Experience. The curatorial program in Belgrade (EN)
Aigerim Kapar - a curator from Nur-Sultan (Kazakhstan), explains her participation experience in the curatorial program WCSCD and speaks about working as a tutor.
About residency What Could/Should curating Do? (WCSCD)
The main questions that the program explores are: what is curating today, how local contexts can become global, how to expand curatorial discourse and introduce a non-European perspective, like an attempt to decolonize art.
A good solution was the decentralisation of the location for classes. We met at the various sites of partner cultural institutions. For example, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of African Art, Italian Cultural Center, etc. We were constantly on the move and in communication with the city and the art community, which helped us to plunge into context the since the geography of the program participants was diverse: Australia, Chile, Poland, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Bulgaria, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and some of us for the first time got familiar with the Balkan context.
The curatorial program lasted for three months. Invited mentors are some of the best professionals from around the world and the region. We made curatorial trips to Prizren Autostrada Biennale in Kosovo, opening of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara, Romania and Academy in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. During these trips we visited artist studios, exhibitions, art institutes, met with curators and cultural activists.
Public lecture by Marco Scotini, Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade.
Cultural environment and art community
The founder of the WCSCD program, Biljana Chirić is a curator based in Shanghai, initiated a program to develop a curatorial discourse and practices in Belgrade. It’s worth to mention, there are some similarities between Serbian and Kazakhstani situation regarding an art infrastructure. The National Museum was closed in Belgrade for 15 years, and the Museum of Modern Art was under reconstruction for 10 years until they opened it again just a few years ago. In the fall of 2019, a large-scale exhibition of the artist Marina Abramović was held. This was her first solo exhibition in the homeland, an event of a historical scale, initiated by the Prime Minister cabinet. I also was at her public lecture at the museum whereas around 5,000 people were present.
Marina Abramović, «Balkan baroque», photo from the private archive of Aigerim Kapar
The art scene in Belgrade is not as big as I expected, although there are many interesting artists, but the problem similar to Kazakhstan is that many of them are more represented in the international art scene than domestically. It is noticeable that with the opening of state institutions, private initiatives became more active: in 3-4 years several commercial contemporary art galleries opened in the city.
Young activist artists occupied a space and made a squad - Kvaka 22, self managing initiative, sometimes including the support of patrons, city government but always remaining independent. For instance, U10 gallery, KC Grad, Magacin, Ostavinska gallery, where they organise exhibitions, concerts, performance festivals. Life around these places is busy and forms into cultural clusters. There are also spaces that have a historical background: Belgrade Culture Center, The Centre for Cultural Decontamination, Remont Gallery.
It’s hard for me to talk about the general specifics of local art. I can say that there are many discussions, that it is time to finish research of the post-Yugoslav context and leave issues of identity in the past. But someone, on the contrary, believes that these issues are not sufficiently, deeply analyzed. I often hear the same criticism in Kazakhstan about the endless post-Soviet discussions in artistic practices. For me, it seems like in our country, critical work has not been done properly and the society has many questions, therefore the topic continues to be relevant.
In Kazakhstan after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was no war, contrary, in Serbia, they have a different situation. All countries of the former Yugoslavia region plunged into hostility and they are just moving away from such situation. If we talk about the specifics of Serbian art, we can say that post-war and post-genocide artists are trying to conceptualize the traumatic past.
Final project
The idea of a group final project resulted from a meeting with an artist Darinka Popmitić in Belgrade. She mentioned a project related to the archive of the independent school “The School of history and theory of images”, which was active in Belgrade from 1999 to 2003. Today we can call participants and founders of the school as pioneers of a critical approach of ideology, political situation and development of visual culture in the city. Influenced by work of the school, department of contemporary art was opened at Art University and today former participants are one of the key figures in the intellectual and cultural life of Belgrade.
The research about “History and Theory of Images” school went through meetings, interviews with participants, founders and teachers. It became an instrument of an immersion into the context of the local art scene. I also had a personal interest in research as the initiator of the alternative school Art Collider in Nur-Sultan (Kazakhstan). This was an opportunity to get acquainted with an example of how a self-organized initiative can influence the development of a whole art industry. Additionally, it touches the most painful part of a Kazakhstani art scene - the lack of a contemporary art studies in universities.
As the final project of residency we have organized an anniversary meeting for participants of the “History and Theory of Images” school. Since focus was on the analysis of images and criticism of an ideology, we discussed the largest image example in Belgrade.
Collective performance in front of General headquarters, Belgrade, Serbia.
What is remarkable about the banner is the military service propaganda depiction, located at General headquarters Building, which was bombed by NATO in 1999. We also invited artists and took a part in the performance in front of this image. The goal was to try to understand the current situation through the methods of the school from 20 years ago and draw parallels between past and present.
Start of work as a tutor
Currently we are collecting applications from curators, artists and researchers. Eventually up to 15 participants will be selected and will come to Belgrade in August. WCSCD founder Biljana Chirić asked us which mentors we would recommend for the next year and the most of us voted for Luca Lo Pinto, a MACRO director in Rome, previously he was a curator at Kunsthalle Wien. She also invited me as a tutor to share the experience with participants of the next program, to help them integrate into the local context. I will help and accompany the mentors of the program, who are curators and researchers such as Ekaterina Degot, Lisa Rosendahl, Jelena Vesic, Suzana Milevska, Xiang Zairong, Ruangrupa - art directors of Documents 15 and others.
I will also participate in the organization of a public school program and artist studio visits. The focus of the upcoming course is female curatorial practices in the former Yugoslavia. We will be looking for the best approaches in archiving these practices. Today it is a globally relevant issue - how to archive information, how to compile, or how to activate and analyze existing archives. This all affects the politics of memory, which means understanding the reality, projection, and construction of the future.
Studio visit with Emir Šehanović, Eugster || Belgrade Gallery
Costs
The course has a symbolic payment, for three months I paid 350 euros, this is the average monthly salary in Serbia, this payment was determined so that the local curators also had the opportunity to participate.
This year, pricing has changed to give everyone equal opportunities. In case of passing the selection, you pay one monthly average salary of your country for the entire course. This is probably due to the research that we conducted on the salaries of cultural occupations. We interviewed mentors and colleagues from our countries and as a result we understood that in Kazakhstan the salary of the state museum head of the department is about 220 euros and somewhere in a similar position, curators receive several thousand euros. Clearly since the possibilities are different for everyone we decided to approach the issue by creating individual fee rates.
Plane tickets, accommodation and food expenses are covered by participants. If you book in advance, it’s possible to find an apartment in the city center for 300 euros per month. The school provides a financial support for the final project of the curatorial group.
I highly recommend participating in the indicated program and following us on social networks.