(Artist) Second-Grade Citizen

Social context and contemporary art

Vida Kneevi and Ivana Marjanovi

Our intention in this text, in keeping with the subtitle of this years Salon Contextual
artistic practices, is to focus on a critical analysis of the social and cultural context in
which the works presented at this exhibition have come into being and which they deal
with, thereby providing a certain framework for reading them. We shall then analyse
the relationship between the said context and the institution of contemporary art and
point out its key problems.

KONTEKST ARCHIVE 06/07/08

From the very beginning, our work on the 49th October Salon has unfolded amidst an
atmosphere of a state of exception,1 within the local society and on the contemporary artistic
and cultural scene alike. At the time when Bojana Peji, the curator of the Salon, extended
an invitation to us to work as assistant curators to her within the framework of this years
Salon, and in the course of our initial working consultations, on February 7th 2008, at the
Kontekst Gallery in Belgrade, the opening of the exhibition Exception, Contemporary Art
Scene from Prishtina was forcibly prevented and the event was censored.2 In February
this year, Belgrade was shaken by gatherings of extreme right organisations and political
parties protesting against the declaration of Kosovos independence; in the course of
rioting that ensued, the city witnessed scenes of wanton destruction and looting. In the
course of our work on this text, the above-mentioned organisations and political parties
have organised protest rallies against the arrest of Radovan Karadi and his extradition
to the Hague Tribunal, under charges of genocide and crimes committed against Bosniaks
and Croats during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It may be said that, on account of all this, the 49th October Salon will open in rather
1 This is how the theoretician Giorgio Agamben explains the concept of the state of exception: ...the
state of exception or state of emergency has become a paradigm of government today. Originally
understood as something extraordinary, an exception, which should have validity only for a limited period of time, but a historical transformation has made it the normal form of governance.See: Ulrich
Raulff Interview with Giorgio Agamben Life, A Work of Art Without an Author: The State of Exception, the Administration of Disorder and Private Life, 5 German Law Journal No. 5, Special Edition,
2004, http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=437; Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception,
University of Chicago Press, 2004
2 Under pressure from the police, justified by the claim that they could not guarantee the safety of the
organizers and the visitors, the Director of the Cultural Centre where the gallery is located decided not
to go ahead with the opening ceremony. As the city and republican authorities did not react and make
it possible to go ahead with the exhibition, we consider this situation a case of censorship. For more
details on the exhibition and the events surrounding it see:
Eduard Freudmann Ivana Marjanovi, The Exception Proves the Rule, Reartikulacija, no. 3, 2008,
http://www.reartikulacija.org/pdfs/Reartikulacija3_web.pdf;
Exception, Contemporary Art Scene from Prishtina, exhibition catalogue, Kontekst, Belgrade, 2008.
www.kontekstgalerija.org (pdf catalogue); and
7. februar, organ of cultural workers, issue no. 1, Belgrade, April 2008.
http://radniciukulturi.net/files/7februar_Glasilo%20Radnika%20u%20kulturi.pdf

188

specific social surroundings, resulting from the process of transition from the turbofascism of the Miloevi era (as it was referred to by the sociologist arana Papi) to the
neoliberal capitalism active here and now.

189

1.
One of the rare intellectuals to write critically about the role of Serbia in the wars
fought on the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s from a feminist theoretical
position was the sociologist arana Papi (19492002). Analysing the phenomenon of
the fascisation of public and private life in Serbia in the course of the 1980s and 1990s,
she introduced the term turbo-fascism to designate the political and social reality of
that period.3 Numerous phenomena in our society after the ousting of the Miloevi
regime (in the year 2000) and what is referred to as democratic changes point to the
fact that certain aspects of turbo-fascism still determine our society. Todays form of
turbo-fascism is somewhat different we can recognise it as part of the discourse
of Euro-Atlantic integrations and the globalisation of capital.4 In this new system,
the only interest of society is a free and unobstructed flow of capital. The issues of
freedom, social justice, equality, discrimination, peace, etc. are raised only when they
constitute an obstruction or threat to capital. Almost as a rule, problem solutions in this
context are reduced to empty words that actually constitute illusory solutions or illusory
improvements of the situation.5
Relying on the postmodern and feminist theory of shifting concepts, arana Papi points
out that we should not hesitate to use big terms such as fascism if they accurately
describe certain political realities. Serbian Fascism had its own concentration camps,
its own systematic representation of violence against Others, its own cult of the family
and cult of the leader, an explicitly patriarchal structure, a culture of indifference
towards the exclusion of the Other, a closure of society upon itself and upon its own
past; it had a taboo on empathy and a taboo on multiculturalism; it had powerful media
acting as proponents of genocide; it had a nationalist ideology; it had an epic mentality
of listening to the word and obeying authority.6
3 See: arana Papi, Europe after 1989: ethnic wars, the fascisation of social life and body politics
in Serbia, in: Filozofski vestnik, special issue The Body, (ed.) Marina Grini Mauhler, FI ZRC SAZU,
Ljubljana, 2002, pp. 191205.
4 Many theoreticians have pointed out the connection between neoliberal capitalism and postmodern
fascism, for example, Marina Grini. See: Marina Grini, Rearticulation of the state of things or
Euro-Slovenian Necrocapitalism, Reartikulacija, no. 3, 2008, and Marina Grini, Euro-Slovenian
Necrocapitalism, transversal - eipcp multilingual webjournal , 2008,
http://eipcp.net/transversal/0208/grzinic/en
5 European and world theory have produced a sizeable corpus of work dealing with a critique of
capitalism and globalisation. It does not seem necessary to us to refer here to numerous Marxist,
post-colonial, feminist etc. theories, which have been critically reviewing the above mentioned social
phenomena.
6 See: arana Papi, Europe after 1989: ethnic wars, the fascisation of social life and body politics in
Serbia, ibid.

Proceeding with her analysis, arana Papi writes: The prefix turbo refers to the
specific mixture of politics, culture, mental powers and the pauperisation of life in
Serbia: the mixture of rural and urban, pre-modern and post-modern, pop culture and
heroines, real and virtual, mystical and normal, etc. In this term, despite its naive
or innocent appearances, there is still fascism in its proper sense. Like all fascisms,
Turbo-Fascism includes and celebrates a pejorative renaming, alienation, and finally
removal, of the Other: Croats, Bosnians, and Albanians. Turbo-fascism in fact demands
and basically relies on this culture of the normality of fascism that had been structurally
constituted well before all the killings in the wars started.7

KONTEKST ARCHIVE 06/07/08

Further on, the author points out: Paradoxically or not, from the late eighties this
normality of evil against the Other belonged to the normal everyday life in Serbia. The
above mentioned processes and changes were necessary in order for it to become so.
This was the result of a sophisticated policy of collective amnesia that made individual
consciences feel free to be suspended by a collective Super-Ego. In these processes
of issuing, licenses to kill were systematically issued by the state TV, private and
commercial TV programs, it was the dominant form of political discourse, and an open
message from the holy messages of the Serbian Orthodox Church. These Serbian
institutions and individuals did construct during eighties some kind of super-conscience
that permitted oblivion and the suspension of empathy, memory and tolerance toward
the Other. We are still far away from any understanding that there exists a whole range
of layers of responsibility for the crimes committed: for example, responsibility for
remaining silent, for forgetting, for hatred and for media propaganda. The responsibility
for remaining silent is the most complicated, since silence includes agreement, but also
awareness of repression - and even a shadow of doubt.8
We shall refer to several events that point to the social phenomena that arana Papi
wrote about, such as the explicitly patriarchal structure of society, nationalism, the
culture of indifference towards the exclusion of the Other (for example, Albanians,
Roma, Chinese, gay men, lesbians, transgender persons, sex workers, women...), the
closing of the society within itself and its obsession with its own past (for example,
the Kosovo myth), the taboo against sympathising with others and empathy, pejorative
renaming (for example, fag, Shquiptar,9 Gypsy), alienation and removal of the
Other, aversion towards the Other, the normality of evil towards the Other those are
the normalities of everyday life in Serbia even today.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Shqiptar (plural: Shqiptart) is an Albanian language ethnonym (autonym), by which Albanians,
mainly those from Albania and Kosovo, call themselves. Serbs, however, use it to refer to Albanians
pejoratively, translators note.

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On the occasion of the International Day of Lesbian and Gay Pride, a gay parade
and a gathering entitled There Is a Place for Everyone were scheduled to be held
in Belgrades Republic Square on June 30th 2001, organised by Labris the Group
for Lesbian and Human Rights and Gayten LGBT the Centre for Promotion and
Development of the Rights of Sexual Minorities. Before it could get under way, the
gathering was forcibly prevented by members of the extreme right clero-fascist group
The Homeland Movement Obraz [Cheek] , supporters of the Rad [Work] and Crvena
zvezda [Red Star] football clubs and the city police, which oversaw and tolerated this
violent demonstration of hatred towards sexual minorities.10

191

On February 7th 2008, at the Kontekst Gallery in Belgrade, the opening of the exhibition
Exception, Contemporary Art Scene from Prishtina, organised by the citizens
associations Kontekst from Belgrade and Napon [Tension] from Novi Sad, was forcibly
prevented. The same exhibition had previously been presented at the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Novi Sad. The intention behind the exhibition Exception, 11 along
with panel discussions and presentation of young Albanian artists from Kosovo that
were also scheduled, was to offer a critical reflection of the present moment and of
the relations between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians in recent history, to discuss the
semi-official apartheid programme carried out against the Albanian population of
Kosovo by the Belgrade authorities, a policy that treated Albanians as a foreign body,
the parallel social system emerging in Kosovo as a result of the massive differentiation
and exclusion of Albanians from political life in Kosovo following the passing of the
new Constitution in 1990 and the abolition of Kosovos autonomy, and contemporary
politics in Serbia, where the radical nationalism of Milosevis politics still represents
an important phantasmatic area.12 On the day scheduled for the opening of the Belgrade
exhibition, The Homeland Movement Obraz and other like-minded groups (overseen
by the police, who were taking care of security), destroyed the art work Face to Face
by Dren Maliqi and managed to prevent the scheduled exhibition from being held.13
10 Even though the organisers reported the gathering to the police and warned of possible (announced!) incidents, the Secretariat of Internal Affairs in Belgrade provided a small number of policemen, many of whom made homophobic, offensive comments and refused to protect the threatened
citizens brutally beaten by the attackers. For more on this see:
http://www.labris.org.yu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=112&Itemid=43;
http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?dd=30&mm=6&yyyy=2001;
http://www.labris.org.yu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=554&Itemid=68; http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=YOaZK-GOEuk
11 For more on this see: Exception, Contemporary Art Scene from Prishtina, exhibition catalogue,
Kontekst, Belgrade, 2008 and www.kontekstgalerija.org (pdf catalogue).
12 During the course of the Novi Sad exhibition, the Socialist Party of Serbia, the Serbian Radical
Party, the Democratic Party of Serbia, as well as the pre-election campaign of Tomislav Nikoli, the
Deputy Chairman of the Serbian Radical Party, openly advocated the lynching of this exhibition and its
organisers.
13 For more on this see:
http://www.obraz.org.yu/Aktivnosti/Obraz_na_delu/2008/SprecavanjeSiptarskeIzlozbe.htm

Other events the incidents occurring at the Students Town Cultural Centre in
Belgrade where the very same organisations and groups prevented a programme
from being held on several occasions, constitute proof that there is a distinct lack of
political will to prevent this violence.14

KONTEKST ARCHIVE 06/07/08

The period immediately preceding and following the proclamation of the independence
of Kosovo on February 17th 2008 was marked by a number of events that made the
tendency of the fascisation of our society even more visible. In addition to protests
characterised by violence, attacks on embassies and looting, perhaps one of the most
explicit examples of this was the campaign of boycotting bakeries owned by Albanians
and the campaign of free distribution of bread in front of such bakeries in Sombor. The
lack of any reaction on the part of anyone after the first such campaigns testifies to the
extent of the normality of this profascist discourse in Serbia. This is also confirmed by
the fact that the exhibition Exception, Contemporary Art Scene from Prishtina was
never held at the Kontekst Gallery and that the city and republican authorities never
provided the proper conditions to enable the opening of this exhibition,15 that the gay
parade was never organised even though the organisers of this and other events that
were prevented from being held insisted on being enabled to go ahead with them.
http://www.obraz.org.yu/Aktivnosti/Saopstenja_i_komentari/2008/UmetnostTerorizma.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxCgz78ro6o
14 On May 30th 2007, a premiere of the film Salt Peanuts Hot Klab of Frans by Antonio Lauer, that
is, the Zagreb artist Tomislav Gotovac, was scheduled at the Students Town Cultural Centre in Belgrade. Following a brief introductory speech by Antonio Lauer, a group of persons forcibly interrupted
the showing of the film. Owing to the intervention of the staff and the support of the audience, the
incident was moved out of the cinema hall and the screening went ahead. For more on this see: http://
www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2007&mm=06&dd=01&nav_id=249352
Apart from this, on July 3rd 2008, members of the Homeland Movement Obraz interrupted the
performance Breathing Walking Touching by Gabrijel Savi Ra, scheduled to be held at the
Students Town Cultural Centre, within the framework of the Performance Festival Ars in Actio. For
more on this see: http://www.studio-b.co.yu/info/vest.php?id=26071
15 On the occasion of the incident at the Kontekst Gallery, officials from the Ministry of Culture of the
Republic of Serbia and the City of Belgrade Assembly issued statements for the media (not, however,
the Democratic Party or the key art institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade,
the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia, the University of Art in Belgrade, etc.). The communiqus
issued by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia and the City of Belgrade Assembly are
available: http://www.seecult.org/portal/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&
sid=26715; http://www.seecult.org/portal/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article
&sid=26716;
http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2008&mm=02&dd=08&nav_id=284078;
http://www.kontekstgalerija.org
In addition to the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia and the City of Belgrade Assembly,
some political parties the Social-democratic League of Vojvodina Youth, the Liberal Democratic
Party and G 17 Plus condemned the incident. The organisations that condemned this incident most
strongly were those from the independent scene such as the Other Scene, the Coalition against
Discrimination, Women in Black, the Rex Cultural Centre etc., as well as a great number of individual
citizens who initiated or signed two mass petitions. All the media statements and the said petitions
are available at http://www.kontekstgalerija.org.

192

Our conclusion would be that a lack of reaction, of voicing a view, actually means
acknowledgement and approval of such a state of affairs.
According to arana Papi, the final decade (of the 20th century) can be defined as
a specific historical processuality, as transition from pro-Yugoslav communism to
the politically autistic, aggressive, profascist collectivism that she sees as the reason
why, among other things, there was never a democratic alternative to Miloevis warpolitics based on ethnic struggle against all. Even the so-called oppositional menleaders could not help themselves and took part, each to his abilities, in this I-dontmind-if-you-are-cleansed game. The only political subjects in Serbia who dared to
challenge this deadly game, since the beginning of wars in 1991, were some (now very
much marginalised) women politicians and some feminist and pacifist groups16 (such
as Women in Black, the Autonomous Womens Centre, Belgrade V. K., I. M.).
Knowing that this kind of opposition to the Miloevi regime came to power after
the year 2000, we should not be surprised that today the Obraz movement and other
organisations and individuals of similar orientation are used by some political parties
for achieving various political goals.17
193

The incidents referred to above are a new face of censorship in the era of neoliberal
democracy, when the law and the Constitution promote the freedom of (artistic)
expression. Today, censorship functions like this: the authorities, at various levels, allow
the (pro-)fascist street forces to decide which event should be allowed to happen and
which should not, and the police cannot guarantee safety to the participants. We could
therefore conclude that the ideology of the political elites in Serbia (and elsewhere in
Europe, of which we shall write later) is right-wing, whether they present themselves as
democrats, radicals, socialists or liberals. The state intervenes ONLY in cases involving
interest in the shape of financial capital.
Thus, for example, the Eurosong 2008 contest, organised in Belgrade in May, despite
the threats coming from the Obraz organisation on account of the announcements
that a great number of gay music fans would be attending the event, passed without
a single incident, even though tens of thousands of foreign tourists visited the city and
it was necessary to take care of security not just at one closed venue but in the entire
city! The President of Serbia personally guaranteed the safety of the delegations, media
and fans at the time.18
16 arana Papi, Kosovo War, Feminists and Fascism in Serbia, Belgrade, 1999, http://k.mihalec.
tripod.com/fem_in_serbia.ht
17 This is confirmed by the fact that in 1996 Vojislav Kotunica the former Serbian Prime Minister (in
the period between 2004 and 2008), wrote an article for the Obraz periodical, which the Homeland
Movement Obraz originates from. For Vojislav Kotunicas article published in Obraz see:http://
www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2006&mm=01&dd=04&nav_id=184200&nav_category=11
18 Following the statements of members of the clero-fascist organisation Obraz that as in 2001,

2.
This local profascist discourse fits very precisely into the discourse of Euro-Atlantic
integrations and the globalisation of capital. When we analyse what Europe (or to put it
more precisely, the European Union) really is, it becomes clear why the pro-European
political option in Serbia did not consider it necessary to react when the exhibition
Exception, Contemporary Art Scene from Prishtina was prevented from being held,
and in similar situations, that is, the logic behind this pro-European discourse in Serbia
becomes clear.
The European democratic values promoted by the European Union (or the values of
European civil societies) are not universal human values those are actually values
that exist only in relation to economic processes where the concept of freedom is
directly and solely connected with the unobstructed flow of capital, which must always
and anew be ensured by using various technologies of power.19 This, then, does not
pertain to universal human rights but to rights connected with making a profit and the
turnover of capital (of multinational companies). For the purpose of increasing efficiency
as mush as possible, the market and private capital are entering even those areas that
have always been socially owned and taken care of by the state cultural institutions,
art institutions, natural resources, education, public transportation, etc.
As the borders within the EU became more open with the development of the single
market and the monetary union, new security threats have been constructed terrorism,
crime, mass applications for asylum, illegal migrations, trafficking in human beings,
etc.20 While, on the one hand, the European Union is presented as a land of human
rights, tolerance and democracy, on the other hand, repression, control, exploitation,
unfair distribution of goods and money, laws on migrations and asylum show the
absurdity of this economy of inclusion through exclusion.

KONTEKST ARCHIVE 06/07/08

The issue of (illegal) immigrants and asylum is especially indicative of the way in which
the problem of European security is construed and how this discourse produces everyday
they will not allow the promotion of freakish and perverted values on the streets of Belgrade,
reported by the Belgrade media, the Executive Supervisor of Eurosong Svante Stockselius said that
the President of Serbia guaranteed the safety of the delegations, media and fans to him, and that
this applied to everyone. http://www.labris.org.yu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21
82&Itemid=47
For more on this see:
http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2008&mm=04&dd=15&nav_category=12&nav_
id=294125http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO7JQR9rzls;
19 Thus, for example, the freedom of movement in the European Union is ensured only when it is economically functional and justified. The rights of workers are guaranteed only when they concern their
economic function. For more on this see: William Walters & Jens Henrik Haahr, Governing Europe:
Discourse, Governmentality and European Integration, London: Routledge, 2005.
20 Ibid.

194

racism. Enforced deportations of Roma citizens from EU and Schengen countries, the
deportations of those who abuse the right to seeking asylum even though they are
faced with the threat of imprisonment, torture or even the death penalty, are merely
some of the examples of the democracy, tolerance and human rights of the
European Union.21 The safety measures and the brutal behaviour of security forces in
the cases of anticapitalist critique of the main institutions of capitalism, such as the G8
summits or the NATO summits, testify to the freedom of expression advocated by the
European Union and the United States of America.22
This is the reality of the civil society of Western Europe, which is getting rich by
exploiting the markets of the new and future member countries (Eastern European
countries), which, by entering the EU, enter into a kind of modern colonial relationship
with Western European countries.

195

In order to avoid the position of a mere observer, consumer or victim, it is important to

try to ponder possible solutions by relying on critical theory. At this point, we would like
to refer to the writings of Walter D. Mignolo, a theoretician from Argentina, member
of the Modernity/Coloniality/Decoloniality project collective, who says that there is
no modernity outside coloniality; coloniality is constitutive of modernity.23 ...What is
eliminated by the narratives of modernity (and post-modernity) is not its own past, but
all knowledge and life-forms that have to be integrated, marginalized or destroyed, so
the salvation mission of modernity can continue. ...modernity conceived in terms of
a rhetoric of salvation, goes hand in hand justifying the logic of coloniality... Mignolo
explains that the colonial matrix of power is made up of four interlinked areas: control
of the economy, control of authority, control of gender and sexuality, and control of
knowledge and subjectivity.24
21 In January 2008, Holland ordered the deportation of a 19-year old gay man from Iran to Great Britain. This Iranian had escaped from Great Britain to Holland having had his asylum application rejected
and having submitted a new application in Holland (which is forbidden). The Dutch court ordered his
deportation to Great Britain even though it was known that he would be deported to Iran afterwards
and sentenced to death there. For more on this see: Tatjana Greif, Schengen in Practice, Reartikulacija, no. 3, 2008, http://www.reartikulacija.org/queer/queer3_ENG.html
22 We can find examples of this in the works of the H.arta group or Oliver Ressler presented at this
years Salon.
23 Mignolo writes that modernity is not a historical period but a rhetoric based on the idea of salvation through conversion (by Spanish and Portuguese missionaries), civilizing missions (British and
French agents), by development and modernisation (US experts in economy and politics guiding the
Third World towards the same standards as the First) and through market democracy and consumerism. He points out that Although it is true that colonialism ended with twentieth century decolonization, coloniality was again re-framed by the leadership of the United States. See: Marina Grini
Walter Mignolo, De-linking epistemology from capital and pluri-versality, Reartikulacija, no. 4, 2008,
http://www.reartikulacija.org/pdfs/Reartikulacija4_web.pdf
24 Marina Grini Walter Mignolo, De-linking epistemology from capital and pluri-versality, ibid.

What the Modernity/Coloniality/Decoloniality project proposes is the idea of de-linking

from the colonial matrix of power, of which the neo-liberal version of capitalism is
one component, where neo-liberalism is the latest version we know of the history
of imperial modernity/coloniality, and capitalism is a lifestyle in which growth and
accumulation take precedence over humans and life in general.
...De-linking from the colonial matrix of power implies a gigantic, collective and global
diversity or pluri-versity... ..in a coordinate diversity of vision towards a society in
which the goal is not living to work or living to consume, but instead, working to live
and consuming to live. ...De-linking from the colonial matrix of power is a subjective
and theoretical operation, and it is hard, because it is not just economic transactions we
are talking about, but the control of knowledge and subjectivity.25

KONTEKST ARCHIVE 06/07/08

What is of key importance here, as pointed out by Walter Mignolo, is that we should
not only understand this colonial division but also, even more importantly, review
our own position within the colonial matrix of power. He says that the geopolitics of
knowledge, one of his key concepts, should not be treated as an object of study and
seen from a perspective outside geopolitics. There is no outside to the geopolitics of
knowledge because there is no outside to imperial difference or colonial difference! The
central issue of the geopolitics of knowledge is, firstly, to understand, although it may
be critical, what type of knowledge is produced from the side of colonial difference
and what type of knowledge is produced from the other side of colonial difference26
In the local context, in political terms (also in the field of art, among others), this means
that today we should not view ourselves only as victims of coloniality (of the European
Union and the United States), but must review the hegemonic place of our society in
the past and at present. Only through a critical rearticulation of history and by detecting
inner colonial situations can we reach the point of de-linking our society from the
colonial matrix of power and constituting the collective and global diversity or pluriversality proposed by Walter Mignolo. This means that, when dealing with knowledge,
25 ...Once such principles are accepted, writes Mignolo, the question is what kind of de-colonial
projects can emerge from colonial local histories: from Eastern and Central Europe (that is, the
Europe at the margins of the imperial states, and with dense and diverse histories, languages, and
religions); from colonial immigrants within Europe and the US and from European (in senso largo,
including the Balkans and Eastern Europe) scholars and intellectuals who want to de-link from
Eurocentered (senso stricto Hegels heart of Europe) conception of life and knowledge and join the
ex-Third World crowd and the mass of migrants from the ex-colonies to the heart of Europe and the
US.
For more on this see: Marina Grini Walter Mignolo, De-linking epistemology from capital and
pluri-versality, ibid.
26 Walter Mignolo, The geopolitics of knowledge and the coloniality of power, an interview with
Mignolo by Catherine Walsh, in Zehar, no. 60-61, San Sebastian 2007 and Documenta Magazines
Online Journal, http://magazines.documenta.de/frontend/article.php?IdLanguage=1&NrArticle=738.
For more n Mignolos concepts see: http://www.waltermignolo.com/

196

political activism and art, we should read the theory, art history or activist social
analyses written by Shklzen Maliqi, Sezgin Boynik, efik eki Tatli, arana Papi,
Women in Black, the Autonomous Womens Centre, Queer Belgrade, etc.

197

3.
The institution of contemporary art, both locally and globally, is not at all innocent in
the processes of coloniality as defined above; on the contrary, it is one of the important
factors of the overall economisation of society, a promoter of the ideology of neoliberal
capitalism, Euro-Atlantic integrations and a means of culturalisation. In this constellation,
culture assumes a new status and a new role. Within the framework of the processes
of implementing the values of the European Union in societies where various forms of
socialism were in power, culture has become a catalyst of the process of culturalisation,
which represents a total abstraction, negation, cleansing and depoliticising of the field
of cultural and artistic production with a view to ensuring unobstructed flow of capital.
What actually happens in reality is that burning social issues remain marginalised
(the problems of the pauperisation of society and high unemployment rate, all-round
privatisation under suspicious circumstances, monopoly in the hands of war profiteers,
escalation of nationalism, racism, clericalism, homophobia, etc.). The process of
culturalisation actually leads to the pacification and neutralisation of the abovementioned social problems and the establishment of a seemingly ordered society.27
An important role in the said processes is played by private capital, civil society and
the state.
In this context, multinational companies, insurance companies and banks support
cultural and artistic projects through a system of foundations they have; through art
collections, they become owners of contemporary art, dictate trends, define the kinds
of projects that get accepted, who should cooperate with whom, what kind of analysis
of art is relevant. We can encounter examples of this in Erste Foundation, the Contact
collection of the Erste Bank, the Ni Art Foundation, the Generali Foundation, etc.
Civil society free citizens associations, various forms of citizens initiatives and
non-governmental organisations has also been and still is an important protagonist
of these processes.28 It played a significant role in the local context in the process of
27 For more on this see: Duan Grlja/Jelena Vesi, Prelom kolektiv, The Neoliberal Institution of
Culture and the Critique of Culturalization, transversal - eipcp multilingual webjournal, 2007, http://
eipcp.net/transversal/0208/prelom/en
28 According to the sociologist Zdenka Milivojevi, towards the end of the 1980s and in the early
1990s the term civil society became topical in Serbia again. Even back then, it was understood
solely as a positive concept that supports positive characteristics, values and campaigns. It was
during that period that citizens initiatives emerged, advocating the preservation of basic civic rights
and freedoms, tolerance, etc., which resulted in the civil sector being, for the most part, referred to as
positively oriented association in the public discourse and among intellectuals in Serbia. Other kinds
of association and civic activities, such as those supporting the spread of extremism, nationalism,
racism, xenophobia, homophobia, that is, those organisations that belong to the negative kind of

democratisation of culture, within the framework of which work on raising the level of
citizens consciousness, promoting and practising positive values, equality, tolerance
and participation in all spheres of culture and society was nominally carried out. What
happened in reality was that civil society, or the so-called third sector, actually became
a catalyst in the process of replacing the receding second sector (that is, the State)
and stimulating the development of the still insufficiently developed first sector (the
market).29 Todays neoliberal citizen is expected, in culture, art and other spheres alike,
to associate of his/her own free will, cooperate, exchange ideas, coordinate work,
all in accordance with EU regulations (Lisbon European Council, 2000, Open Method
of Coordination30). Otherwise, the funds necessary for work will not be available. This
system of coordination of the protagonists of culture and art and the discourse they are
supposed to establish is dictated solely by the economy.31
An important role in the above processes is played by the state, which contributes,
through the established democratic institutional system, to the greater efficiency of
market operation and the unobstructed flow of capital. This encompasses all state
institutions, including cultural and art institutions.

KONTEKST ARCHIVE 06/07/08

The October Salon, being the greatest annual event in the sphere of visual arts in Serbia,
is also developing in keeping with establishing neoliberal market principles. Since
2004, it has been transformed into an international event like documenta, Manifesta
and countless biennials and similar exhibitions that represent the most powerful global
platforms of art and the art market.32 Such events are, for the most part, conceived
without anything in the way of a political agenda or profile. This thesis is confirmed by
the series of international October Salon exhibitions over the last few years, which have
had no common points or fields of communication.
association were not considered to be part of civil society in Serbia even though, from an international
perspective, the definition of civil society encompasses both positive and negative organisations, as
well as the informal forms of civic association. See: Zdenka Milivojevi, Civilno drutvo Srbije: Potisnuto tokom 1990-ih u potrazi za legitimitetom, prepoznatljivom ulogom i priznatim uticajem tokom
2000-ih: CIVICUS indeks civilnog drutva izvetaj za Srbiju, Argument, Belgrade, 2006, p. 17
29 Duan Grlja/Jelena Vesi, Prelom kolektiv, The Neoliberal Institution of Culture and the Critique of
Culturalization, ibid.
30 For more on this see: William Walters & Jens Henrik Haahr, Governing Europe: Discourse, Governmentality and European Integration, London: Routledge, 2005
31 Thus, for example, through competitions for the purpose of financing culture, the European Union
and numerous private foundations such as the European Cultural Foundation compel the protagonists
of the scenes in ex-Yugoslav countries to cooperate among themselves (and with EU organisations),
organise partner projects, exchange programmes, etc.
32 For more on this see: Kati Morawek / Beat Weber, The Documenta files - Economics of the art
system: The example Documenta, brumaria - prcticas artsticas, estticas y polticas, 2007, http://
www.brumaria.net/erzio/contenido.php?id=180 and Miko uvakovi , DISCOURSES OF MANIFESTA CRITICAL READING OF THE DISCOURSES OF AN INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, Art-e-fact, Strategies of
Resistance, Issue 4, 2005, http://artefact.mi2.hr/_a04/lang_en/theory_suvakovic_en.htm

198

All of the factors mentioned above external and internal ones, national and international
ones alike, lead to the establishment of a non-conflictual or politically correct society as
a basic prerequisite for the unobstructed flow of capital. According to the theorist Boris
Buden, under such circumstances culture becomes doubly instrumentalised. It serves
either the European West, as a means of domination for the purpose of expansion to
the East, or as a medium of depolitisation, in the process of its unification.33 The curator
and art theorist Stevan Vukovi writes that the civil sector, by promoting the premises
of liberal democracy and economic liberalism, and carrying out the Politics of Repair
or Redress, paved the way for the unimpeded expansion of the hegemonistic world
orders and the values of cultural humanism of the liberal West, gave them legitimacy
and incorporated counterhegemonistic ideas into itself.34

199

In such a constellation, critical artistic, curatorial, theoretical and social practices are
entirely marginalised, censored or even non-existent. The mass production of exhibitions
and events mostly boils down to entertainment these are often branding managerial
projects realised by curators/managers in cooperation with artists/managers, where
anything goes, nothing is questioned, but most importantly of all, everything appears
highly professional and efficient. These processes are tendentiously created and
copiously financed for the purpose of paralysing social criticism and the depolitisation
of art and culture.
The Bucharest Biennial offers an example that exceptions and a different policy of
framing events of this order of magnitude are possible (though not without attendant
problems!). The organisers, Razvan Ion and Eugen Radescu, come from the alternative
Bucharest scene, and their political and critical attitudes established as the aim
of this biennial may be read in all of the Biennial editions so far (even though the
curators have changed!). At the Biennial web site, it is stated that this event is linked
to an universal problem - that does not take into consideration the geographical
or historical context - the problem of resistance in daily life, of details and living
as a way of living... Fundamentally, European culture has been the result of
exchange - sometimes peaceful, other times violent - that have taken place between
neighboring societies and between different social groups within a given state. These
horizontal and vertical forms of cultural exchange occurred in many different manners:
through imitation, assimilation, dissimulation, appropriation, through either mutual
understanding or hegemonic dominance... We would like to operate in a way that
demonstrates sensitivity and competence in dealing with the others as the alter
33 See: Boris Buden, Kultura proiruje i ujedinjuje Evropu, zar ne?, in: Kaptolski kolodvor: politiki
eseji, Centar za savremenu umetnost, Belgrade, 2002, p. 188.
34 See: Stevan Vukovi, Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will, Institutional Critique in
Serbia and its Lack of Organic References, transversal - eipcp multilingual webjournal, 2007, http://
eipcp.net/transversal/0208/vukovic/en

from different cultural backgrounds.35 The institution of the October Salon has not
attained this kind of awareness yet.
The question that arises is whether the October Salon as a mainstream city event may
raise above the symptoms of culturalisation based on the principle of entertainment
as communication, as the mechanism of social control and producer of subjectivity?36
To end with, we would like to point out that the artistic positions that we support
within the framework of this exhibition are those that see their own artistic work as
positioning with respect to social and cultural problems, which include an analysis
of those problems in their structure, as well as radical critique, production of debate
and/or a proposal for a possible solution (through positioning and critique). We have
based our curatorial practice at the Kontekst Gallery on this kind of thinking, having
established the gallery as a self-organised space for critical and political action within
the local social context, reacting against the establishment of capitalism and all-round
privatisation, the fascisation of society, nationalism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia,
violence, etc.37 Therefore, our position at the Salon may be read as a continuation of the
programmes that we realise at the Kontekst Gallery, cooperation with certain artists and
activists, for whom we consider it essential to present their works and performances
within the framework of the October Salon, being of the opinion that only by providing
room for critical practices that we create together can we create the potential for the
emancipation of political subjects the audience as critical public opinion which, as
such, can exert pressure and put up resistance against the fascisation of society. We
decided to accept the invitation of Bojana Peji and participate in this years Salon, as
we pointed out at the beginning, after the censorship that the exhibition Exception,
Contemporary Art Scene from Prishtina, which we coorganised, was subjected to; we
felt obligated to point out phenomena of the fascisation of our society, to reflect the
social and cultural context that we work in and to propose, through our text and the
selection of a part of the works, a critical analysis of it, insisting that this society must
change and that it must consider and accept criticism levelled at it.38

KONTEKST ARCHIVE 06/07/08

Text was originally published in the 49. October Salon catalogue

35 Text on the Bucharest Biennial: http://www.bucharestbiennale.org/about.html

36 Simon Sheikh, Representation, Contestation and Power: The Artist as Public Intellectual, www.
republicart.net, EIPCP multilingual webjournal 2004.
http://www.republicart.net/disc/aap/sheikh02_en.pdf
37 We shall only mention some of the programmes the project Sex, Work and Society; Land of
Human Rights Artistic Analyses and Visions of the Human Rights Situation in Europe , Holy damn
it 50,000 posters against G8, on the urgent need for radical answers; cooperation with the Queer
Belgrade collective. For more on the Kontekst Gallery programmes see www.kontekstgalerija.org
38 We cannot escape the fact that we ourselves are, in a way, a part of the system that we criticise,
both through the programme of the Kontekst Gallery (which is cofinanced by the Ministry of Culture
of the Republic of Serbia and the Secretariat for Culture of the City of Belgrade) and through our decision to be a part of the October Salon (a critique of which we have presented). The question that still
remains open is whether working outside the system is possible at all. To us, working within it means
a demand to organise this space differently, of which we have written in this text.

200

NOVEMBER 2008
12.11. 19.11.
On Her Pleasure: Naked Reading of Lacan
Author: Lana Zdravkovi, Institute for Art
Production and Research Kitch, Ljubljana

201

Video projection On Her Pleasure: Naked Reading

of Lacan is reflection about female (sexual)
pleasure as defined and thought by contemporary
psychoanalysis and its key authors like first of all
Freud and Lacan (the artist reads Lacans Encore
in the video). That is of high importance because
through thinking about this problem, broader
social and political problems of contemporary
society are being problematized not only the
position of women in the contemporary society
but as well more and more present chauvinistic
and macho discourse in its whole scale from
culture, art, science to politics and economics.
That has its broad consequences in the society
that only declaratively functions under dictate
of democracy but is in fact deeply chauvinistic,
which means racist and nationalist as well (this
statement is based on the body of work of Michael
Foucault, tienne Balibar, Jacques Rancire and
Alain Badiou). Thats why the fight for gender
equality is not only a feminist demand (the artist
is not a feminist but political activist) but as
well an absolute demand for real equality no
meter of sex, national or ethnic identity, race or
cultural differences (all these elements are in the
contemporary society more connected then it looks
on a first sight). The work can be understood as a
political performance that seeks ways to classless
society or no authoritarian politics. In today neoliberal society where precariat insecure and
temporary modes of work have became standard
that is as well a fight for workers rights and a
better world. That is an utopian demand, that
seeks to become, as put by Immanuel Wallerstein,
utopistic (radical but possible). Female sex organ
that today, in the time conformism and hedonism
of consumerist society has became a cheep
symbol, in this art work is used not as a symbol of
emotions and beauty but as a symbol of thinking
and political acting.
The video, created as co-production of Institute
for Art Production and Research Kitch, Ljubljana
(www.kitch.org), Association for the Promotion
of Women in Culture - City of Women, Ljubljana
(www.cityofwomen.org) and Multimedia -

Performing Art Center, Skopje (www.multimedia.

org.mk) , was for the first time presented on March
the 8th 2007 within Red Dawns festival in Ljubljana
and later on 8th September in 2007 in the Sarajevo
within Pitchwise festival.
Lana Zdravkovi was born in Belgrade. She
lives and works in Ljubljana. As researcher she
is employed at Peace Institute Institute for
Contemporary Political and Social Studies. She
publishes articles regularly in magazines and she
collaborates with radio Student. She is finishing
her PhD thesis in political philosophy in Slovenian
Academy of Science and Arts. She is a political
activist and artist acting under the name Kitch.
Fields of her artistic acting are: neo-liberalization
and economization of art, political performance,
pornography and art, kitsch and trash art.
www.kitch.si
20.11. 7 pm
Projection of the film 5 Factories-Worker Control
in Venezuela (by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler)
+ discussion on the topic of workers struggle in
Jugoremedija factory (Zrenjanin)
Participants: Nina Hoechtl, Vladan Jeremi and
Ivan Zlati
Moderator: Marko Mileti
In their second film regarding political and social
change in Venezuela, after Venezuela from Below
(67 min., 2004), Azzellini and Ressler focus on the
industrial sector in 5 Factories-Worker Control
in Venezuela (81 min., 2006). The changes in
Venezuelas productive sphere are demonstrated
with five large companies in various regions:
a textile company, aluminum works, a tomato
factory, a cocoa factory, and a paper factory. In
all, the workers are struggling for different forms
of co- or self-management supported by credits
from the government. The assembly is basically
governing the company, says Rigoberto Lpez
from the textile factory Textileros del Tchira
in front of steaming tubs. And coning machine
operator Carmen Ortiz summarizes the experience
as follows: Working collectively is much better
than working for another-working for another is
like being a slave to that other.
The protagonists portrayed at the five production
locations present insights into ways of alternative
organizing and models of workers control.
Mechanisms and difficulties of self-organization