (Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Bor, Serbia) in IEEE Annals of the History of Computering in 2012. [5] From the interview with Dragan R. Milivojević, retired researcher of Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Bor, Serbia conducted in Belgrade (Serbia) on 22th of October 2020. [6] Andrej Kirn, Marxovo razumevanje znanosti in tehnike (Marx’s understanding of science and technology) , Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1978, p. 226. [7] It is quite evident, Greek understanding of technics follows an already established class division of labor as the basis of antient Greek society: among others, the division between the free citizens and the enslaved ones executing manual labor. Previous Next

< Back A disturbing Chinese dream: scattered thoughts on the cultures of involution and art institution in China 18 Feb 2022 Zian Chen 1. Just as Chinese social media widely popularized the notion of involution, or neijuan, literally “curling inward,” as a term critically reflecting the collective feeling of burnout, quite ironically, its Politburo policy makers has been promoting the concept of domestic circulation, nei xunhuan, as a response to their ongoing economic warfare with the United States and their sustained zero-tolerance policy towards Covid-19. There has been criticism of China’s apparent political seclusionism, although quite a few developmental economists supported its anti-liberalist spirit by connecting it to the dependency theory of the third world. 2. Lately, I’ve found that Chinese contemporary art practitioners actually relate to the feeling of involution in ways that exceed the presupposed instant lifespan of the term. For one, quite a few artists still remember the heyday of the worldwide “fever” for Chinese contemporary art when their studios were visited by international visitors on a weekly basis. They brought funding to China, be it private or public. Back then, Beijing was known as a mutational cosmopolitan city where everything can happen. The fever reached its height before the opening of Beijing Olympics in the summer of 2008, until an (un)timely financial crisis hit and suddenly burst the neoliberal bubble of immaterial wealth. By the time I relocated to Beijing in 2017, the city felt like an entirely different one from what I have heard. On top of the air pollusion and rising living expenses, the city government even attempted to wipe out the artists’ studios on the urban fringe, studio visits by occasional international visitors were often done with the intention to woo funding from Chinese collectors. For another, since Chinese authority rarely exercises its soft power by allocating government funding to its own contemporary art, the marketing strategies of the domestic private art institutions can only be involutional. https://www.bilibili.com/s/video/BV19a4y1577F A video documenting a cycling laptop user in Beijing’s top university. The original post was called “Tsinghua’s Involuted King” and was about those who code on bicycles. 3. It’s worth to note that it is the advent of memes in an internet environment that actively reshaped the term into a netizen’s glossary in September 2021––the highly restricted nature of Chinese internet against access to overseas networks might be seen as an infrastructural attribute of involution. If we look way back into the prehistory of the word, involution––following the sinologist Prasenjit Duara’s adaptation of Clifford Geertz’s term in the 1980s––was merely an academic definition denoting ever-intensifying labor practices in rice farming resulting from a rise in population. Involution is a process that can only result in fierce social competition without relevant technological breakthroughs that increase productive outcomes. The haunted metaphor of agriculture behind today’s all-too-informationalized signification of involution symptomatically suggests its ontological hindsight: it’s been definitive of the nation who once proclaimed its existence being “rooted in the countryside and agriculture” (yinong liguo), and young Chinese programmers have coined a new, self-deprecating term: “code farmer” (manong). Indonesian version of Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia by Clifford Geertz. 4. Prima facie, people seem to be celebrating the astonishing rate of growth in terms of contemporary art infrastructure outside of the nation’s traditional cultural center over the past decade. One can perhaps attribute this Chinese museum dream entirely to the worldwide notoriety of Chinese collectors active today, some of whom perform the dual role of both museum director and curator. A prototypical private museum in Shanghai in the recent years has employed a laissez-faire directorship and a part-time-based staff structure. Nosy media reports portray the museum boom as some kind of gold rush, with blue-chip artists (mostly white) as the gold diggers seeking to get their pricey works into the Chinese market. Their enormous bodies of work make it very easy to churn out proposals for retrospectives in those program-free private museums, tailor-made by the Chinese representative of their international gallery. With its blatant pragmatism emphasizing its efficacy in the dissemination of its cultural capital over critical insight, we can fairly proclaim a new genre of mediocre curating: the instant retrospective. Fortunately, many local veterans are aware that these are just what Eileen Chang called a “gorgeous robe, only infested with fleas on closer inspection.” Privately they all gasp at the unexpected change of the art scene in Shanghai, infested with such tasteless exhibitions in the course of a mere decade. Local veterans never die. They fight back with the eternal picture of the past by mounting exhibitions such as “The History of Chinese Contemporary Art: 40 Years”; some other newly founded museums have revisited the exhibition history of a city as its strategic “salute to the key stakeholders” (bai matou). As for me, I don’t believe these historicisms are really looking for any sort of answer in history; in fact, if there were any artistic movements today capable of propelling a historical moment like the Chinese avant-garde artists once did in the 1980s, perhaps we wouldn’t be dwelling so relentlessly on the past to begin with. 5. Some museums with real-estate backgrounds allocated their museum’s operation costs in their annual promotion budget. Surely, the city government would be delighted to brand your museum a local cultural cluster. That will be very creditable for the municipal cultural officers to boast as their outstanding achivements. In turn, the “philanthropic” investiment can be rewarded with a favor deal in acquiring lands. Another newly opened museum in a second-tier city enjoyed the support from their parent company, a developer whose investment primarily focused on lower-tier Chinese cities. Their staff once characterized such a marketing strategy as “xiachen shichang, or sinking market”: they hosted municipal officials to their art museum which was constructed at the top of a high-rise shopping mall, whose panoramic window provided a bird’s-eye view of the cityscape. How can an elevated view possibly lead to a sinking market strategy? The municipal officials would be very flattered to see the developer’s capacity to bring a Mori Art Museum to their city’s skyline. Now, a popular marketing strategy applied by the nation’s e-commerce business which successfully used low-end products to explore a potential market in lower-tier cities is translated into contemporary art circulation. 6. For some pessimists of Chinese museum futures, this model is doomed, considering the recent U-turn of the nation’s ever-tightening real estate policy, in response to its rising infertility rate. However, another case would point out quite an opposite tendency, considering that the venerable UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, after changing hands to a domestic private-equity firm, has now brought this sinking market strategy back on track. In less than five years, they have opened two other franchises with more to come in quite a few other lower-tier Chinese cities. Arguably, a leading museum has now transformed into one that is also conglomerated with professional museum management business. 7. In the latest managerial involution of the Chinese art philanthropy, what used to be a tight salary expense in securing an exhibition team has now been dissolved into temporary scholarships for recruiting a handful of talented Chinese curators-to-be. It might not be a coincidence that, in this scene, the word “neoliberalism” can rarely be seen in the exhibition press releases and critical essays. To put it in Brian Holmes’s terms for further analysis, the key to the culture of involution (as an extended manifestation of evolution) is its rendering of a “flexible personality” back to an “authoritarian” framework. And neoliberalism, the idea that has historically mediated the transition from authoritarianism to flexibility, has gone undetected by Chinese critics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLBkXYAB-lg Ryuichi Sakamoto at the UCCA Sonic Cure Concert 8. In a time of rising infertility rate of cultural reflexivity and criticality, what kind of culture does such involution grow? Perhaps we should consider a peculiar case from UCCA in a time of emergency and crisis. The pandemic had rendered online public events as a norm. But what marks the genesis of those online events? Back in the days when the pandemic was just beginning, UCCA actually organized the first online event of its kind, entitled “Sonic Cure,” at the end of February, 2020, on a live stream APP Kuaishou, a software with a particularly strong user base outside of China’s first-tier cities (thus bespoke the Chinese culture of involution par excellence). The livestream features, amongst others, the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto experimenting with an almost soundless vibration of a cymbal at his home in New York, and later, we got a glimpse of the instrument’s label in Chinese, “Made in Wuhan.” This sentiment mobilized netizens to project Sakamoto’s gesture as one of solidarity with the virus-affected city. He drew their attention to Wuhan as a major center of manufacturing for musical instruments, a fact which might have remained unknown to wider Chinese audiences. Now labeling as a “cymbal of unity,” the music clip facilitated re-imagining a place away from perceptions of hell. To us this viral image serves as an example of good contamination; it also demonstrates that, under Covid-19, there has been a considerable change in approaches to art making, from an emphasis on production to one on sustained practice. Previous Next