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Events Alumni 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 Future Light: or is A New Enlightenment Worth Considering? | Maria Lind Comradeship: Curating Art, and Politics in Post-Socialist Europe | Zdenka Badovinac What Could/Should the Institution Do? | Ares Shporta < Participants Educational Program Programs >

About educational program Introduction of program 2018-2022 About educational program Introduction of program 2018-2022 Lecture Series Participant Activities < Mentors Educational Program Menu >

Hu Yun < Back “Topola” (Cottonwood trees) and “Breza” (birch trees) and Chinese wok Hu Yun Key words from Bor:Provided by The Hunter and Miss K (two friends from Bor who guided me during my first visit to Bor) http://old.wcscd.com/index.php/wcscd-curatorial-inquiries/as-you-go-journal/bor/ Collected by Hu Yun Disappearing: “Topola” (Cottonwood trees) A towering native, a cottonwood tree soars and spreads, growing more than 30m tall and almost as wide. It’s a cherished shade tree, often planted in parks. In the wild, cottonwood grows along rivers, ponds and other bodies of water. It also thrives in floodplains and dry riverbeds, where infrequent rains transform dry land into waterways. Historically, cottonwood earned its place as a landscape tree because it grows rapidly, cumulatively up to 1.5m a year. It’s also a favorite for shade, with the large spread helping to cast cooling shade over homes and streets. There’s a cottonwood for nearly any region, with different hardy types in Zones 2 through 9. (Brandt, Wilhelm; Gürke, M.; Köhler, F. E.; Pabst, G.; Schellenberg, G.; Vogtherr, Max., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen in naturgetreuen Abbildungen mit kurz erläuterndem Texte : Gera-Untermhaus :Fr. Eugen Köhler,[1883-1914]. www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/303674 ) “Breza” (birch trees) Birch trees belong to the genus Betula and are classified as part of the Betulaceae family of plants. They are typically small to medium-sized trees and shrubs found in temperate zones in the Northern Hemisphere. Some varieties grow in shrubby clusters. Others are trees that clump with multiple trunks. And others grow as classic single-trunk trees. Most birches are characterized by distinctive bark with papery plates; the appearance of the bark often is the feature that gives the species its common names. Birches often form even-aged stands on light, well-drained, particularly acidic soils. They are regarded as pioneer species, rapidly colonizing open ground especially in secondary successional sequences following a disturbance or fire. Mycorrhizal fungi, including sheathing (ecto) mycorrhizas, are found in some cases to be beneficial to tree growth. A large number of lepidopteran insects feed on birch foliage. (Betula pendula Roth, syn. Betula verrucosa Ehrh. Original book source: Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885, Gera, Germany. Source: www.biolib.de ) Appearing: Chinese wok Being the first Chinese person to open a Chinese restaurant in Bor, Chef Qiu’s wok is one of his everyday’s essentials. Image courtesy Chef Qiu, Bor, Serbia Hu Yun is an artist currently based in Melbourne. Previous Next

Anne Bourrassé < Back Art as barrier gestures Anne Bourrassé Early mornings collide with long evenings. Tuesday is like Friday, and Saturday runs without sleep. News are so often repeated that it falls into the norm. The days pass by. Without natural light in the apartment my shadow disappear. It appears behind my back, twice a week, on my way to buy basic necessities. All that remains to be done then is to reconquer the “infra-ordinary”, as Georges Perec calls it, to enchant the usual. There is nothing usual about the crisis. It does, however, impose new attitudes on us, by freezing the binary rhythm. It defines a space for our movements and its choreography of useful gestures. Locked up, the right foot more rarely exceeds the left foot, and vice versa. Big is the magnitude of the situation, small is the space of our condition. How can we extract ourselves from it and apprehend it in new forms? See this crisis as an object in its own right, understanding its language and the tone of its appearances, deducing from it the means of artistic action, even ephemeral and solid. How can we propose an image for the invisible ? How can we lend a material to the impalpable? Artists, curators, critics, operate at a distance to make the sensation of reality take off and allow creation to emit new frequencies. Geographically isolated, but united in the experience of the environment. The studio moved to the home, in a context that constrains us in our possibilities and tools. At the same time, the situation delivers its own atmosphere, it defines its point of view, its materials, its sonorities, and its colours. Resource of inspiration, it sets the tone of time. Art thus becomes a rampart to agitation with its own barrier gestures. Respect the distance with your subject. Listen to your environment. Favour the tools at your disposal. Use your hands regularly. Anne Bourrassé is an independent curator, fostering the interactions between visual arts and humanities. Previous Next

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities On WCSCD educational programme Collective reflections This conversation with What Could Should Curating Do (WCSCD) education programme participants happened in June 2024, during the final part of the 2023/24 education programme. The conversation took place in the rural (the village of Gornja Gorevnica, in central Serbia), as we spent one of the last weeks of the programme together in the WCSCD pedagogical centre.The heat challenged our abilities to focus and to be present during this discussion — the conversation was recorded as temperatures reached 35 degrees celsius in the shade. Writer Toby Üpson, who has been following the programme during its transition over the year, initiated the conversation with questions. Program participants Anna Ilchenko, Asida Butba, Andrey Parshikov, mentor Luigi Coppola and intern Min Chengxiang were present and took part in this conversation. Program participant Laura Rositani wasn't with us during the last visit to the rural. Her responses were introduced to this text later, as the conversation was being transcribed. Overall the conversation tries to reflect on the programme's focus and the embodiment of knowledge. WCSCD’s educational programme was established in 2018, mostly situated in Belgrade. It is an international programme for artists and curators. Having these two positions, curatorial and artistic, in close proximity is very important for WCSCD; in many places that lack an art infrastructure, these positions constantly merge, complement and support one another. The WCSCD educational programme has been a testing ground for creating a collective learning site, a space to think about how to institute differently. The central place of the educational programme in WCSCD’s activities has been vital to the institution; the programme has helped guide us, creating a space to collectively consider many practical questions as well as to think about our future. Biljana Ciric (BC): It’s the 21st of June 2024. Toby, Asida, Andrey, Anna, Luigi, Min, and myself are present. I think it's a good moment to reflect. Toby has some questions which I found interesting and I felt we could think about these together. Toby Üpson (TU): To start off, my first question is really broad and very subjective. The premise of the education programme this year, and its leading question was, what does it mean for an arts institution to become the custodian of land? So, that guiding question automatically implies that the programme is focused around the arts institution and its organisation beyond the programme. In that sense, as participants, I was wondering what and how have you ‘gained’ from the programme — to use a word I don't like —, or at least how have you experienced this process? Asida Butba (AB): You mean in relation to how through knowing our background, what sort of meaning we put into custodianship as a practice, as a way of thinking? TÜ: I think more generally. You signed up and applied to an education programme which is very, very specific. How do you think this process has formed you, if it has formed you, and what have you learned, if anything at all? Anna Ilchenko (AI): Or unlearned. TÜ: Indeed. AI: I was curious about the idea of custodianship, carrying in a larger sense, because of how this word operates in different contexts, in relation to Australian Indigenous communities for example. And how to practise different cultural strategies in order to have a more inclusive society, that sort of thing. I was curious to see whether this situation could somehow be applicable to other contexts. I mean as an experiment, an experimental educational, not practise per se but a condition. It was interesting not just to see but also to practise it [— custodianship]. Of course, I'm oversimplifying because it was purely a kind of artificial, I would say, laboratory situation. But I was curious to see how it could work. Do I know whether it works or if it can be universal, that sort of a strategy? I wouldn't say that I have a clear understanding of how this could be, these ideas come from engaging with knowledges from indigenous communities from other parts of the world. So this is still an open question for me. AB: My motivation to apply was more related to a question of alternative ways of instituting, since I’m organising a space myself that's something that I've been curious about. What are these methods, you know, especially when starting something from scratch with no infrastructural backing, where there’s not a lot of resources to build either or you have to inherit the resources. To me, that was what I found interesting. I'm not sure that the things I learned have anything to do with custodianship of the land. TÜ: How do you think you could apply what you have experienced with the programme to your daily practice? AI: I think that my experience of the programme has been very different. I would say that it fluctuated between inspiration and thoughts you apply to your work directly, but which also have a kind of vagueness or intuitiveness where it's not clear what's going on, where it's not clear how or what the result is going to be. It is an open process. And that's a huge thing. I can go on forever about this and what I can take from this. Andrey Parshikov (AP): After documenta14 I was interested in how and what the connection is between cultural production and the production of goods or food or something like that. I had never thought about that. Second, I never thought about these groups, those who are going into the woods and making something there, who are connected to the land and so on. ‘Land’ was not in my vocabulary as a contemporary practitioner. So it was out of this curiosity that I applied. I learned a lot from the tutors about how artistic value could add something to the production of food and now I understand better all these artists from documenta14, like what their artistic practice is, where their art is and how it works. Laura Rositani (LR): I can certainly relate to Asida's response. My initial motivation for applying was driven by a desire to reconsider my approach to curating, especially in light of my recent learnings. I was and still am particularly interested in exploring more ecological and caring methods of curating. This experience has prompted me to ask many questions: how can I curate a show without artworks? One of the most valuable lessons I've learned is the importance of the process over the material object. The programme made me rethink the methodologies and phenomenologies of new spaces, developing a critical eye and embracing failure sometimes. This was a new experience for me: I've come to realise that the current ‘likes culture’ may not be conducive to learning. This experience has pushed me to think outside of the box and challenge my assumptions. The opportunity to interact with such a diverse and talented group of people from around the world has made me realise how often I limit my view to my own bubble; being with the WCSCD group was enriching. TÜ: It sounds like you all approached the programme with a level of curiosity, an interest you wanted to learn more about. Is it right to say that you've become more knowledgeable about these things? AI: I have implemented the things I learned through the programme in a recent show. Not everything worked but at least this is just something that I felt I could naturally implement both as a curatorial strategy and also as a way to challenge the idea of how to engage with Indigenous context in Russia because these have their own layers of complexity, much more twisted than could be imagined. The exhibition talks about the earth as a political, economic and spiritual agent; we worked with a group of researchers from Yakutia, because of their relationship with the land and their understanding of its purpose as a support system. TÜ: Sounds like there was a knowledge transfer at a simple level taking place. AI: Yeah, I've never done anything before like that. AB: I’ll say there has been an expansion of how I understand what I want to do and what I want to do in the near future. Some of the issues we've discussed here, regarding the land, and some of the readings, give me a sense of the possibilities of what I could do in the environment I work in. Thinking about where I work, I was asking myself what is this? I don't quite understand because I was born in Russia; there are some things I really don't grasp enough and that I have no clue why they work like this. For example, there are activist groups uniting around land-based issues and they are really strong. Young people in their early 20ies have this gut feeling that this is our land, we're not giving it to anybody and so on. I can relate to that. I also work with an indigenous population, in a place where half of the population lives in the rural, it's basically a Caucasus tribe, one living in an unrecognised state [— Abhazia], and I’m actually working with some of these people now, on future programmes for the space I organise. TÜ: How useful was it to have the programme so focused on the rural, and not just in terms of curiosity, in terms of the reality of the situation? In other words, why choose an education programme with no aircon! when you could have been in a library? AP: I didn't want to read books. I wanted to be in dialogue with others and this was a good opportunity for that, an opportunity to learn from other professionals and not from the books, it's always better that way. BC: An embodied experience? AP: Yes, yes, an embodied experience, exactly! AB: It is also all those conversations had beyond the workshops, beyond the presentations and the lectures. For me, these were the spaces for the most fruitful discussions. They were also part of that educational process, for me anyway, and that's why it's important for everybody to be together in a situation like this. Luigi Coppola (LC): After this year, do you think there is a specific category that you can confine to the rural? Is it a specific category for curators or art context to engage with? Do you think there is a specific way of working in this context? AP: Of course, you need to be brave enough to do that. I mean doing an exhibition is one thing and creating the space for rural within contemporary production is another, that’s very different from a traditional art institution. LC: I don't think there is this categorisation. I think it's more a methodology or way to engage with an issue. I don't see the distinction because I don't find a big difference in terms of how the society is built. If we say we have the institution in the city or that an urban area is more educated to the art context what does it mean? Because there are so many rurals; I ema we talk about marginal places, peripheric places, indigenous places, and we categorise everything as a rural place. What we think of as rural is the space for the production of food but it's much more than this. Urban contexts are now also producing food maybe, more than you know. I live in a place where nobody is cultivating anymore there is no attachment to the land, and the people are living exactly with the same trauma, the same mechanism in the city, maybe missing some things in the city, but there is no difference in the way they are educated, they create society, they create a relation. In every context that I've been in, I'm not able to create a category and I don't feel I fit in this idea of rural art, rural artist. I feel all this construction around contemporary art is completely fake, and I don't find this categorisation worth the discussion to be honest, so I try when it's possible to destroy this because I don't feel it's for me. There are so many things that it's more interesting for me to talk about: methodology, engagement, connecting, the way to connect, the way to create, the way to act, the way to practise. We need to talk about situated practice and every time we are in a place we need to discover a methodology for this. AP: It's not about the context. It's very raw. I mean here there is no audience. There is no nothing. There is no… LC: And it is rural? AP: Of course. LC: But it's not part of urban-rural. We can go to many places in the city that are rawer than this. We can go into favelas and we can find people who are very raw. I can show you some raw context in the city. AP: Of course. I'm sorry, but I'm working in a museum. In a museum there is an audience, there is an infrastructure, there is everything. LC: Yeah, but this is an art institution. It's not rural. It's not a question of rural and not rural. AP: But we're building institutions, right? Or alternative institutions. So that's why I'm comparing it to. TÜ: I think it might be useful to reframe a way of thinking. You're in the programme, you're researching, how useful is it to have a specific, project-based, situation like this? To have this institutional project alongside the education programme’s research and the conversations? AI: I think it's very useful. Actually, I really loved this experience here in the village. Also all the rawness that Andrey mentions. Because you're trying to do something and you see the reality of what is really happening. You ask yourself and everyone else more questions, and I think that this is an extremely useful process. The first aspect of the programme was more of a scenery, like all the workshops and so on framed our thinking. I felt that the second part, engaging with this rural context, really required closer engagement with the people who have an understanding of how this place functions, maybe knowing the language. BC: I think that it's interesting that you mentioned this because it's something that I’m thinking deeply about. The majority of the physical programme happened in Belgrade, in a very urban setting. But it's fascinating that when we talk about the programme, we talk about the rural experience. It's very sensorial being together here, living together, eating together, cooking together… AP: Taking showers together… BC: Taking showers together… This experience creates a different bond within the group. This compliments the notion of learning as everyday practice. Figuring out these dynamics interests me; so too, hearing about how our experiences together, in the rural, has left an impression on you. Before moving to the rural we did a methodological preparation. For that we thought about positioning: how do you position yourself as a practitioner, etc., etc. We focused our research with case studies on rural practices from across the Balkans, undertaking a number of field trips to understand these histories and contexts. It was very important that you understood that there were practitioners before us and, like us, that they tried to decenter artistic work. Through this historical research, we learnt where the problems with these practices were, what the struggles were. Indeed, Whilst on our research trips we could actually taste the bitterness of these practices as we encountered their ruins, deepening our thinking about what and how we could learn from these practitioners. So yes, for me it's really interesting to hear how powerful our stay in this rural context was for you, I mean for me as well. AP: We keep forgetting about the part of the programme dedicated to the margins, to the people who went out of the system. This was very important for me as well. When I was living in Moscow I was researching different types of secs, all the case studies and communes we visited resonated with this research, especially in relation to spirituality. LR: To me the situation we experienced in the rural was not that new but still it was challenging. I am not used to sharing the same space with several people for ten days but I believe this brought me to new awareness of myself as a person and as curator. It made me think about the importance of time and slowness: it takes time to get in touch with a community, to take care of it and to come up with something valuable created together. TÜ: Do you think you've gone through a process of unlearning? AI: I wouldn't say ‘what have you unlearned’ is the best question. On a very practical level, I had this knowledge in me already. It's been there since I was a child, I would wash the dishes the same way as you, but I have forgotten all this knowledge after living most of my life in cities. So here the unlearning was more of a case of going backwards, mentally, and unpacking some of the things already embedded within me but which lie latent and unused, like riding a bicycle essentially. TÜ: When I say unlearning I don't just mean bookish knowledge, I mean body-knowledge too. AB: Yes and learning how your body's being socialised. AI: I felt this when we were working with Petra [Pavleka], physically thinking about biodiversity and how to implement this; you took a shovel and your body already knew what to do because you've done it so many times, so this is what I’m saying, it's like riding a bicycle. Growing up I was much more experienced living in the countryside — even though it's a very complex relationship for me because I grew up in the 90s — we had to know how to grow vegetables so we could have food on the table. Being a child you don’t want to go through with this labour, you want to be a kid not planting potatoes. So the rural can be a dark place in some way and that is why I hesitate to go back to something. There were moments of joy, of course, and moments of learning; my grandmother was so knowledgeable about countryside life and I would learn a lot from her. So, for me, an inter-generational relationship and knowledge also resurfaced here. And this is another thing that I asked Luigi when we were having discussion in the autumn; coming from a post-socialist context, for me, it's going back to the countryside and means going back to its models of producing food. I can remember after school or during the summer we would cultivate potatoes for free. Obviously, it was not ‘common wealth for god's sake’ , this was essentially exploitation. For me, this experience surfaces all those complexities. It makes me question the means of labour, its distribution across a labour force as well as all the power dynamics in place or that were in place. TU: I'm very interested in bodily knowledge. You've all grown up, gone down a specific route, normally followed an institutional pathway or a particular curatorial mode of thinking, becoming socialised to that way of working. I am interested to know if you have started thinking about and unthinking how you've been socialised. AB: I mean I can totally relate to Anna regarding the activation of forgotten parts of myself, like washing the dishes or taking a shower or enjoying the view from the window of the toilet. I know these things instinctively, some are active in my present life and others need to be reactivated. I was never really socialised in a... I mean, I do not come from an institution. BC: It's more grass roots. AB: Yeah, I'm not cultivated. I'm just grass root. Just grass. TÜ: Sorry to jump in and to directly ask about your artist space, is the logic you follow to organise this the same logic as the ‘big boy’ institutions? ie, applying for the same pots of funding. I would like to think about this experience in relation to alternative institutional models. AB: Despite my curiosity in alternative methodologies, to organise my space I currently apply to ‘normal’ funding streams. For me, this is the only thing that works honestly. I haven't figured out any other strategy and I don't think that looking at this programme I can see any other strategies that are immediately available to provide me with sustainability. To pursue an alternative system, in my context, I feel I would need to quit whatever I’m doing with my art space and spend two years or more researching alternative strategies. And this is not what I want to do. Our resources in Abhazia are scarce and I’m trying to learn how to do what I do better with these limitations. BC: Can I ask where you think the curatorial is here? AP: While you are creating you are cultivating something or are taking care of something probably. Trying to introduce alternative means of production into cultural institutions that have very traditional and conservative ways of working it's already something curatorial, even thinking about this and thinking about how to do this is curatorial. AB: I think there should be a certain sensitivity to the people we meet in rural areas. For me the curatorial would be to engage more, to try to enter from different angles, to experiment with different means of engagement and to see how people respond. AI: For me it's also about people first, finding people to have conversations with. But also, there is a necessity to care about this place. BC: I have a last question. If the field of curatorial is constituted by the questions we can ask, What is the one question that you would ask after experiencing all the hardship? LC: I'm not sure that the curatorial is constituted by the questions you ask. It's about the care that you put into things, be this an economic thought or the ecology of people. A question isn’t the starting point but a practice. AI: For me, the question, as a cultural practitioner, is about the idea of holistic unity. AB: Maybe my question would be how to create a space that could be productive for listening or how to create a space where everyone present could have a sense of the other or the unknown. LR: More than a question, mine is a thought and again it’s about time and what Luigi called the ecology of people. Working on margins and working on communities requires a lot of time spent on site and with people. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

Yana Gaponenko < Back Activities to stop or to reappear and to be born after (or as a result of) the health crisis Yana Gaponenko Bruno Latour proposes to reflect on the current pandemic situation as the possibility to refuse poisoning and damaging activities we had before it as well as emancipating and liberating ones to appear after we learn to live with the consequences of the pandemic. I may for now conclude that we’ll be totally missing our pre-pandemic brains as we used to miss our pre-internet ones. Nostalgia as a safe space element now defines our daily life practices in quarantine: artists, curators, researchers of all kinds return to their unfinished projects, rethink on their previous background and dive into an inner archeology and inner watching. Diaries will return as a tool of everyday notes and individual archiving and dreams will replace physical travelling in space so people will write down and draw their dreams’ narratives as one of the only unpredictable and not controlled by the state adventures spaces in quarantine times. Past time begins to matter and the concept of the future feels to be reduced. The planning horizon is as narrow as one week maximum. Offline meetings with group activities became extremely precious practices of the past and the concept of collectivity moved from the concept itself to the real people groups quarantine put us in – whether it’s our family we locked in with or our neighbors we rent the space with. At the same time family as a social institution will be reconsidered and people will practice single status much more often after all. All human life spheres will be emphasized with the nationality aspect. The concept of a national state already comes back as geographical borders are now more obvious than ever in past decades. The tools of pandemia fight varies from one country to another. Bio, body management and health maintenance is especially politicized now and have all means of control described once by Foucault. Perhaps control over death will return and replace neoliberal control over life as the medical system isn’t able to sustain so many people suffering from diseases. People will be allowed to die as it was in the Middle Ages. One gets medical help depending on the health system status their country has reached due to inner political decisions of the past. The perverse imbalance of medical help reveals total social injustice in all countries. Vulnerable people became even more vulnerable, precarious cultural workers – even more precarious than earlier. Incest, home violence, suicides will grow. There will become more homeless people as a consequence of the economic crisis and physical distance. Capital, be it financial or symbolic, is the key currency nowadays. Institutionally protected artists and curators will for some time rest in their safe spaces whereas total freelancers and the rest of emerging art makers will show more agility and maybe even invent new means of art production. More and more artists will practice work offline and make crafts and art with palpable materials which will remain after the crisis. Barter as an alternative to money exchange for the service will reappear as a practice of surviving and mutually beneficial cooperation. Home agricultural rituals will reappear and people will live with the vegetables and fruits they planted in their houses which will cause the appearance of the new organic forms of life in a human habitat (worms, insects, etc). Searching for vitamin D people will start moving to the south, and so will the building industry. People will reduce consuming food from the supermarkets, clothes (they may use each other’s protecting costumes when going outside now) and the entertaining experience will remain individual as in quarantine times. Invisible labour done by women in families such as housekeeping and childcare will be equated to the paid work and become more regulated and protected. Office work and going to school will cause a lot of debates after the pandemic and will split society into those who put real interactions at the forefront and others who don’t trust people after all biological battles. Vernissages, public art discussions and symposiums will be held less often than before being replaced by individual tours and consultations for those who can afford it. Art infrastructure will be represented by two polar agents: very strong state art institutions with national old art collections and low horizontal self-organised initiatives. No ‘middle class’ private cultural institutions will survive the crisis. Artwork logistics will become chaotic, works will be bought directly from artists studios, there will become more private collections as collectors will support living artists on a barter basis, making collections of the future look subjective. More and more international council boards will appear to decide on the future of art producing today. Big art institutions will combine their collections for mutual survival and reduce exhibition spaces which no one may maintain anymore. National cultural memory of third world countries will since upcoming times be owned by big players among capitalist countries, bringing us to the new era of informational colonisation. Some practices which will most likely be back but not wished: Elite individual original artworks experience (will make capitalistic gaps even bigger) Rewriting history and informational colonisation (oblivion and propaganda will lead to irrevocable consequences) Alt-right and nationalistic tendencies will grow Control over death replacing control over life (ethical crisis) Some practices which will most likely be back and are wished to: Barter and exchange economy (will strengthen horizontal connections) Self-sufficiency with nature materials, sewing clothes, planting food, crafts (will reduce consumerism) Diary notes, archiving, inner archeology, mail art (will reduce visual overproduction) Vladivostok as a relatively young Russian city (est. in 1860) has always been aside from major empire or state disasters and used to be “a state in the state”. As a voluntary and adventurous place it was discovered by those who were ready to start their life from scratch and had nothing to lose or were forced to settle these lands from the west. This entrepreneurial vein comes to the fore every time the region is in crisis. So nowadays, pandemic unfortunately doesn’t deter people from going to work because otherwise they won’t survive the economic crisis. Extremely remote position from the place of state decision making will leave my region to survive on its own as it has already been doing during the 1990s. Poaching seafood and wild animals will intensify, that’s the way people will become closer to nature here. Vladivostok used to be a closed city until the 1990s, therefore solely as a speculation we may assume that the pandemic of 2020 will just make this isolated city as remote and independent as it already used to be thirty years ago and before it as well (exactly one hundred years ago when the Far Eastern Republic was proclaimed here for a couple of years). Yana Gaponenko (born 1988) – curator, lives and works in Vladivostok, Russia. Previous Next

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As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future Bor Encounters September 15th –September 19th 2022 < Back Bor Encounters 10 Aug 2022 As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future Bor Encounters September 15th –September 19th 2022 www.wcscd.com www.biblioteka-bor.org.rs Press statement from Dragan Stojmenovic, librarian, Bor Public Library, partner cell of the inquiry “The long-awaited gathering of the participants of the As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future project at the Bor Encounters will hopefully not be the end of that journey, although it might be said that Bor is somewhere far away, and at the end of the Belt and Road–like some kind of richly decorated, golden buckle on a cowboy belt, or maybe another hole to tighten or loosen that belt. We will finally get to know each other, socialize, consider what we have done so far to promote our shared work and present it to the widest public, at the same time, we will regret the destroyed natural environment, look for hidden stories among the walls of the library, wander and discover Bor’s arcades–the arches between the columns of the French colonial administration, socialist baroque, and neo-colonial practices of liberal capitalism, in the end, we will eat together the food prepared by the guests-hosts. We just need to agree on how to proceed, what road we will choose. We hope that we will have the strength to stay and survive where we are, until we build our own roads, not expecting them to lead us to predictable and presumed destinations, but to revealing and liberating free expressions of disinterested creativity, movement and encounter.” Statement from us guests and visitors of Bor By the time you read this, most of the preparations for As you go… Bor encounters should be done and we are waiting to walk with you in Bor. Bor is small town and I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of it. It is where Public Library Bor, is located and together we will be hosting number of encounters. Bor is also a site known for its copper mining industry, which has existed since the early 20th century, but also for the recent purchase of its mining complex by Chinese mining giant Zijin. Chinese investment in Bor’s mining industry has created many headlines with regards to land disputes, pollution and relocations. Bor is a very popular film location. Its extraction wounds are vast and photogenic and appear as the background in many movies. We are not going to Bor to extract yet another image of its ever-expanding wounds. We are going to Bor to spend time together as part of transnational inquiry As you go…roads under the feet towards the new future ; to walk with people in Bor, as organized by Jelica Jovanovic ; to eat meals that Hu Yun will cook with Qiu, a Chinese chef who cooks for Chinese workers living and working in Bor Zijin; to gift with artist Jasphy Zheng situating Stories from the Room in Bor Library and to mourn the place together with Robel Temesgen . This will be our first physical meeting since we launch the enquiry in February 2020 in Addis Ababa, although we know for sure that a few colleagues will not be able to physically attend due to closed borders. In addition, this will be our first moment of sharing with public in physical location. The days in Bor also include launch of publication of inquiry As you go… done in collaboration with Mousse Publishing House and Rockbund Art Museum and edited by Biljana Ciric that looks closely into our mode of working and research done since 2020. Participants: Robel Temesgen (artist, Addis Ababa); Larys Frogier (director, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai); Sinkneh Eshetu (writer, Addis Ababa); Aigerim Kapar (interdependent curator, Almaty); Jelica Jovanovic (architect, Belgrade) in collaboration with Dr. Visa Tasic (engineer of electronics), Milos Bozic (member of local community in Krivelj), Katica Radojkovic ( producer and seller of cheese), Nemanja Stefanovic ( student), Hu Yun (artist, Belgrade/Shanghai/Melbourne); Jasphy Zheng (artist, Xia Men/Shanghai); Dragan Stojmenovic (Public Library, Bor); Nikita Choi (chief curator, Times Museum, Guangzhou), simona dvorak ( curator), Vladimir Radivojevic (photographer), Nebojsa Yamasaki (artist). Organized by What Could Should Curating Do and the Bor Public Library Conceived by Biljana Ciric As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future – Bor encounters Introduction As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future – Bor encounter is the first physical public moment of sharing not only our research but also our mode of working based on relationality and interdependence that we bring with us as we move forward. As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future is a long-term project and research inquiry that reflects on the Belt and Road Initiative and how it will alter the aesthetics and practices of everyday life in different local contexts of Ethiopia, Serbia, Slovenia, Uzbekistan, China, Kazakhstan. We have established set commonalities as guidelines of our research including socialism , non-aligned legacies , neo-geopolitical settings , economical influences (especially that of the Chinese and Arab world within localities of similar patterns, that have even employed the same companies through different regions), being an agent of its own culture , and the recent COVID-19 pandemic . Since April 2020, due to the pandemic, we have employed the strategy “dig where you stand”, and have been working with 15 researchers across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ethiopia, Serbia, Slovenia, and China. The research inquiry has been developed trying to listen to local urgencies and learn from them. From there a number of case studies had been formulated and research conducted. Bor encounters is culmination of our work and research done in last two years and will include, number of public moments. China operates within this inquiry as a point of connection, but always with the potential of separation. We did this research with colleagues in China, staying with the trouble as Donna Haraway says. China’s name carries many burdens but what does it mean to talk about China today? Trinh T. Min-ha states that reality cannot be contained and framed in a name. When reality speaks to us, we create an elsewhere within the here and this is what we have trying to do. This was our strategy—not to talk about China as the other, but to speak with China or to speak with Bor . Full day to day program from 15th to 19th will be announced on September 1st All the events are open to public and free of charge and we are looking forward walking with you. More about As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future. As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future is initiated and conceived by Biljana Ciric. The inquiry and research cells include What Could Should Curating Do (Belgrade), Zdenka Badovinac (Ljubljana), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), Guangdong Times Museum (Guangzhou), ArtCom (Astana), Robel Temesgen and Sinkneh Eshetu (Addis Ababa), and The Bor Public Library. The first stage of the project has been supported by the Foundation for Arts Initiatives, CURTAIN (Rockbund Art Museum), Austrian Cultural Forum, Curatorial Practice (Monash University Art, Design and Architecture), and the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship。Bor encounters received additional support from Office for Contemporary Art, Norway. As you go… Bor encounters participants biographies: Sinkneh Eshetu (penname: O’Tam Pulto), a published author and landscape architect, is passionate about cultural landscapes – the combined works of culture and nature. He develops his novels and children stories based on his studies and interpretation of cultural landscapes to help preserve indigenous cultures and natural ecosystems. He develops positive youth development and empowerment media products for children and youth f. Among his 9 published works, fiction and non-fiction are ‘Catch Your Thunder: Rendezvous With the End’ (2015, Partridge Africa ), ‘A Thousand Versions of Love: The Tao of the Dusty Foot Philosopher’ (2014, Oland Books), ‘Affordance-Based Conceptual Framework for Landscape Architecture: Dealing With Change in Fixity and Fixity in Change’ (2012, Lap Lambert Academic Publishers). In the process of publishing are his 12 children books, a ‘Fruitycity Series: Appo My Friend’, based on Fruitycity Children’s World that he has created– an imaginary world where children are leaders. He is a founder of a start-up – a social entrepreneurship company called ‘Fruitycity Children’s World, which he currently manages. Dragan Stojmenović graduated in Ethnology and Anthropology from the Faculty of Philosophy (Belgrade, Serbia), and has been living and working in Bor, Serbia since 1974. Since 2000, he has been working at the Bor Public Library; since 2005 as a Local History Department librarian. He is the author and chief manager of Digitization of Non-book Materials, Cultural and Public Activities of the Public Library Bor ; and the editor and curator of several cultural programs, exhibitions and public lecture series, as well as the online platform http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/ . He has also been an associate of numerous cultural organizations and NGOs, and a co-author of their various projects and programs. His book On French Society of Bor’s Mines photographic documentation was published in 2021. Born in 1987 in Ethiopia, Robel Temesgen is currently a PhD fellow in Artistic Practice at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. He received MFA from Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art, University of Tromsø, Norway in 2015, and a BFA with Great distinction in Fine Art (Painting) from Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, Addis Ababa University in 2010. He took part in several fellowships and residencies, Junge Akademie Program of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and IASPIS, Stockholm, the Swedish Art Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual and Applied Art are to mention a few. Temesgen’s work has been widely exhibited in international platforms in solo and group shows including ARoS Museum, Aarhus (2021), Para Site, Hong Kong (2021), Kunsthall Oslo (2019), Circle Art Agency, Nairobi (2019), Addis Foto Fest, Addis Ababa (2018), Modern Art Museum, Addis Ababa (2018), Tiwani Contemporary Art Gallery, London (2018), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2017), Marabouparken, Stockholm (2017), Nada Art Fair, Miami (2016), Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2016), TromsøKunstforening (2016), Tiwani Contemporary Art Gallery, London (2016), KurantVisningsrom, Tromsø (2015), Lumen Festival, New York (2015), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2014) and Modern Art Museum/GebreKristos Desta Center, Addis Ababa (2013). Aigerim Kapar is an independent curator, cultural activist, founder of the creative communication platform « Artcom ». Born in 1987 in Kazakhstan, lives and works in Astana. Aigerim curates and organizes exhibitions, city art interventions, discussions, lectures, workshops. Cooperates with art and educational institutions and scientific structures. In 2015, she founded in collaboration with the art community, the open platform “Artcom”. The platform brings together cultural figures to exchange experiences and find channels of interaction with society in order to develop and promote contemporary art and culture. In 2017, Aigerim initiated the Art Collider informal school – when art meets science. Where artists and scientists jointly conduct artistic studies, lectures and discussions on current topics. The results of the school are presented at exhibitions, publications and video materials. Jelica Jovanović (1983) is an architect and PhD student at the University of Technology in Vienna, working as an independent researcher. She graduated with a degree in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade. She is a founder and member of the NGO Grupa arhitekata, within which she has worked on several projects: Summer Schools of Architecture in Bač and Rogljevo (from 2010), (In)appropriate Monuments (ongoing from 2015), Lifting the Curtain (2014–2016, exhibited in Venice Bienale in 2014). She also coordinated the regional project Unfinished Modernisations for Association of Belgrade Architects (2010-2012) and worked as s curatorial assistant for the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) for the exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980 . She is a twice-elected secretary general of DOCOMOMO Serbia , for which she is also working as a project coordinator and web editor. She is also the coauthor of the book Bogdan Bogdanović Biblioteka Beograd – An Architect’s Library with Wolfgang Thaler and Vladimir Kulić, as well as the coauthor of the web page Arhiva modernizma with LjubicaSlavković. She is also an OeAD One Month Visit scholar (Austria) and SAIA (Slovakia) scholar. Hu Yun is an artist currently based in Shanghai and Belgrade. In his practice, Hu Yun revisits historical moments in order to provide alternative readings, a process that also informs the artist’s self-reflection on his native and personal ties. His selected solo exhibitions include Image of Nature (Natural History Museum, London, 2010); Our Ancestors (Goethe Institute Shanghai, 2012); Lift with Care (2013) and Narration Sickness (2016) at AIKE Shanghai, and Another Diorama (2019, NUS Museum Singapore). His works have also been exhibited at the Power Station of Art (Shanghai), Centre Pompidou (Paris), The Cultural Centre of Belgrade, Para Site (Hong Kong) and Times Museum (Guangzhou). Hu Yun has also participated in the 4th Guangzhou Triennial (2012), 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016), 6th Singapore Biennale (2019) and 10th Asia Pacific Triennial. He is the co-founder of art e-journal PDF (2012-2013). Larys Frogier has been the Director of the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai since 2012.Since 2013, he has been the Chair of the HUGO BOSS ASIA ART jury and he conceived this new award, exhibition and research program as an evolving platform to question Asia as a construction to investigate rather than a monolithic area or fixed identities.In 2020, he engaged the Rockbund Art Museum in the long term research program conceived by the independent curator Biljana Ciric As You Go… Roads Under Your Feet, Towards A New Future . In 2020, with Alfie Chua, he founded the duo artists Ocean & Wavz engaged in text, sound and image creation. Simona Dvorák is an interdependent curator based in Paris. She develops projects on territories as Ile de France or Central and Eastern Europe. In her practice, she employs performative, sound and video formats, specific to the territorial and temporary context with the valorization of long-term collective work. She questions how we can create spaces of “communality” in the cultural sphere, notably as a curator within Initiative for Practices and Visions of Radical Care (founded by Nataša Petresin Bachelez & Elena Sorokina). She works on creating frameworks for “exhibition processes” that allow us to share and generate knowledges to anticipate possible futures: antisexist, anti-racist, inclusive. These strategies are based on learning and unlearning as a decolonial methodology developed collectively in Nora Sternefeld’s doctoral research para-seminar at the HFBK in Hamburg, that she is part, as well as within CuratorLab dealing with practice of cultural “resistance”, a program led by Joanna Warsza at Konstfack in Stockholm. simona dvorák was also recently a fellow of program Art and Education in documenta fifteen in Kassel. She works now as a curatorial assistant on Walking with Water public program imagined by Biljana Ciric and Balkan Projects in relation to the Republic of Serbia Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. Concurrently, she is in charge of programming at the Department of Cultural Development. Vladimir Radivojevic is street photographer from Bor. Passion towards photographic research he inherited from father. He is working with analog and digital photography since 2005. Vladimir participated in number of group exhibitions. Chef Qiu moved from Cambodia to Bor pursuing his ambition to open Chinese restaurant. Dr VišaTasić , engineer of electronics, employee of the Mining and Metallurgy Institute Bor. Miloš Božić , member of the local community in Krivelj. Katica Radojković , a producer and seller of cheese at the local market in Bor Nemanja Stefanović , a student of communication and a member of the local youth theatre in Bor. Nebojša Yamasaki Vukelić was born in 1986. in Belgrade, where he lives and works. He has received his MA in painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 2021. His work is mostly focused on drawing, through which he deals the question of personal and collective capacities for social imagination. The notion of the end of the world is an important aspect in his work, both as a marker of anxieties experienced by individuals in current contexts, and as an expression of resistance to existing social, economic and political conditions. He has exhibited in numerous group shows, as well as a solo show – Inside it will all be soft and tender , at X Vitamin Gallery. He is one of the recipients of the drawing award of the Vladimir Veličković Fund in 2021, as well as the painting award “Miodrag Janjušević – academic painter”, the same year. BILJANA CIRIC is an interdependent curator. Ciric is curator of the Pavilion of Republic of Serbia at 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 presenting with Walking with Water Solo exhibition of Vladimir Nikolic. She is conceiving inquiry for first Trans- Southeast Asian Triennial in Guang Zhou Repetition as a Gesture Towards Deep Listening (2021/2022). She was the co-curator of the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennale for Contemporary Art (Yekaterinburg, 2015), curator in residency at Kadist Art Foundation (Paris, 2015), and a research fellow at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Høvikodden, 2016). Her recent exhibitions include An Inquiry: Modes of Encounter presented by Times Museum, Guang Zhou (2019); When the Other Meets the Other Other presented by Cultural Center Belgrade (2017); Proposals for Surrender presented by McAM in Shanghai (2016/2017); and This exhibition Will Tell You Everything About FY Art Foundations in FY Art Foundation space in Shen Zhen (2017). In 2013, Ciric initiated the seminar platform From a History of Exhibitions Towards a Future of Exhibition Making with focus on China and Southeast Asia. The assembly platform was hosted by St Paul St Gallery, AUT, New Zealand (2013), Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2018), Times Museum, Guang Zhou (2019). The book with the same name was published by Sternberg Press in 2019 and was awarded best art publication in China in 2020. Her research on artists organized exhibitions in Shanghai was published in the book History in Making; Shanghai: 1979-2006 published by CFCCA; and Life and Deaths of Institutional Critique, co-edited by Nikita Yingqian Cai and published by Black Dog Publishing, among others. In 2018 she established the educational platform What Could/Should Curating Do? She was nominated for the ICI Independent Vision Curatorial Award (2012). Currently she is developing a long-term project reflecting on China’s Belt and Road Initiative titled As you go . . . the roads under your feet, towards a new future . She is undertaking practice based PhD in Curatorial Practice at Monash University, Melbourne. For more info please contact us Monika Husar mokahusar@gmail.com Violeta Stojmenovic sloterdajk@gmail.com Previous Next

< Back WCSCD produces limited edition prints 1/9 WCSCD produces limited edition prints on the occasion of the program Walking as a Way of Knowing- Belgrade 2024 in collaboration with the artists Dunja Karanovic and Jelena Andzic. The Walking as a Way of Knowing- Belgrade is a series of walks imagined as an artist's interventions in the public space that reveal marginal histories, present and future of the place. Dunja Karanovic and Jelena Andzic's prints are inspired by the walks they created and shared in 2024. Prints by both artists formulate tangible and physical traces of these experiences of walking with different participants. The envelope contains seven signed prints by both artists Dunja Karanovic and Jelena Andzic. Edition of 100 Size: A5 (148x210mm) Price: 4300 dinars If you are participated in our walks special discount applies 3800 dinars. More about walks pls visit link here: Https://www.wcscd.com/participant-activities/walking-as-a-way-of-knowing-%E2%80%93-belgrade Statement by Dunja Karanovic: Starting from the Spring of 2024, we walked through Belgrade with the idea of Feminizing the City - looking at both visible and invisible traces left by women throughout history - feminists, freedom fighters, peace activists, but also painters, poets, and dancers. One of the most striking impressions was a monumental emptiness in our public spaces, one that should be filled by the names, faces, and legacies of women. Statement by Jelena Anzic With the increasing disappearance of public spaces in Belgrade, Cerak Vinogradi serves as a reminder of the importance of walking. This urban project was built in harmony with its natural surroundings, all the while glorifying it. When built in 1984, Cerak Vinogradi was built for the future, and we are sadly not there yet - as stated by one of our guides from The Little Town on Top of the Hill walk.

February 4th 2020 2pm – 8pm Guramayne Art Center Addis Ababa Organized in collaboration with Biljana Ciric & Guramayne Art Center < Back Preface 4 Feb 2020 We are pleased to present long term research project As you go… the roads under your feet, towards a new future (If you want to travel, build roads first) . This long term project reflects on the recent Belt and Road Initiative (OBOR), and how it will alter the aesthetics and practices of everyday life in different local contexts. The project invites collaborations with artists, activists, architects, agricultural researchers, and anthropologists in an effort to try and understand the impact of the OBOR on different locales, creating a critical analysis and reflection. The project will be developed in dialogue with different institutions in the parts of the world where OBOR has a great presence, such as in Central Asia, the Balkans, East Africa, who will act as hosts and facilitators of the research to be done in collaboration with local communities. Gathering of partner institutions in Addis Ababa close door sessions and public moment hosted by Guramayne Art Center marks the begging on the project. During this public moment hosted by Guramayne Art Center we publicly announce the project, as well present partner institution of the project WCSCD (Belgrade), Times Museum (Guangzhou), Guramayne Art Center (Addis Ababa), Moderna Galerija (Ljubljana), and ArtEast (Bishkek). For this special occasion few artists work related to topic will be presented. Na China (2019) recently produced film by Marie Voignier as well as A New Silk Road: Algorithm of Survival and Hope , 2007, by Gulnara Kasmaileva and Muratbek Djumaliev. Artist Robel Temesgen new work Addis Newspaper: The Chinese Issue – January 2050 initiated by the project will be also presented. First Phase of the project has been supported by Foundation for Arts InitiativesAdditional grant for first public presentations in Addis Ababa has been received from Soros Foundation – Kyrgyzstan Participants of project public moment in Addis Ababa Robel Temesgen – artist (Addis Ababa) Zdenka Badovinac – director of Moderna Galerija (Ljubljana, Slovenia) Nikita Yingqian Cai – chief curator of Times Museum (GuangZhou, China) Mifte Zeleke – director of Guramayne Art Center (Addis Ababa) Gulnara Kasmaileva and Muratbek Djumailev – artists and founders of ArtEast (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan) Biljana Ciric – independent curator and founder of What Could Should Curating Do February 4th 2020 Location: Guramayne Art Center Format of public presentation 2:00pm – 2:20pm Introduction by Mifta Zeleke and introduction of Guramayne Art Center Introduction of the project by Biljana Ciric 2:20 – 3:00 Lecture performance by Robel Temesgen 3:00 – 3:20 Zdenka Badovinac 3:20 – 3:40 Nikita Yingqian Cai 3:40 – 4pm Gulnara and Muratbek 4:00 – 4:30 Moderated discussion with partner institutions 4:30 – 4:45 Q&A 4:45 break 5:00 Marie Voignier film screening 7:10-7:25 Q&A 7:30 – 7:45 Screening of the work by Gulnara Kasmaileva and Muratbek Djumaliev 7:45 Q&A 8:00 Closing remarks Previous Next