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As you go . . . the roads under your feet, towards a new future (If you want to travel, build roads first) About Cells Activities Online Journal Projects Contributors

Alumni 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 >

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

Alumni 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. Vera Zalutskaya is a contemporary art curator. Her interests are mainly in art of Eastern and Central Europe in the context of postcolonial studies. In 2014 she graduated from the European Humanities University in Vilnius (educational program Theory and practices of contemporary art). Studied also Art history and Culturology: comparative studies of civilization on the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. As a member of different collectives or independently she organized and curated many exhibitions in Belarus and Poland. Zohreh Deldadeh is a freelance art scholar and curator based in Tehran. She started her career as an executive manager in Iranian Art Publishing and Tavoos Contemporary Art Online Magazine; she was part of Mohsen Gallery, one of the leading contemporary art galleries in Tehran; Pejman Foundation’s team as an assistant director and assistant curator in two venues of the foundation (Argo Factory and Kandovan Building). Moreover, she has collaborated as a coordinator, project manager and co-curator with other galleries and art institutions in Iran and abroad. Aleksandra Mikić obtained BA degree in Art History, Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade. Her interests are in the art of post Yugoslavian period in conditions of transition. In her researches she is focusing on art practices as social symptoms in the context of biopolitics and biopower. Anna Tudos is a freelance curator from Budapest, Hungary. She completed the Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) MLitt course at the Glasgow School of Art in 2017 after her studies at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. She is particularly interested in exploring hidden histories and underrepresented issues often through unconventional ways of mediating art. Her recent collaborations include OverOverOver, an artist exchange between Detroit and Glasgow and BRUT Europe with artist Marija Nemcenko. She co-hosts the show ‘Radio Dacha’ on Subcity Radio, exploring the notion of the „East” through discussion and music. Biljana Puric is an independent researcher. She holds Masters Degrees in Film Aesthetics from the University of Oxford, and in Gender Studies from the Central European University. She has published peer-reviewed articles, along with art and film reviews and criticism, in Issues in Ethnology & Anthropology, ARTMargins, Journal of Curatorial Studies, New Eastern Europe, and Short Film Studies. Rebecca Vaughan is a Melbourne based curator and writer. Previously Rebecca was Museum Assistant and Administrator at the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) and Editorial Assistant at Perimeter Books, a small arts publishing imprint based in Melbourne. She holds a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne. < Participants Educational Program Programs >

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Lecture by Hou Hanru / Reengaging a contemporary art institution with civic society Saša Tkačenko, Flags from the WCSCD series, 2018. Photo by Ivan Zupanc THE CURATORIAL COURSE WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE A PUBLIC TALK BY: Hou Hanru REENGAGING A CONTEMPORARY ART INSTITUTION WITH CIVIC SOCIETY MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART BELGRADE WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2018 AT 6 PM In collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, the fifth lecture within the series of public programs organized by WCSCD will be presented by Hou Hanru (Artistic Director of MAXXI – National Museum for 21st Century Art and National Museum of Architecture, Rome, Italy). Following the recent lectures describing new and different perspectives on the theories and practices of exhibition-making, Hou Hanru’s presentation will outline certain aspects of the program developed by Hou at MAXXI, detailing his vision-strategies for the reengagement of a contemporary art institution with civic society in this time of “global crisis.” As part of this, he will also discuss some of the challenges of running a XXI century institution, its complexity, reality, and actions. As Hou explains: “I think that society needs institutions or organizations that can preserve those elements that are supposed to be experimental, complicated, and controversial, while playing a very important part of the knowledge production of today. It’s also very important for museums to be able to provide the conditions that allow intellectually complicated projects to exist. Otherwise we follow the path of the entertainment industry.” ABOUT THE LECTURER: Hou Hanru is a prolific writer and curator based in Rome, Paris, and San Francisco. He is currently the Artistic Director of MAXXI (National Museum for 21st Century Art and National Museum of Architecture), Rome, Italy. Hou Hanru has curated and co- curated over 100 exhibitions in the last two decades across the world. Some notable examples include: China/Avant-Garde (National Museum of Art of China, Beijing, 1989); Cities On The Move (1997–2000); the 2nd Johannesburg Biennial (Hong Kong, etc.) (1997); the Shanghai Biennale (2000); the Gwangju Biennale (2002); the Venice Biennale (French Pavilion, 1999; Z.O.U.—Zone Of Urgency, 2003; and Chinese Pavilion, 2007); the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial (2005); the exhibition and public program of the San Francisco Art Institute (2006–2012); the 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007); Trans(cient)City (Luxembourg 2007); the 10th Biennale de Lyon (2009); the 5th Auckland Triennial (Auckland, New Zealand, 2013); Open Museum Open City (MAXXI, Rome, 2014); Transformers: Choi Jeong-hwa, Didier Fuiza Faustino, Martino Gamper, Pedro Reyes (MAXXI, Rome, 2015–2016); Istanbul, Passion, Joy, Fury (MAXXI, Rome, 2015–2016); Please Come Back, the world as prison? (MAXXI, Rome, 2017); Piere Giraldi (MAXXI, Rome, 2017); Home Beirut (MAXXI, 2017–18); Growing in Difference, the 7th Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennial of Urbanism and Architecture (UABB 2017–2018), among others. He is also a consulting curator of Chinese art for the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and co-curator of Tales of Our Time (2016), Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World (2017–18), and One Hand Clapping (2018). He is an advisor for numerous cultural institutions, and frequently contributes to various journals on contemporary art and culture, lectures, and teaches in numerous international institutions. His books include Hou Hanru, Utopia@Asialink, and School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne (2014); Paradigm Shifts, Walter and McBean Galleries Exhibitions and Public Programs, San Francisco Art Institute (2011); On the Mid-Ground (English version published in 2002 by Timezone 8, Hong Kong, and Chinese version published in 2013, by Gold Wall Press, Beijing); Curatorial Challenges (conversations between Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist, in Art-It magazine as “curators on the move,” Japan, 2006–2012, Chinese version, Gold Wall Press, Beijing, 2013); among others. The WCSCD curatorial course and series of public lectures are initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric together with Supervizuelna. The lecture by Niels Van Tomme is made possible with the help of MoCAB and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with the additional support of Zepter Museum and Zepter Hotel. Project partners: The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; GRAD—European Center for Culture and Debate; EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial, ’Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’ Foundation and Zepter Museum. The project is supported by: the Goethe Institute in Belgrade; Istituto Italiano di Cultura Belgrado; the Embassy of Sweden; the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; the Embassy of Ireland in Greece; the Embassy of Indonesia; the EU Info Centre; Pro Helvetia – Swiss Art Council; and galleries Eugster || Belgrade, HESTIA Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau, and Zepter Hotel, Royal Inn Hotel and CAR:GO. Media partners: EUNIC Serbia, RTS3. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Reimagining the museum | WCSCD 2020/21 Annual Lecture Series The curatorial program What Could/Should Curating Do 2020 is proud to continue in 2020 with public program through lecture series The first talk in the 2020 series is titled: Reimagining the museum By Luca Lo Pinto Date: November 10, 2020 Time: 12:00 pm Belgrade/10:00 pm Melbourne /6:00 am New York Venue: zoom invitation link (ID: 985 237 3109) Live stream/Facebook event link “The museum is a medium that should constantly be able to be questioned. It cannot be anymore intended as a space of mere contemplation but rather as a social space based on freedom of experimentation and on the desire to realise artists’ visions. In a historical moment in which the concept of museum and its identity are constantly challenged by social and economic changes as well as by the language of art itself, it’s essential to experiment with alternative models. In occasion of the talk, I would discuss the program I’m developing at MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome where I’m turning the museum into an exhibition intended as a form and place of production. A container which becomes content – aiming to reduce the distance between the dichotomies of museum-actor and public-spectator”. Portrait by Giovanna Silva About Speaker Born in 1981, Luca Lo Pinto is the artistic director of MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. From 2014 till 2019 he worked as curator of Kunsthalle Wien. He is co-founder of the magazine and publishing house NERO. At Kunsthalle Wien he organized solo exhibitions of Nathalie du Pasquier, Camille Henrot, Gelatin&Liam Gillick, Olaf Nicolai, Pierre Bismuth, Babette Mangolte, Charlemagne Palestine and the group exhibitions Time is Thirsty; Publishing as an artistic toolbox: 1989-2017; More than just words; One, No One and One Hundred Thousand; Individual Stories and Function Follows Vision, Vision Follows Reality. Other curatorial projects include Io, Luca Vitone (PAC, Milan),16th Art Quadriennale (Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome), Le Regole del Gioco (Achille Castiglioni Studio-Museum, Milan); Trapped in the closet (Carnegie Library/FRAC Champagne Ardenne, Reims), Antigrazioso (Palais de Tokyo, Paris); Luigi Ontani (H.C. Andersen Museum, Rome); D’après Giorgio (Giorgio de Chirico Foundation, Rome); Olaf Nicolai-Conversation Pieces (Mario Praz Museum, Rome). He has written for many catalogues and international magazines. He edited the book “Documenta 1955-2012. The endless story of two lovers” and artist books by Olaf Nicolai, Luigi Ontani, Emilio Prini, Alexandre Singh, Mario Garcia Torres and Mario Diacono. In 2014 he published a time capsule publication titled 2014. WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? (WCSCD) WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? (WCSCD) was initiated and funded in 2018 in Belgrade as an educational platform around notions of curatorial. From 2020 WCSCD started to initiate its own curatorial inquiries and projects that should unpack above -mentioned complexities keeping educational component as a core to the WCSCD. The WCSCD curatorial program and series of public lectures have been initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric. WCSCD 2020/2021 public program series has been done in collaboration with Division of Arts and Humanities, Duke Kunshan University and they co-stream all public lectures. Strategic media collaboration is done with Seecult and they will co-host all public lecture series. Project Partners Media Partner For more information about the program, please refer to www.wcscd.com Project contacts: what.could.curating.do@gmail.com Follow us: FB: @whatcscdo Instagram: @whatcouldshouldcuratingdo < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

< Back Stories from the room - Conversation 21 Feb 2022 Jasphy Zheng Stories from the Room project by Jasphy Zheng has been implemented in many locations including Shanghai, Addis Ababa and Bor among others. Participants and organizers of the project in different locals gathered to reflect on situating the project locally. After this meeting, we continue to work on a permanent home for Stories from the Room achieve in Public Library Bor. Participants in conversation were Jasphy Zheng (artist), Violeta Stojmenovic (Public Library, Bor), Larys Frogier (director Rockbund Art Museum), and Dawit Seto and Sarah Bushra (Contemporary Nights, Addis Ababa) and Biljana Ciric (WCSCD). Previous Next

< Back Notes on respiration 15 July 2021 Teodora Jeremić Breath underwater Last night I had a strange dream, although not the first one of this kind during the last year and a half. Living in the time of pandemic means living in the world of altered reality where the only constant is change, where time and space are shifting and diverging, habits are disappearing and being replaced faster than we ever thought possible. With that amount of instability, insecurity, doubtfulness in our conscious lives, one of the first things that experienced a sudden change was our subconscious, and consequently our sleep. Many suffered pandemic-induced insomnia, as a by-product of a state where we tend to stay awake as long as possible or not be able to fall asleep at all, due to irrational fear that sleeping might mean losing an important piece in the flow of information, which was difficult to follow anyway. Luckily, I belonged in the second group, the one with deep sleepers whose regular sleeping hours are not disturbed even by looming apocalypse, although the quality of my sleep was indeed changed to some extent by extremely vivid dreams imbued with modified fragments of the new reality. Last night, I dreamt that the world was coming to an end in a rather peculiar way. In the light of impending doom whole humanity was supposed to move and settle underwater. Beneath seas, lakes and oceans new cities were sprouting. Along the coral reefs new settlements were established, new kinships were made, new way of life was flourishing. Our nonhuman-human relationships were thriving in this new space of confinement and safety, blurring the line between one world and another, smudging the differences between guests and habitants. The ones who were living under water for a longer time even physically adapted to the new circumstances and appropriated some of the characteristics of sea world creatures. It could be said that a new hybrid species were on the way. In my dream, I was still completely human, just surprisingly light. I was capable of smoothly moving around, sliding through water, walking and swimming, and I was doing all of that with an utter freedom, completely relieved from earthly worries, when a giant, shimmering but quite ordinary looking, and pretty impolite dentex got into my way and reminded me that I don’t know how to breath “down here”. Suddenly, I realized that he must be right, because I really didn’t have any branchiae, and all of a sudden I couldn’t take a breath. I am breathing fire and a bit too busy to help * As I’m writing this, I can’t be sure if things would have been different, even if we didn’t have the year of pandemic behind us. Maybe it would have been just the same either way. But I believe that perhaps my continual presence in the moment and being mostly in the company of myself (since I obviously didn’t have anywhere else to be and anyone to be with except occasional nostalgic episodes of daydreamy ping-pongsbetween past and future) was pretty much pandemic-specific and has provided me a great insight of learning how to listen to my body. I didn’t become a guru, or mastered meditation which I hoped to, but I gained some insight of how my body functions and what it needs, and during the last year, air and breathing became very relevant fields of exploration for me. Like many others I was looking for my personal haven, different ways of keeping my sanity under control and my optimism high as well as options for practicing self-care, and I was privileged enough to be able to do so. Even in the world where pandemic has begun to break down engrained divisions between collective care and self-care, not everyone yet had the possibilities to practice it, but the word “care” did become probably the most used (and borderline exploited) term. The notion of “care” got its high position in almost every circle, with cultural practitioners and institutions particularly focused on discussing ways to offer better care. The only difference is that there were those who are calling for care and awareness for a long time, considering it as the primary tool for fighting against oppression and injustice, and the others who just now recognized (or were made to recognize?) the need for care. Despite some questionable motives, the fact that we needed to start taking care and practice healing many years ago remains crucial, so I’m glad we finally did. No matter the circumstances. Speaking about self-care is impossible without at least mentioning breathing as it is being considered a number one remedy for relaxation, stress management, calming down, anxiety relief and everything else we need in this day and age, and in the light of pandemic I gave a try to mindful breathing. My technique of conducting it is still not praiseworthy but it helped me a lot in understanding that thinking respiration, being aware of it, living according to it, actually represents a synonym for the changes we need. Slowing down, paying attention, listening carefully, interchange. We got too scattered, too busy, too repressed by the ideas of greater goals, usefulness, purposefulness and productivity, that it was needed to find our way to the “pause” button for the whole system and enough strength to push it without fear of the potential failure. When we did, when the button was pushed to the end, and as Latour said, we slowed down the system we were told it was impossible to stop, we all got newly conquered spaces for breathing. In that new space, what was needed was to make a proper inhale and exhale, and begin the process of unlearning everything we know, especially regarding this constantly present distress over productivity. To acknowledge that we cannot be productive or creative all the time and that we are not less worthy because of it. But, along with it another question was imposed. Where do we go after the break? What do we do next? Where does that new inhale-exhale dynamic bring us to? Breath me in, breath me out Breathing is the process of moving air through the body, facilitating gas exchange with the internal environment, mostly to flush out carbon dioxide and bring in oxygen; to dismiss detrimental and toxic, and take and consume what is beneficial and vital for us. That process is, besides being substantial for living creatures, also a good reminder that already in the very basic concept of life, lies the natural predisposition of the humankind to not only survive, but also distinguish right from wrong, and get rid of the latter, even through the most basic needs. That being said, even though breathing does have some healing and soothing effects, in the face of air pollution and climate change caused by extractive capitalism, when it’s getting harder and harder to breath not just on ecological but also political level, it is difficult to pretend air is not also the territory of constant struggle. As according to Mbembe, it is certain that the air we breathe will become more and more full of dust, toxic gases, substances and waste, particles and granulations, in short, all kinds of emanation in the time that is yet to come, but it is also even more sure that asphyxiation that is brought to us, comes in many forms making “breathlessness” the permanent contemporary condition. “There is no air in megalopolises which are suffocating in pollution, in precarious working conditions which exploit workers, in the ubiquitous fear of violence, war, aggression” [1] . Breath is precious source of life, and in the moment in which Berardi`s “breathlessness” is more present than ever, the question of respiration becomes not only the question imposed on an individual, but rather deeply collective, asking what brings us all to the state of being deprived of air and how do we confront it? Winter 2020/21, Belgrade was one of the most polluted cities in the world, even first place holder on that top chart for some time. One of the rare situations when No 1 status is not to be bragged about. After months and months of the government ignoring the problem and bouncing the questions from ministry to ministry, on the 10th of April several thousand people decided to go out on the streets, and protest in front of the Serbian parliament against the lack of government action to prevent water, land and air pollution by industries. The protest was dubbed the “Ecological Uprising” , it was organized by environmental activists and protestors demanding the introduction of a moratorium on the construction of small hydroelectric power plants, the suspension of deforestation in Serbia, as well as a more intensive afforestation. They called for an end to the misuse of money for ecology, for authorities to stop ignoring environmental impact studies, such as the construction of mini-hydropower plants on the environment, and for citizens to be better informed about environmental issues. Borjan Grujić [translation: knowledge and talent that’s fine, but what about the desire for change?] The Defend the Rivers of Mt. Stara Planina (Odbranimo reke Stare planine – ORSP) movement was the main protest organizer, but the gathering was supported by many organizations and associations from all over Serbia, a total of 45, including Pravo na vodu, Eko straža, Građanski preokret, Tvrđava, Trash Hero Serbia. Activists from region, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina, joined the protest as well, saying that everyone in the region shares the same concerns and problems, or as Lejla Kusturica from the Coalition for the Protection of the Rivers of Bosnia and Herzegovina put it well: “we are here today with you because we share the same problems: unjust, imperious governments, total neglect of local communities for the benefit of some powerful individuals” [2] . Representatives of 45 organizations agreed on dozens of demands including implementation of the constitution and environmental protection law, information and education on environmental protection at all levels, suspension of construction and revision of harmful SHPPs project, participation of citizens in environmental issues etc. “Uprising” happened as an answer to years and years of unfair dealing and wrong ruling when it comes to nature. Ecological problems in the region differ from “micro” (local) to “macro” (regional) but based on the same exploiting principles of neo-liberal capitalism that people around the world are struggling with, which at the end it all come to: extraction of common goods, unfair ruling and non-transparent processes behind it, exploitation of nature and destroying nature ecosystem. Very same principle is recognizable both in “small scale” project such as one of many intentions of investors like “Avala Studios” (now 70% held by Cezch company “Sebre”, 30 % Chinese company “Filmax Hong Kong”) to cut 40 hectares of forest and greenery in Košutnjak in Belgrade in order to build residential complex, or equally careless larger scale projects, such as Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto that is examining the possibility to start mining jadarite, a lithium and boron mineral unique to western Serbia, around the river Jadar. If Rio Tinto starts to extract lithium, arsenic will be deposited in the tailings and the entire area will be unfit for agriculture, threatening people’s health, as well as 140 species with extinction. Those are just some of many examples, followed by constant growth of the small hydropower plants in Western Balkan. From the middle of the 2000s onwards, some of the Western Balkans’ countries – notably Albania, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina – started issuing concessions for small hydropower plants. “The EU had set targets in 1997 for the share of renewable energy by 2010, so it was clear there was going to be increased interest by investors in this sector in the future and the reason why the Western Balkans’ targets seem quite high compared to the overall EU target of 20 per cent is that the Balkan countries had quite high levels of renewable energy to start with” [3] . Overall goal of the renewable energy targets to help Europe move away from a fossil-fuel based energy system seems like positive intention, but what is problematic is that indeed the EU does allow some potentially harmful forms of renewable energy to be incentivised as well as that besides contributing to environmental damage, initiatives for hydropower in the Western Balkans are often criticized for benefiting wealthy business for people who are close to or part of region’s governments. In Serbia for example, companies connected to Nikola Petrović, the best man ( kum ) of President Aleksandar Vučić, are among the top beneficiaries of hydropower support [4] . Borjan Grujić [translation faster, stronger, better! * /slow, strong, good] *This is the political slogan of Serbian president used during the election campaign and afterwards Reading the reports and thinking from perspective of someone who is not part of European Union, but whose resources are being exploited for the sake of better and more sustainable life in EU, it is impossible not to think about the work “Naked Freedom” by Marina Gržinić and the parallels and remarks Kwame Nimako made on the attitude Western Europe has towards Africa and Eastern Europe. At the same time, it is very easy to become aware that the other side of “exploitation” coin, belongs to substantially self-exploitative practices that favour particular private interests of few who are not really familiar with the word “common”, no matter the price. With all of this in mind, from the position of government, “Ecological uprising” was of course read as an act of opposition (a typical “if you are not with me you are against me” kind of rhetoric) and Prime minister in usual manner minimized the problem by responding as “This topic shows jobs and pensions are no longer a priority in Serbia because when you start dealing with the environment, you are dealing with the problems of the first world” [5] . In well-practiced and masterly spinning, it is interesting how fast we came from “we are fighting for basic living conditions (plus you are exploiting our common goods)” to “you are just being too spoiled and living too good when you start to protest about this”. It is even more interesting that anyone who knows average salary in Serbia [6] would even dare to make such remark and comparison between “first world” and the world we are living in, whichever number it is, but concept of “good life” is a changing context I guess, especially when you are misusing information. Still, the most interesting part is how the exact same type of rhetoric is being used by every contemporary autocrat, new type of “democratic” parents of nations, self-proclaimed saviors of the people. Those who exploited crises so many times and in so many ways that the burst of protests and uprisings during this and last year was a common thread that connected many countries, proving that people all over the world are tired of being repressed and used, but also boiling with an accumulated discontent, ready to burst. Along with protests against rampant corruption in Bulgaria, the ones against president Maduro in Venezuela, or tens of thousands of protesters who took the streets in Sudanese cities despite a lockdown to demand a transition towards democracy, global rise of anti-lockdown (actually anti-government) protests was noticeable. There was a similar perception in many countries that political leaders were misusing restrictions for political purposes. Leaders of countries such as Bolivia, Israel, Serbia, Uganda, Brazil shared the irresponsible, inadequate approach to the pandemic, laughing it off at the beginning, but is also worth mentioning how similar is their attitude of minimizing the significance of planetary problems, environmental crisis and climate change, manipulating the information, misusing the trust of the people. Serbia is not any exception to that, with last year and this year protests as a proof. Slavica Obradović, digital art Still, seeing so many people in the street this time felt much different than standing on the same pavement in front of the building of Parliament last year. We have chanted, we have marched, we have asked for answers to the most urgent question for this and next and any generation that comes after. We have expressed worries, ideas, suggestions, warnings, hopes, desires. We were together, peaceful, united and powerful. Unlike the protest in July 2020. “Ecological Uprising” didn’t turn to violent, and was not even necessarily just of political opponents as much as comrades in the fight for commons: common sense, common goods, and common future, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity, and that gave me hope. A sense of mutual solidarity and honest concern that was prevailing. Standing there, in the midst of banners reading “Cut corruption and crime, not forests!” or “Water is life” and “Plant a tree!”, I was holding my borrowed protest sign saying “In rivers we trust!”, which I obtained after losing mine somewhere in the crowd. I was surrounded by different profiles of people, people from different cities and villages, with different backgrounds and socio-economic conditions, little children, old people, students, parents, friends, well known public personalities. It felt very empowering and like everyone is being aware that the reason for being there is much bigger than them. Much bigger than this government, or next, or previous. It resonated with what Zdenka Badovinac beautifully wrote that “the lesson of Covid for the entire world, and not just for our leaders, is that the interests of capital have interfered too greatly with nature.” [7] and that tampering with nature was the final straw in an endless sequence of exploitation which is not to be tolerated anymore. Because the story of planet and nature exploitation goes hand in hand with every other tale of exploitation we are familiar with. Slavica Obradović, digital art And it is not just about capital, but also sexism, racism, classism, speciesism, androcentrism, any other systems of oppression we could possibly remember that reinforce each other and lead to the degradation of life and the destruction of nature. It is constant, ever-lasting, tenacious tendency to put all oppressed groups (women, colonized people, marginalized communities) on an equal level to nature, abusively labeled “as part of nature”, meaning something outside the sphere of reason and history. There is some kind of inherent or even structural connection between the patriarchal domination of women (and, in the view of some theorists, other socially oppressed groups) and the ecologically destructive exploitation of the earth, and something predominantly masculin in emphasizing that “human” and “nature” are separate categories. Patriarchal exploitation of female bodies, and the capitalist exploitation of workers and planetary resources are rooted in the very same worldview where is important and possible to own things, and in which all that is not human and is not male is devalued. Going back to Franco “Bifo” Berardi, and his megalopolises suffocating in pollution, as well as workers in precarious working conditions and exploitation, or women fighting the hundred-headed beast of inequality treatment, his “breathlessness” parallel works very well as a reminder for how many different oppression we might feel in our contemporary lives, and how “being left breathless” is not always as romantic as it might seem. It is not new that we are suffocating in the unjust, exploitation, inequality for a long time and it is a text written back in 1974. when Francoise d’Eaubonne called upon feminists to wed their cause to that of the environment and lead the way into a post-patriarchal, genuinely ‘humanist’ and ecologically sustainable future [8] , which is something to be reconsidered. Therefore, having an “Ecological Uprising” meant something more than just having a protest. It was not an ecological protest, even though it was the biggest one so far, nor just a political one, but rather an outburst of pure activism that is offering a way to “post-patriarchal” society, through the means of resistance and renovation, linking struggles against environmental degradation with the endeavour to overcome social domination, on all the basis. Street and sidewalks in front of the Serbian Parliament turned to meeting space where the opposites met. People from the villages around Stara Planina, activists from different cities across Serbia and region, university professors, students, pensioners, families with children. The face of the protest was not the face of political opposition and some of its representatives we already know, nor the face of the foreign management as it was of course implied, but the simple and beautiful face of common people, standing for their cause. Thus, rather than being just another protest, “Ecological Uprising” seemed more like witnessing the genesis of new collective body that is heterogenous, peaceful but determined, sharing the values of equality, celebrating the values of care and well-being, and will for dismantling systems and power structures based on domination and exploitation. Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breath and to love you Given that everything evaporates and disappears in the air, and that we all breathe it at the same time, it is our most personal piece of space, but in the same time the space in which we all meet. As Lisa Blackman argues: “Instead of existence in which we are connected but autonomous subjects, we actually coexist in a common ecology” (Blackman, 2010). Or as Irigaray writes “I can breathe in my own way, but the air will never simply be mine” [9] . Breathing unites us with the others, at the same time that it underlines our individuality, and the protest reminded me of that. The one who breathes is also breathed upon, the one who takes and consumes is also giving back, and in that very act of sharing breath, lies the very essence of human conviviality. It is a mutual “space” which we inhabit, exchange, in which we meet and live in a common system where every human exists in comparison with the other, and where the idea of “commoning” is closer than anywhere. Borjan Grujić [translation regular state of emergency] Every riot brings a possibility for new after-life. After dismantling the old, new is to be established and the more I was interested in respiration the more I got the feeling that it could explain the contemporary chaos and offer useful methods and system. Thinking about respiration I couldn’t stop thinking about Deleuze and Guattari rhizome concept. Instead of tree structure that became the dominant ontological model in Western thought, that reinforces notions of centrality of authority, state control, and dominance the rhizome has no unique source from which all development occurs (strangely enough, it looks very similar to the respiratory system). The rhizome is both heterogeneous and multiplicitous. It can be entered from many different points, all of which connect to each other. The rhizome does not have a beginning, an end, or an exact center, it is based on sharing and equality, the same way air is. Thinking about it also reminded me how air was unfairly ignored and forgotten and has received far less attention in the political environmental literature than its sister element water. Still, they function according to a similar principle of connection, non-recognition of boundaries, mobility, and according to the deeply feminist principle of circularity. If there are elements we should listen to while constructing the new post-pandemic systems they’re those two. Just as water, air and respiration reveal key aspects of permeability, relativity, vulnerability and indomitability, which speak of the feminist re-examination of the body as completely open, unstable, changeable, but also recognizing and valuing the same in the social system, and can extend a shared sense of place and a sense of shared responsibility for collective commons or worlds. As Luce Irigraray writes, air is mediator of all perceptions, knowledge, thoughts, language, imagination, action, and as such, respiration is the practice that connects us. It is the principle of exchange, which Irigaray sees as instinctively feminist, since breathing is in its essence, a feminist rearrangement of the procedural and relational course of life. It is a practice of care, nurture, togetherness. And of course, the focused or any other type of breathing won’t ultimately save us from the crunching capitalism but something else might- learning how to live as air breathing bodies. It made me think of Sarah Ahmed’s text how self-care can be an act of political warfare. “And that is why in queer, feminist and anti-racist work self-care is about the creation of community, fragile communities, assembled out of the experiences of being shattered. This is why when we have to insist, I matter, we matter, we are transforming what matters … For those who have to insist they matter to matter: self-care is warfare. [10] Borjan Grujić On my way back home from the protest that was fighting for the clean air understood in all beautiful meanings it could possibly have, I was walking to the rhythm of my own breathing, thinking my yoga instructor would be very proud of this. It felt so natural, in sync, and empowering. It sounded like a beat of change. An inhale of solidarity. An exhale of resistance. And just like that it occurred to me that the one of the main characteristics of breath is also that it can be held, but just for a short time. We can put up with a lot of it, but hopefully, not for too long. Last year rumbled through, followed by great amplitudes in almost every part of our lives while simultaneouslyfeeling like nothing happened. But in the meanwhile, something did. We decided to breath out, to let the stiffness in our lungs and bellies, exhale the stale air and at least try to start shaping new ecosystems. Resistance is building everywhere, and not just against one man, in one country, against one ideology, one -ism, but rather against all the set of values that dominated way too long. A new kind of collective body, isbeing shaped. The one that doesn’t recognize borders, or nations, or leaders, and its only being formed by mutual criticality towards present conditions of living and collective willingness to react. The other day I had a short zoom talk with Marko Gutić Mižimakov and Karen Nhea Nielsen, and while writing this I simply cannot help but constantly think about their work “Thank You for Being Here with Me” and repeat it in my mind like some kind of mantra. “when I say we, I am counting you in when I say we, I am talking about you too and also you when I say we, I am speaking from this space We were one and more than one before”. Slavica Obradović, lean on Teodora Jeremić is an art historian, freelance curator, and editor based in Belgrade. [1] Franco Bifo Berardi, Breathing: Chaos and Poetry, Semiotext(e), pg 15, 2018 [2] https://twitter.com/K_U_P_E_K/status/1380862839326449669?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1380862839326449669%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbalkangreenenergynews.com%2Factivists-gather-at-ecological-uprising-in-front-of-serbian-parliament%2F [3] “Western Balkans hydropower: Who pays, who profits?”, September 2019, pg 10. [4] “Western Balkans hydropower: Who pays, who profits?”, September 2019, pg 5. [5] Prime minister Ana Brnabić was guest on RTS channel where she spoke about “Ecological Uprising”, https://rs.n1info.com/vesti/brnabic-ekoloski-ustanak-primer-nepostovanja-vecina-ljudi-nije-nosila-maske/ [6] According to this year report average salary is around 500 euros. Still, being average it is to be noted that there is a big stratification, where salaries are larger in Belgrade, and the reality of the citizens in most other cities is that people are getting by with 300 euros a month. [7] Zdenka Badovinac, “Editorial: The Collective Body”, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/119/403341/editorial-the-collective-body/ , Journal #119 , June 2021 [8] Kate Rigby, “Women and Nature Revisited: Ecofeminist Reconfigurations of an Old Association”, January 2018. [9] Luce Irigaray, “From The Forgetting of Air to To Be two”, in Nancy Holland; Patricia Huntington. Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001, 209. [10] Sarah Ahmed, “Selfcare as Warfare,” Feminist Killjoys, https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/08/25/selfcare-as-warfare/ Previous Next

< Back The stories behind the lockdown: Kazakhstan against Corona 28 July 2020 Anvar Musrepov During the quarantine, Kazakhstan became the first country in the world to return to a full lockdown in a post-Soviet authoritarian manner. On March 19, lagging two weeks behind the actions of EU countries, quarantine was announced in Kazakhstan. Schools, universities, and shopping centers were closed. Armored soldiers with military equipment and machine guns were placed in front of city entrances, as police checked all passerby’s, asking each person about their purpose for simply walking. Considering the low number of coronavirus cases at the time, many people agreed that the government reacted with unreasonably strict protocols. There were few infected patients, yet the military marked those territories, cordoned off neighborhoods at the foci of infection, and in some cases even sealed entrance doors to apartment complexes containing dozens of residents. Kazakhstani citizens didn’t have the opportunity to go outside, exercise or even go for a walk. Quarantine adopted an extremely totalitarian style, and for many, it seemed that the Coronavirus was merely an allowance for the performance of an authoritarian power. The special local consciousness of people, based on the mythological perception of reality, gave rise to a large stream of fake news: from disinfection through a pagan shamanic ritual of fumigating the space with sacred grass, to conspiracy theories denying the existence of Coronavirus, and connecting the quarantine with the prolonged transition of power in the country. Back in the Soviet period, political mythology was a part of the folk art. The Kazakh state system of making decisions behind closed doors lead to a conspiracy vision of the world among many of its citizens. One of these myths, for example, tells of secret meetings in the underground halls of the President’s palace, where Nazarbayev conducts mystical rituals with the cabinet of ministers, before levitating at the moment of worship. The mythologization of power and undermined trust also impacted the effectiveness of the information campaign of COVID-19, leading many people to simply deny the existence of the virus, linking the quarantine to political manipulation. For a local economy built on the sale of crude oil, the beginning of the quarantine also marked the beginning of an economic crisis, caused by negotiations between Russia and the OPEC+ countries to limit oil production. The lack of work due to quarantine was accompanied by a sharp fall of the national currency, and an increase in the prices of goods and services. Under these conditions, the art community of Central Asia consolidated and created an alternative art market within a Facebook group. Initiated by Kyrgyz artist, Meder Akhmetov, Art Bazaar was inspired by the Russian community, Ball and Cross ( Шар и Крест ), but with a focus on artists from the Central Asian region. The principle of this self-organized art market resembles the schemes of financial pyramids common in the 1990s. When selling a certain number of works, a requirement is to purchase other art from the online bazaar, as well as transfer several works to the fund. In this way, artists bought and sold works from each other, creating a self-organized environment of collective care, while effectively excluding galleries and art market middlemen. It is fair to say that as such, the art market, as well as the institutional environment within the Central Asian region, is still in the process of formation.So-called underground art in Soviet times emerged from cramped apartment exhibitions with the fall of the Iron Curtain in the 90s. The state, inheriting the Soviet mentality, has never represented culture by itself, and thought of art only in connection with the goals of biased propaganda. Artistic ideas that do not respond to the cultivation of sports or strengthening patriotism, won’t find their place among the bureaucratic “argumentation” of projects. The legacy of the Soviet art education which focused on socialist realism continues to present a major issue in academies and art schools. For a long time in these conditions, the community of artists developing an alternative to conservative art, in which the driving force were not institutions or the art market, but the enthusiasm of the community itself, remained in the margins. Art Bazaar But Art Bazaar was not the only reaction of the art community to the new reality of the pandemic. The curator of the Artcom platform, Aigerim Kapar, organized open workshops with a Georgian artist, Wato Tsereteli. Participants practiced collective drawing, which later resulted in a virtual exhibition organized by the participants themselves, presenting a webpage with the results. Kyrgyz curator, Aida Sulova, conducted an educational program with children. The final works were accompanied by audio messages from authors, and were also presented in the virtual halls of the Artstep platform. I also decided to invest my part in the #stayhome movement and created an exhibition on the iada-art.org website; my idea was that an online exhibition should not mimic a real space, but could well remain in the webpage format, at the same time using the logic of an exposition construction. The name of the exhibition, Cybernomadism , reflected its main theme of examining the future from a decolonial perspective through the nomadic Kazakh culture. On the animated deforming grid background as a basic form of a space markup, works of 8 artists respond to the idea of technological utopia in the Kazakhstani context. Cybernomadism A. Kasteyev State Museum of Arts , which before the quarantine was a fairly conservative institution, has also gone through a transformation associated with the need to continue working online. The main exposition of the museum consists of Socialist realism paintings, and exhibitions of contemporary art were rarely held, unless in conjunction with other institutions. The need for a presence in the media prompted the museum staff to create exhibitions and record video tours. Realizing quickly that traditional art did not attract a new audience on the internet, museum curators quickly changed their strategy and began to focus on contemporary art. One such exhibition, dedicated to Rustam Khalfin, an artist who is often described as one of Central Asia’s contemporary art pioneers, was the first in the last 20 years. Isolation and a complete transition to online platforms have made many processes more transparent. This undoubtedly also influenced culture, as state museums moved away from the representation of the discourse of power and turned to the audience. While the media space repeated like a mantra that “the world will never be the same”, by the end of April people were allowed to go for a walk, and by the end of May, cafes and shopping centers had begun to open. Simultaneously, repatriation flights were organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Kazakh embassies in different countries. Because of the bureaucracy and the general situation, many had to wait for two months to return. After arriving home, people were signed to a 14 day self-isolation, but no appropriate supervision was conducted and the arrival of citizens took place before getting out of hand. Towards the end of June, the situation changed dramatically and got out of control. The dissidents’ opinion changed, and arguments such as, “show at least one patient,” ceased to flash on social networks. Instead, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all other social media platforms became filled with requests for help; people looked for medicine, advice, or tried to call for ambulances. Subsequently, the Coronavirus hotline and paramedical services were left immobile due to overload. Hospitals stopped accepting patients, and even the simplest antipyretic drugs were in short supply. Pharmaceutical humanitarian aid from different countries were sold through corrupt channels at inflated prices. No more advertising was needed. The virus had touched every family in the country, and even Nazarbayev himself became ill. The media space became filled with obituaries of deceased celebrities, politicians, and relatives. Huge queues of people spilled out of employment centers and morgues, despite the danger of infection. On July 5, Kassym – Jomart Tokayev, the new president, conducted an online conference wearing a mask, in order to announce a second lockdown. Later it was revealed that the shortage of drugs and overpricing were associated with corruption within the Ministry of Health, and several high-ranking officials were removed from their positions. After almost a month, the situation with drug supplies stabilized, and several new field hospitals have been opened. Statistics of deaths from pneumonia, after a long period of denial, nevertheless, were combined with the statistics of deaths from coronavirus. Now, people are used to wearing masks, and they are much less likely to sabotage quarantine rules, but many still hold secret weddings and funerals, despite the strict measures (which includes imprisonment for 10 years). Kazakhstan was the first country in the world to return to a full lockdown. When the private becomes public, and health issues are no longer too personal a topic for discussion, the local becomes global and the deadly second wave in Kazakhstan is, in essence, a threatening warning to the entire world. Anvar Musrepov is an artist and curator from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Previous Next

WCSCD emergency grant announces grant recipients We are honored that we can give a symbolic contribution to colleagues and peers in the region through emergency grant. Participants of the program have selected three grants recipients: Sasa Rakic cartoonist based in Pancevo (Serbia), creating comics under the pseudonym of Aleksandar Zograf. www.aleksandarzograf.com Adela Jusic artist based in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), cofounder Association for Culture and Art Crvena, one of the creators of Online archive of Antifascist struggle of women of B&H and Yugoslavia (adelajusic.wordpress.com www.afzarhiv.org ) Agata Lucic artist based in Zagreb (Croatia) (https://www.behance.net/agatalucic ) We would like to thank all applicants for reaching to us. WCSCD will continue finding ways supporting community so please stay in touch with us. About Grant: In light of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the art community, the What Could Should Curating Do has created 3 grants of 450 euros for artists, curator, art practitioners working on visual arts whose work and livelihood has been affected due to impacted by the economic fallout from postponed or canceled exhibitions and projects. Colleagues in former Yugoslav Region are eligible to apply. Emergency grant has been supported through the online curatorial program Post-Pandemic Condition with mentors Natasa Petresin Bachelez, Maria Lind and Biljana Ciric. Online program participants: Louise Hobson, Ainsle Roddick, Kirsty Màiri Robertson, Aglaya Zhdanova, Julia Gelezova, Ariana Kalliga, Cushla Donaldson, Teodora Jeremic, Sophie Davis, Dunja Rmandic, Agata Szymanek, Amal Al Ali, Yin Shuai.