Thursday, June 2nd - program at the opening
8 p.m. – film screening - Silent War in Beqaa Valley, documentary film by Samir Mahanović, 22min40sec
8.30 p.m. – conversation about project and exhibition with authors and artists – Gabriella Cardazzo, Giuliana Carbi, Leon Tarasewicz, moderated by Zorana Đaković Minniti, program coordinator of gallery Podroom
9.00 – concert/music performance by Giovanni Floreani - music from the border lines – Strepitz open project
The starting point for this multidisciplinary project about „boundaries“ that are much more than borders between states and people was the sentence from Tadeusz Kantor play Dziś są moje urodziny (Today is my birthday) in which author repeats several time the sentence in French „ À la frontière...!“.
Gabriella Cardazzo in her text about the exhibition is quoting Luigi Arpini who said that Kantor was thinking on “border” line on which he lived and artists’ commitment to always be on the forefront...
The artworks and music of the selected artists and authors are micro-stories about identity, belonging, borders and physical margins and inside and outside limits. Artists from Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Italy, Slovakia, Lebanon, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia through different media, from personal experience and/or from the point of view of observers “accompanies us to say that in looking at border stories we can better look inside ourselves to get ready... to cross our border, as we all must do, but also says us that it could be a more joyful wait if we make to other people the gift of our comfort, sensitivity and optimism” explain Giuliana Carbi, one of the curators of the exhibition.
This project that combines exhibitions, lectures, screenings, conversations and concerts was presented at the beginning of 2016 in Trieste. As it is structured in a form of „exhibition in progress“, the Belgrade edition will join two more artists.
More information about the project at: www.triestecontemporanea.it
About artists/authors (by alphabetical order)
KAROLINA CICHA
Music, audio from the rock-folk musical performance in Trieste, 2016
Karolina Cicha is Polish song-writer, singer and multi-instrumentalist. She is working in the field of the rock-folk music influenced by the multicultural territory of Poland and popular songs written and sang in different languages.
KRZYSZTOF CZYZEWSKI, WIESLAW SZUMINSKI & KUBA KOSSAK
INVISIBLE BRIDGE, poetry, photographs, films and archive material Invisible Bridge was realized during the last three years in Sejny by the Borderland Foundation and the Centre Borderland of Arts, Cultures and Nations. This polyphonic tale involving poetry, film and photography has both artistic and social dimension. It has been created by artists from the Borderland team or closely related to them:
Krzysztof Czyżewski (concept and poetry), Wiesław Szumiński (photography) and Kuba Kossak (film).
GRZEGORZ DABROWSKI
ALBOM.PL, photographs
In the summer in 2014 a group of ethnographers, among which the photographer and journalist Grzegorz Dąbrowski, went on a field trip during which they visited seven towns located along both sides of Polish-Belarusian border (Kleszczele and Grodek in Poland; Sopoćkinie, Łunna, Wołpa, Wołkowysk and Kamieniec in the Republic of Belarus). They were in search of old archival photography (they documented and digitalised some 2300 photographs from private archives), however what they found turned out much more than that.
Grzegorz Dąbrowski is a Polish photographer, curator and journalist writing for Gazeta Wyborcza in Warsaw. He has worked on the archives of the photographers Bolesław Augustis, Antoni Drodowski, Jerzy Kostko and Jan Siwicki and has documented during 2013-2014 together with Urszula Dąbrowska and Rafak Siderski the Polish-Belarusian border in the project albom.pl.
GIOVANNI FLOREANI
MUSIC Audio, 2016
Strepitz open project
Giovanni Floreani is musician from Friuli and in his music the one could feel influences of Central Europe (Friuli, Austria and Slovenia) and classical and electronic music as well. In 1999 he founded group Strepitz that is exploring the meaning of “mixing” in the music and specificity of the music from the border territories.
LAURE KEYROUZ & ANGELO RICCIARDI
CARISSIMO ANGELO, CARISSIMA LAURE, video installation, 2016
Trying to empty the sea for reducing distance between Naples and Beirut, the work is based on the correspondence between Laure and Angelo. Laure Keyrouz is a Lebanese poetess and artist who lives in Italy and teaches Arabic translation at the University of Trieste. In her work - performances, videos and installations – poetry is always in the focus. In 2013 she published the book of poems Ink and stone. She is founder of Inchiostro e pietra, a blog-magazine for art, poetry and philosophy and Zonca Art Contemporary Centre in Arcade (Treviso). Angelo Ricciardi lives and works in Naples. In his artistic research he is focused on writing, on relations between verbal and visual communication and daily life’s object. He collaborated with Kainòs - web magazine for philosophical criticism.
PREDRAG MARIĆ
GUITAR STORIES, audio from musical performance in Trieste, 2016
Croatian artist from Buje that now lives and works in Berlin. He is writing music for solo guitar, 12 strings guitar and jazz guitar. His music combines styles that belong to popular, classical music, jazz and blues.
SAMIR MEHANOVIĆ
SILENT WAR IN BEQAA VALLEY, documentary film, 2014
The documentary Silent War in Beqaa Valley was filmed in January 2014 on the border between Syria and Lebanon. It speaks about refugees from Syria and the children who are struggling to get proper education in the unsteady borders in Beqaa Valley. The work is part of the filmmaker’s artistic research on how international community can protect civilians in the war zones. Bosnian born and Scotland based, Samir Mehanović is a film and theatre director, producer, and screenwriter. In 2015 his film The Fog of Srebrenica was awarded the IDFA Special Jury Award for Mid-Length Documentary. He has previously received the BAFTA Scotland award for Best First Time Director for the short film The Way We Played, which has screened at over 30 festivals.
LADA NAKONECHNA
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, series of drawings, graphite on paper, 2014
The work is based on Lada’s own photo archive of the barricades built out of anything that protesters could get on the Majdan Nezalezhnosti Kyiv’s Independence Square during the winter of 2013/14. The drawings follow the Western culture writing from left to right. As the words left and right also refer to politics the drawings leave an open question about the possible change regarding the direction. They dissolve to the right into nothing.
Lada Nakonechna was born in 1981 in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. She lives and works in Kyiv. She is artist, curator (member of curatorial and activist union Hudrada) and educator (co-founder of the Course of Contemporary Art in Kyiv). From 2005 she is part of the R.E.P. group. She has participated in numerous international and Ukrainian exhibitions including 2015 exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany.
DUŠAN RADOVANOVIĆ,
RUSSIAN FOREST, objet trouvé, 2013
Russian Forest by Leonid Leonov is the book which in its interior contains anabolic steroids in the form of testosterone and Deca-Durabolin injections. Abuse of these substances, which are legally unavailable, is widespread, for example, in the bodybuilding field, in order to achieve a clean body weight, i.e. gain weight and definition. I have found the book with all its contents in an apartment in Belgrade as a lost package. In 2008 I have illegally taken it across the border and have photo-documented uninterrupted border crossings. That same year I displayed the book as a ready-made, supplemented with photos, at 13 th Biennalle of Art in Pancevo.
In 2013 I exhibited the book in the exhibition Smuggling Anthologies in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rijeka, Croatia. I documented crossing the border with illegal substances and I exhibited it in the gallery. Several ampoules were on offer at the auction as art pieces (ready-made) signed by the artist and framed. Hence, the illegal substances found their way back to the market.
The work has been on display at the eponymous exhibition in Idrija Municipal Museum, Slovenia and Trieste Contemporanea/Studio Tommaseo, Italy.
Upon completion of the exhibition in Trieste, the book was sent to me by post. I was summoned by the customs to give a statement explaining the contents of the shipment. Failing to prove that it was an art piece, I was told the package would return to Trieste. This exhibition is the way for the book to come back to me. Dušan Radovanović was born in 1979. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. Among other exhibitions he participated in Smuggling Anthologies in Ljubljana, Rijeka and Trieste, 38 th Drawings and Small Sculptures Exhibition of Faculty of Fine Arts’ Students, 13 th Biennale of Art, Pancevo etc.
TOMÁŠ RAFA
NEW NATIONALISM. TRAVELING BETWEEN POLAND, CHECZ REPUBLIC, HUNGARY & SLOVAKIA
Photo and video project
Through this ongoing project that started in 2009, Tomáš Rafa investigates notions of nationalism in Central Europe. Featuring tense footage and reports of political demonstrations, blockades and protests, the Slovak artist and filmmaker captures events often unseen on TV news programs.
Winner of the Oskár Cepan Award in Slovakia (2011), Rafa’s project is housed on a website that has been screened in museums and galleries across Europe, promoting positive social activism and triggering community conversations about nationalist conflicts.
LEON TARASEWICZ
UNTITLED, installation, 2016
Ever since his debut, he has been a prominent member of the art scene, even though he identifies the centre of his world as the small village of Waliły near Białystok. He emphasizes his Belarusian provenance and identifies with the Belarusian minority inhabiting eastern Poland. He has acted as a spokesman for that minority on many occasions and has supported initiatives reviving Belarusian culture. In 1999, he did not accept the Art Award of the President of Białystok in a protest against the local authorities’ policies, which, in his opinion, were stoking the conflict between Polish and Belarusian communities. (taken from the Małgorzata Kitowska-Łysiak text Leon Tarasewicz, culture.pl)
Leon Tarasewicz is one of the most intriguing contemporary painters in Poland. He was born in 1957 in Waliły in the Podlachia region. He studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in class of Tadeusz Dominik. Since 1996 he is professor at the Department of painting at the same Academy.
ARTURAS VALIAUGA
THE LAND OF LONGING
Series of 47 photographs taken in Konigsberg area (Kaliningrad Oblast) that attempts to view Kristijonas Donelaitis’ Lithuania Minor in the context of today Arturas Valiauga is an artist and photographer. He was born in 1967 in Vilnius, where he lives and works. He graduated from the Vilnius College of Technologies and Design and in 2010 he got his master degree at the Vilnius Art Academy. He is well-known as professional advertising photographer. Among the most important exhibitions and projects he has been taking part in there are: the project Work by the International Photography and Research Network (2005-2006), the 4th International photographic art triennial Ars Baltica, the EU-Japan fest project European Eyes on Japan (vol. 11). In his work he focuses on the themes of social identity and time.
ALEKSANDAR ZOGRAF
POSTCARDS FROM YUGOSLAVIA (VIA VIENNA), 2015
LITTLE VERA, 2016
Comic about one Vienna taxi driver tries to convey the energy of an random encounter. That was the tale that had to be told. No one asked this man anything but he explained his life to complete strangers during one short ride to the airport. Like many willing or not immigrants he wasn’t sure where he belongs and what are “his” boundaries. Little Vera (litteraly Little Hope) is the comic that I created after finding on the flea market photos of an unknown small girl. Only thing that was clear is that her name is Vera. Parents used to dress her up in bizarre costumes although war raged around them. Serbia was the first in terms of casualties regarding its population. Even in the far European backwoods someone tried to keep up some semblance of normal life!
Aleksandar Zograf (a pseudonym of Sasa Rakezic) is a Serbian cartoonist, the author of such works as Life Under Sanctions, Psychonaut, Dream Watcher and Bulletins from Serbia. Zograf has been active on the international scene since the early '90s when his work started to appear in U.S. comics anthologies such as Weirdo and Zero Zero and when Seattles Fantagraphics Books published a few of his titles. Works by Zograf have been translated and published in many European magazines, and his solo titles have been issued by publishers; Association in France, Fandango in Italy, MmmrrrRRRG in Portugal, RENDE in Serbia, etc.
About curators
Gabriella Cardazzo is a curator, filmmaker and traveler born in Venice. She was managing the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice, together with her brother Paolo until 1987. After that time, she dedicated her professional work to the film and foundation Fondazione dell’Associazione ArtSpace. Since 2011 she is working as curator in Trieste Contemporanea.
Giuliana Carbi Jesurun is an art historian and curator based in Trieste. She was professor of history of contemporary art at the University of Trieste until 1991. She is the director of the Studio Tommaseo in Trieste and the founder and president of the Trieste Contemporanea Committee. Realization of the exhibition is supported by: ArtSpace, Trieste Contemporanea, Culture.pl, Lithuanian Culture Institute, Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in the Republic of Italy, Polish Institute of Rome, Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, City of Belgrade and Cultural Centre of Belgrade
Gallery PODROOM Cultural Centre of Belgrade
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Republic Square 5/-1 and/or Knez Miahilova 6/-1
www.kcb.org.rs