Wednesday, 20th of November from 4 pm, Generalstab building and November 21st 6pm Ostavinska panel discussion
The event “Reading of the biggest image in Belgrade” will mark the end of the three-month international curatorial course “What Could/Should Curating Do?” starting on Wednesday, the 20th of November in front of the Generalstab building at 4 pm with a public performance led by Nemanja Boskovic.
On 21st of November at 6pm in Ostavinska a panel discussion will commence. Participants will be members of The School for History and Theory of Images and curators of the project. During the event, an artist intervention by Bojan Đorđev i Siniše Ilić will be presented.
The curatorial team of this final project of the WCSCD course, which is running for a second year in Serbia and gathering young curators from all over the world, includes Sasha Puchkova from Russia, Aigerim Kapar from Kazahstan, Martina Yordanova from Bulgaria, Mateja Smic from Croatia and Zulfikar Filandra from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
They point out that the final event is the outcome and of their three-month stay in Serbia. Through the research of the School for History and theory of images, they had an opportunity to get to know the art scene in Belgrade.
“Our research of The School for History and Theory of Images remains the signature of our time spent in Belgrade. Through it, we got to know aspects of the local art scene and its historical and geopolitical context. They were the first ones to, through this alternative educational programme, attempt to encourage critical thinking, questioning and critique of ideology, political situations and problems of the academy, with the goal of improving the quality of visual culture studies. The School soon became some sort of a forum and epicentre for discussions which ‘by their range define new modes of interaction between culture, politics and theory in the broader social field.’ (Editorial, Prelom Magazine #1, 2011). Somehow, we felt that the situation of that time and the one of today have a lot in common and thought that there are valuable lessons we could take from the past, reflect on them in relation to the present, and try to project the learnings onto the future.“
The young curators add that the research of the school opened up new views and served as an inspiration for the final programme of the WCSCD course:
“The two main discourses of the School – Critique of Ideology and Reading of the image, have inspired us to think about the current situation in relation to that of 20 years ago, revive the School’s approach and attempt to apply it to the current setting.
To mark the School’s 20th anniversary and test their methodologies in the contemporary context, we have decided to curate ‘The reading of the biggest image in Belgrade’ in relation to the image covering the Generalstab building. Surprised by the quantity and nature of the political discourse in the public and media, startled by the presence of armed defence bodies in the city and prompted by the fact that the biggest image in Belgrade promotes army recruitment, we felt that this would be an interesting and urgent topic for research.”
The event is organized as part of WCSCD 2019 curatorial program