Dear reader
We are entering second year of the inquiry As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future and I am writing this from yet another lockdown in Melbourne. Borders remain close as we are learning to live with Covid 19.
I am struggling to understand what is happening in many places that I can deeply relate to and feel that our public sphere is fragmented more then ever. Throughout our online journal we continue to make small contribution filling that gap or at least making it more visible.
We have presented As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future symposium in collaboration with Moderna Galerija as first public moment of sharing not only our research, but also our mode of working based on relationality and interdependence that we bring with us as we move forward.
Given changes caused by larger social and political framework in Slovenia we will continue to work with Zdenka Badovinac as an active cell from this year among existing cells: Rockbund Art Museum, Times Museum, Artcom platform, Robel Temesgen, Sinkneh Eshetu, Public Library in Bor.
Being in project for a year, together we have experienced civil unrest in most of the localities, researchers falling ill due to covid (and thankfully, recovering), civil war in Ethiopia that escalated in November 2020, our colleagues losing their positions, our partners’ funding being taken away.
This project stretches out our emotional capacity, and our endurance is challenged on a daily basis. Still, we continue to walk together. Research quietly continues, acknowledging the importance of being together and creating some things during this separation being imposed on us.
Since April 2020 due to pandemic we have employed strategy dig where you stand and we have working with fifteen researchers across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ethiopia, Serbia, Slovenia, and China. The research inquiry has been developed trying to listen local urgencies, learn from them and from there number of case studies had been formulated and local research has been conducted.
Online journal will continue to share research unfolding but also give visibility to contexts we are engaged with when needed.
Journal entries we continue with texts by invited writers to reflect on political, social and economical struggles that pandemic accelerated in Ethiopia, Serbia, Slovenia, Kazakhstan and China from writers, artists, health care workers among others.
Biljana Ciric