As part of their ongoing rearch project Project Political Practices of (Post-)Yugoslav Art, Prelom kolektiv, kuda.org, SCCA/pro.ba and WHW together with ŠKUC gallery have organized the timely documentary exhibition related to their research about "the case" of SKC in the 1970s. The exhibition investigated cultural and political circumstances in Yugoslavia after the protests of 1968 40 years ago.
SKC in ŠKUC
The Case of Student's Cultural Centre in the 1970s
... documents, images, texts, films, testimonies, researchers' notes ...
This exhibition, in a form of a notebook in space, offers the insight into the present stage of a part of an ongoing collective research project Political Practices of (Post-)Yugoslav Art, initiated in 2006 by WHW (Zagreb), kuda.org (Novi Sad), SCCA/pro.ba (Sarajevo) and Prelom kolektiv (Belgrade). The project traces, problematizes and articulates the interrelationships of visual arts, intellectual production and socio-political practices in the ex-Yugoslav space. It tries to give back the political voice to the art that has been taken from it, both actively (through the domination of “cultural industries” approach) and retroactively (through the way it is historicized).
The “case” of Student’s Cultural Centre (SKC) in Belgrade reveals numerous important traits of the general constellation of art and politics in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It is characteristic of the strategies after 1968 to contain, pacify and institutionalise student or youth culture as an offered or organized “alternative”. Like many of student’s cultural centres throughout SFRY, SKC was an official state-constituted cultural institution offering young artists and cultural workers “roof over their heads”. At the same time, it was a place of avant-garde experimentation – the introduction of new technologies, new artistic expressions, new forms of cultural activism and self-organization.
In the present cultural-political situation SKC is fetishized and marginalized at the same time. On the one hand, it is seen as a space of unlimited freedom and individual creative expression in the midst of oppressive, totalitarian state. This romantic and nostalgic view is usually followed by reactionary fascination with the formalist re-turn of language and symbolism of the (neo-)avant-garde characteristic for our post-socialist condition. On the other hand, inside predominantly conservative stream of national culture, its historical contributions remain excluded from the contemporary system of evaluation. The symptomatic non-existence of the experience of SKC’s artist, activist and organizational practices shows the erasure of potentially still viable strategies for contemporary regional cultural institutions. The research of The Case of Student's Cultural Centre in the 1970s aims to extricate the concrete relationships and transactions between artists and the institution in order to reveal the political genealogy of contemporary art practices.
The goal of this research project, therefore, is not to “discover” and historicize what is nowadays seen as the underground art practices of some “brave” individuals in the face of a totalitarian system. It is a call for re-examination that could point to the possibilities of reviving progressive and critical experiences that existed on the cultural, artistic and intellectual scene in former Yugoslavia from the contemporary standpoint of the post-Yugoslav situation in artistic and cultural production within the neo-liberal constellation.
CULTURAL INSTITUTION AND SELF-MANAGEMENT: The reforms of Yugoslav self-management socialism in 1965 and especially in 1974 set forth an economic system that could be seen as an anticipation of the contemporary neo-liberal model of entrepreneurship in culture and even of cultural industries. The “case” of Belgrade’s Student’s Cultural Center during the 1970s reveals a complex mode of functioning which is in a number of ways parallel to the problems that contemporary cultural institutions are facing. Even though it was established and budgeted by the state, it presented a space for alternative cultural production. Although it was a professional institution of culture with the administrative distribution of roles, it operated in a non-hierarchical way and without respect for traditional divisions between cultural producers and audiences or disciplinary and professional specificities. Those contradictory traits allow us via this historical example to examine the possibilities of different and defying practices within the institutions and to shed light on the present-day possibilities of critique within the institutions.
OCTOBER 75 AND STRIKE STRIKE IN THE ART PRODUCTION:
The emancipatory project of “Conceptual art” has been formulated as tactical replacement of marketable art product by critical art attitude, that is, the replacement of the “object” by the “idea”. From the contemporary cultural-political-economical perspective, it seems that this project rather contributed to formal radicalization of art than to a real change of its social function. It resulted in practicing the “methods” of self-reflexivity and self-referentiality within the enclosed disciplinary field of art. In other words, the replacement of the “object” by the “idea” remained internal to the discourse of the “institution of art” on one hand, and on the other hand well situated in the logic of the post-Fordist (re-) production and what is referred to as a “cognitive capitalism”. Through the re-examination of collective art projects in SKC like October 75 and different individual artistic concepts which favored various forms of strike over the cognitive production, this chapter of the show tries to discuss ultimately radical approaches to the Conceptual Art project in former Yugoslavia.
TESTIMONIES, MEMORIES AND INTERPRETATIONS:
Testimonies, memories and interpretations of the SKC actors bring into the light a more differentiated and complex picture of art and cultural practices than the smoothed and pacifying discourse of dominant art histories. Less being souvenirs of the “good old times”, they depict the complex field of different practices, strategies and relations that made up SKC. Those conflicting and, often, conflictual interpretations, also indicate political developments and shifting social positions that represent the stakes in today’s games in the production of art and culture and in a broader battle for unified ideological discourse of the neo-liberal era.
SKC IN PUBLIC
Selected articles from Yugoslav press during the 1970s provide a mosaic of complex interplays between public opinion, official statements and SKC. Generally seen as a part of “pessimism in culture” movement since the 1960s – countering technocratic progressivist and growingly petit-bourgeois bureaucratic ideology – SKC was treated very contradictory. On the one hand, it was depicted as the evidence of providing the youth culture with necessary infrastructure, while, on the other, it was scorned as a locus of then called anarcho-liberal, anti-socialist tendencies. The clippings also include articles on SKC programs as beginnings of an informed cultural journalism, various statements of party and cultural officers on SKC, debates on financial sustainability of such institutions, etc. thus piecing a picture of the presence of SKC in a broader social life of SFRY.
KINO BELEŠKE/CINEMATIC NOTES:
This for many years lost and recently found experimental film was produced in 1975 by famous British-German director Lutz Becker in collaboration with Dragomir Zupanc and the group of artists, curators and critics gathered around SKC. The film includes verbal statements and performative gestures of the numerous protagonists of the 'New artistic practice' in former Yugoslavia, referring to the role of art in society and re-thinking concepts of 'form', 'autonomy', 'economy', 'politicality' and 'institutionalization' of contemporary art. Participating: Bojana Pejiæ, Raša Todosijeviæ, Goran Ðorðeviæ, Ješa Denegri, Jasna Tijardoviæ, Marina Abramoviæ, Dragica Vukadinoviæ, Slavko Timotijeviæ, Zoran Popoviæ, Dragomir Zupanc, Biljana Tomiæ, Dunja Blaževiæ, Nebojša Filopoviæ, Goran Trbuljak, Gergelj Urkom.
