. Biennial Mladih 2021
The 2021 Youth Biennial includes three central segments:
1. Curatorial workshops / work on the production of new works by young artists;
2. Exhibition at several locations in Belgrade with a focus on the Kalemegdan Fortress;
3. Educational program - accompanying program of the exhibition (online)
1. CURATORIAL WORKSHOPS
Workshops for the production of new works of art (April-May)
The curatorial workshops are conceived as a four-week cooperation of the curatorial and organizational team with 40 young artists from Serbia and the Balkan region who are selected on the basis of a public invitation, and who will be provided with funds for production and cooperation. It is planned to hold 5 curatorial workshops, which would be problematically further conceived only after the end of the public tender for the acceptance of project proposals for the production of new works, in accordance with the insight into topics and ideas that young artists deal with. The workshops will take place through intensive communication between the team of young curators and the organizational team of BM with 40 young artists, combined online and live. 40 artists will be selected through a public competition (open in March). The workshops will also be held live: in the open space of the Kalemegdan Fortress, in the premises of the Art Pavilion "Cvijeta Zuzorić" and the Student City Cultural Center, during the months of May and June, according to epidemiological conditions. They are designed as a space for experiment, dialogue, exchange of opinions, in order to better prepare for the final works.The project implementation plan includes the following phases:
Phase 1 / workshop: ARTICULATION OF IDEAS / ATTENTION & LISTENING
The workshops were conceived as conversations, reading groups and discussions between the artists and the organizing team of the Biennial (all involved in the project), during which the initial ideas and concepts of the artists would be developed as fully as possible. Curatorial workshops would take place during April (preparation) and May 2021 in the premises of the Association, the Student City Cultural Center, in the open space at the Kalemgdan Fortress, and if necessary online. It is planned to hold 5 curatorial workshops, which would be problematically further conceived only after the end of the public tender for the acceptance of project proposals for the production of new works, in accordance with the insight into topics and ideas that young artists deal with.
Curatorial workshops are led by a team of three young curators selected by the ULUS Art Council in a public competition (December 2020-January 2021): Jovana Trifuljesko, Senka Latinović and Teodora Jeremić (biographies attached).
The segment of curatorial workshops is dedicated to cooperation with students of the Faculty of Architecture (under the mentorship of Professor Dr. Pavle Stamenković, Assistant Professor and Dr. Petar Cigić), who will be involved in the process of designing the exhibition (elaboration of exhibition architecture at several locations in Belgrade) and in direct communication with artists and curators, through teamwork, gain important practical experience. Together we will visit the exhibition and public spaces where the exhibition will be set up, read texts prepared and adapted by the curatorial team in collaboration with artists, transparently discuss the budget capacity of the exhibition and achieve better results with existing resources, as well as interaction with the audience. program that will take place during the exhibition.
It is planned to conduct research on the working conditions of young artists from Serbia during the curatorial workshops, which would be available to the public during the exhibition (exhibition catalog, ULUS MEDIA).
Phase 2 / workshop: PRODUCTION OF WORKS / INTERACTION & PLAY
June and July 2021 will be dedicated to the production of up to 40 new works of art. The call for proposals for works that would be realized within the Youth Biennial, young people would be encouraged to propose not only individual creativity, but also to join groups / collectives in performing the final works. The works will be conceived and performed in a variety of media: video / audio, textual expression, performance, installation, site-specific intervention, painting, sculpture, etc.
2. EXHIBITION: ZAJEDNIČKI JEZIK / LANGUAGE IN COMMON
(July 29 - September 5, 2021) - physical space
During the summer, a program will be realized within which the entire experience gained by the participants is summarized and presented through an exhibition and accompanying programs. The exhibition is not conventionally conceived, but represents a place of meeting and exchange of all involved in this process, and sharing with the general public. The exhibition is realized in the physical space at several locations in Belgrade (ULUS premises, Students' City Cultural Center, Kalemegdan Fortress, public spaces). It is desirable to think about the works in relation to the given space: public areas and institutions located there (Nebojsa Tower, observatory, Natural History Museum, Zoo, Military Museum, Roman Well, gunpowder, Amusement park, etc.).
It is planned that the exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog that should document all experiences during the implementation of this project, and the accompanying program of the exhibition will have an educational function, to develop projects of young artists and other future cultural workers, further expand the engagement, which will create space for further training of young artists and due to the completion of the Youth Biennale 2021. Art research and new productions will be shared through a new segment of ULUS's website - ULUS MEDIA.
LANGUAGE IN COMMON is the name of the Youth Biennale 2021 exhibition and was created as a result of the synergy of different concepts of all involved in this project (three separate curatorial approaches were created based on insight into the organizational structure and mission of the Youth Biennial). Public Preparations I) and then merged into a single form (Public Preparations II).
The selected topics of the exhibition relate to the reflection of the permanent crisis in contemporary society and the field of art, seen through the ideological transformation of work (in art and other areas of social action), public space and public interest, as well as health and environmental consequences affecting the contemporary world.
Explanation of the curatorial concept:
" Language in common is built through collective work and constant exchange. A common language (Language in Common) is not a thing and it is impossible to measure it. We see a common language as a place of freedom and a place of struggle where we fight for what we care about, by believing in what we are committed to, what we are experimenting with, researching and insisting on collective expression. A common language does not have to be uniform, it depends on the context in which it is created. Speaking through a common signifier "we" does not mean speaking on behalf of someone - it is an attempt to establish a new collective body, which "speaks" a common language, because it understands, feels or experiences similar problems. The common language is a constellation of symbols, hashtags, neologisms, emojis, but it is not just that. It is also the communication system of the emerging revolutionary collective. It is a meeting place for a new generation that communicates in a different way, somewhat encrypted for the previous ones, through new rules, new challenges, new tendencies.
New meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and types of relationships are constantly being created and a new "language" implies a willingness to recognize and define them. That is why the Youth Biennial 2021 invites all those who want to be accomplices, partners, conspirators, builders of a new language, participants, co-authors. Everyone who creates, writes, thinks, expresses themselves visually, with sound, movement, to map together the problems, worries, noises of modern society and explore the horizons and spaces of the future - what they look like, how we reach them and what it takes to go or disappear have you appeared to us? ”(from the joint curatorial concept of the Youth Biennial 2021).
As part of the common whole, three sub-topics will be realized, which will be processed by each of the curators individually, and which will have overlaps:
A. IZOLACIJA / CONFINEMENT
Keywords: isolation, loneliness, claustrophobia, crisis, white cube, identity, ideology, social media, introspection/freedom.
"The ubiquitous feeling of loneliness that ate one generation reached its zenith with the arrival of the pandemic. We live in a historical moment where we are one click away from all the people we love, every museum and movie, but we still feel dissatisfied. Mental and physical isolation have never been so clearly palpable. Where to start with the demystification of this feeling, and what is it in general? Wherever we go, we encounter a prevailing feeling of closedness. What are the boxes we are in, and what prevents us from escaping from them? Are we forcibly closed, or tucked between walls? Can we build a community despite closed borders, different ideologies and artistic traditions? Somewhat ironically, with the title Confinement, I want to start a dialogue and reconsider different aspects of isolation. In order to solve a "problem", you have to admit that it exists, that's what this is about. Let's define the limited spaces in which we think, create and live and together explore the problems of institutions, ideologies, societies and generations. (From the concept of curator # 1, Jovana Trifuljesko)
B. UDISAJ / BREATH
Keywords: togetherness, urgency, flow, exchange, revival, breathing, freshness, rhythm, flow, change, mobility, permeability, indomitability
"Everything disappears in the air, evaporates, disappears, we all breathe it at the same time, it is a space that we create, exchange, take for ourselves and consume, in which we meet and" coexist in a common ecology ", in a common system. In the modern world, our spaces of community are threatened from different sides, relocated, changed, and dealing with the air belongs to the domain of political ecology, which as an interdisciplinary field examines how unjust power relations and their discourses shape the way human and nature relations are articulated. , produced, and points to what consequently leads to the physical and psychological “breathlessness” we feel everywhere. There is no air in megalopolises that are suffocating in pollution, in precarious working conditions that exploit workers, in the ubiquitous fear of violence, war, aggression, in anxiety attacks due to (im) possibility. At a time when Berardie's "breathlessness" is more present than ever, it's time to ask ourselves what is it that brings us to a state without air? What hinders proper personal and social respiration? What is an obstacle to natural air flow? How to "breathe freely"? What is fresh air today? Is fresh air a luxury or a basic right? What are the alternatives and are there any? What are the spaces of freedom? How to win or form them? How to use air as an element and example of a good system of networking and exchange, information flow, and breathing as a method of resistance? How to make your own "breathing space" and what is it in general? How to bring in fresh air and ventilate institutions, institutions, positions? What and how to address all those issues that we do not name but are somewhere "in the air"? (From the concept of curator # 2, Teodora Jeremić)
C. POST, POST… / POST POST..
Keywords: Post… post… pos..t, crisis, youth, polarization, imagination, capitalism
"Post-pandemic - Is it even possible to return to the" normal course of life "after such an experience? Will this experience be another one that you will overcome, and mark your present with the prefix POST - post-pandemic society? Can you pretend to live, after the emotional, economic, psychological and political violence you have suffered?
Post-youth – Young artists are often perceived as generators of new worlds and a new energy, but are you in particular ready to spin the wheels of social imagination? Where is the motivation? Where is the guilty conscience? And where is the youth which one is supposed to live carelessly? Are you entitled to it? And what if there is nothing after youth?
Post-truth – Today’s social dialogue rests on antagonism and extreme polarization. Fake news, paranoia and life in a bubble of like-minded people have brought about the destabilization of confirmed scientific discoveries and have compromised the ethics of journalism. Who do you trust today and why do you trust yourself?
Post-humanism – Is the contemporary human enough or do we have to look for new alternatives and cohabitations so that we can survive in some future world? To what extent have foreign bodies inside of us – steel, silicone, pacemakers, and vaccine viruses – already made us into cyborgs? A cyborg is half human, half machine – a fluid being without prejudices. “Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not remember the cosmos”, wrote Donna Haraway. Who’s afraid of a strong cyborg?
Post-capitalism - "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." (Frederick Jameson, or Slavoj Žižek, probably) (From the concept of curator #3, Senka Latinović)
3. SELF-ORGANIZED EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM FOR YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE FIELD OF FINE ARTS - TALKING
(August-September) - physical and online space
The educational program for young artists is a place for building additional knowledge, which cannot be obtained through formal education in the field of art, especially given the large deficit of discursive and theoretical knowledge and the connection of artists' work with current social trends in art academy programs. and faculty. For this reason, the program is called TALKING because it aims to mark a step into the field of reflection and reflection on social processes in the field of art. Through the launch of topics such as the form of organizing collective artistic activity, the strategic role of contemporary art in Serbian cultural policy, the economy of art and opportunities for involving artists in wider socio-economic processes, art in the cyber world, relations between art and identity policies, ecology, etc. seeks to accelerate the development of emancipatory practices of young people under the auspices of ULUS.
The educational program includes a line of self-education of young people within ULUS and partner organizations through the organization of a series of talks with competent interlocutors in the field of humanities, natural and technical sciences and culture, initiated by young artists and curators. Through a series of joint talks and mentorships, guests would present their work and try to answer the questions asked by young people, and move young people to reflect on social issues. In this way, the conceived issues, initiated by young people, will receive additional structural upgrades and broader contextualization. Each of the lecturers-mentors will be guests twice: once as part of the lectures they will hold for young people and the second time as part of a mentoring workshop with a group of young artists interested in the lecture on the proposed topic. The second guest appearance will be of the workshop type, and the focus will be on the development of ideas of young artists.
During the month of August, the following will be organized:
- 6 online conversations with 3 guest lecturers in each, which will be broadcast through the online communication channels of all collaborating organizations involved in the organization of the project (public events of regional format);
- 18 mentoring workshops of guest lecturers with a selected group of young artists (events for selected groups of registered young people
If epidemiological conditions allow, the program will be organized in a combination of online and live participation.