Belgrade, 21 December 2005. In a public debate entitled 'Radio aRtivism', several practitioners of radio-based projects explore to what extent their method is related to activism or to an aesthetic practice. Both 'local' and some guests from abroad take part in the forum. The participants are divided up according to their geographic origins: The German radio collective Ligna and the French curator Claire Staebler are situated on one side, and the guests from Belgrade and Novi Sad on the other. Accidentally or on purpose, this division prefigures the schism between the views of the participants which is reinforced as the debate unfurls. While Ligna explores what could arguably be one of the most radical uses of radio intervention in contemporary German society, their intervention is seen as too dislocated from the political context of Belgrade where radio was once used to depose a government, and not for 'pleasing' and art for art's sake performances in railway stations or in shopping malls. The division culminates when one of the debaters refuses to speak English. Unexpectedly, the exchange of views about radio as an actively democratic medium reveals some striking differences in what is thought to be a practice that could be transferred has actually an entirely different meaning in different political and cultural situations.
Cultural centre REX, Belgrade
On this page you can see a particular case (an assumption, condition, decisions, etc.) that has influenced the course of the ALMOSTREAL project.