Shadow Casters (Bacači Sjenki)
in collaboration with Student Cultural Centre (University of Zagreb)
SHADOWING THE CITY:
HYPERTEXTUALITY OF URBAN SPACES
Research workshop
Zagreb, May 8-10, 2009
With the kind support of the European Cultural Foundation, Office for Culture, Education and Sports of the City of Zagreb, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia and the Zagreb Student Cultural Centre
The notion of shadowing has at least a two-fold meaning: one comes from visual arts terminology and stands for giving texture and volume to two-dimensional plains. The other comes from social sciences and is used as well in performing arts as a method of merging with the surrounding or the situation and mimicking its unfolding and traits. Shadowing the City embraces both meanings.
The two-day intensive workshop is aimed at detecting the specifics of approaches to immaterial cultural heritage and cultural memory in urban spaces through different artistic practices and initiatives, urban culture theory and social science. The format of the workshop will consist of short presentations of various artistic projects and other cultural endeavours dealing with the topic that will be followed by discussions in which all participants are expected to take part – a dynamic and dialogical form shying away from the ex cathedra principle. The geo-political focus of the workshop is the Western Balkans but a wider context will be provided through selected examples from Eastern and Central Europe, Turkey, Western Europe as well as some non-European practices and experiences. Those concentric circles or layers of different approaches, analysed and reflected through discussions, will presumably allow for some new perspectives.
Background: Shadowing the City is organised as a culmination of a four-year project by the Shadow Casters Re-Collecting City/ Re-Collecting Time (RCRT). The entire RCRT project has sprung out of the realisation that the preservation of cultural memory is a vitally important issue for societies undergoing transition, as in such times of feverish accumulation of capital cities go through radical and dramatic changes, often to the detriment of immaterial cultural heritage. What makes the transition even more brutal in the region of the Western Balkans, compared to Eastern and Central Europe, are the bloody wars in the 1990's that took their toll not only in the form of destruction of human lives and material property but also in the destruction of heritage of previous era in social and political as well as in cultural and spiritual sense. This has brought to an overall production of discontinuity, which is one of the most devastating elements of influence when it comes to building the future. It is in such conditions of damaged memory and pervasive collective amnesia that raising the issue of cultural memory (especially the one dealing with immaterial cultural heritage) appears as a necessary endeavour.
In its first two years, the project was focused on Zagreb and dealt with detecting, archiving, studying and exhibiting the artworks and the project documentation on artistic actions as well as political protests and public gatherings in Zagreb in public, non-typical performing spaces from 1945 to the present. What was in the core of RCRT’s interest was the temporality of those actions and events, which at the time of their unfolding did not aim at any permanent presence. Moreover, RCRT strove to capture even more fragile and ephemeral aspects of the past events through searching for memories of individuals – artists themselves, their collaborators, journalists, accidental passer-bys – in various forms: from material ones (photographs, films, videos, written testimonies) to spoken evocations. The collected materials were and still are displayed to public in two specific exhibiting forms: Open Offices and Wall Newspapers (please see links!). The project thus went beyond the mere representation level, directing its attention towards the creative investigation of the broader context of artistic and political actions in public spaces.
In the meantime, RCRT has expanded to the entire region of the Western Balkans.
Hence Shadowing the City research workshop has been preceded by several preparatory workshops in the region (Zagreb, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Dubrovnik, Sarajevo – some of them still pending) that are detecting innovative and artistic practices dealing with the issue while offering the know-how of the project leaders accumulated through the RCRT project. Each workshop has a somewhat different format and each is documented either (or both) in material or virtual form. Selected participants of those workshops are forming the core of the workshop presenters.
Participants: artists, architects and urban planners, heritage and cultural policy specialists, art historians and critics, cultural officers
Workshop moderators: Dragan Klaić, Katarina Pejović, Boris Bakal
Programme Board: Boris Bakal, Katarina Pejovic, Vanja Žanko, Srećko Horvat, Iva Kovač
Co-ordinators: Iva Kovač, Boba Mirjana Stojadinović
Pre-workshop event
Thursday, May 7, 20.00:
Chris Neville: Urban and Cultural Archaeology of New York – Case Studies of the Projects “Place Matters” and “Lower East Side Tenement Museum”
Lecture at Zagreb Architects Association, Trg Bana Jelačića 3, Zagreb
Post-workshop event
Monday, May 11, 19.00:
Marc Augé: Architecture and ‘Non-Places’
Lecture at the School of Architecture, Kačičeva 26, Zagreb
PROGRAMME:
Friday, May 8, 2009
16.00: Welcome by Katarina Pejović and Boris Bakal, co-founders of Shadow Casters and organisers of the workshop
Introduction and program review by Dr. Dragan Klaić, cultural researcher and analyst, Professor at CEU, Budapest
16:30: Re-threading Urban Textures
Women’s Guide Through Zagreb. Barbara Blasin, artist and designer, Zagreb
Bring it on to the Streets: Alternative October Salon of Visual Arts. Ivan Zupanc, photographer and artist, Belgrade
Placc Festival. Fanni Nanay, Art Historian, Budapest
Talent en Route. Laura Cull & Samuel Steer, visual and performing artists, sProUt, London
17.30: Break
17.45: Discussion
Closing remarks. Srećko Horvat, philosopher, Zagreb.
19.00: Ends
Dinner in Student Centre Club
22.00: Theatre performance:
Vacation From History, Shadow Casters. Mosor Cinema, Zagreb (100’)
Saturday, May 9, 2009
9.30: Opening and program review: Dragan Klaic
Architecture and Urbanism as Political Tools
Outside My Door. Marija Mojca Pungerčar, visual artist, Ljubljana
Famous Brno Villas II. Barbora Klimova, visual artists, Brno
Apartment Project. Serra Ozhan, art historian and theoretician, Istanbul
Post-Capitalist Cartography: Red Plan and Plan Mediterraneo. Red Plan Group, Pula
Discussion
Closing remarks: Feđa Vukić, architect, Zagreb
11.30: Break
11.50: Traumas and Dreams: Unraveling the Burried Memories
Sarajevo Video Archive. Nihad Kreševljaković, historian and artist, Sarajevo
Travelling Through Collective Unconscious: L’île. Fiona Templeton, director and performing artist, London/New York
Time Patrol. Janos Sugar, visual artist, Budapest
A Peak in the Future: Exodus 2048. Michael Blum, visual artist, Vienna
Discussion
Closing remarks: Marc Augé, anthropologist, Professor at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
13.30: Lunch
14.30: Passing it On to the Young Ones: Community Reflecting Upon
Memory
Do You Practice What You Preach? Nikoleta Marković, visual artist, Belgrade
Memory of Space: Scole. Valeria di Modica, performing and visual artist, Bologna
Place Matters. Chris Neville, historian, performing artist and cultural anthropologist, curator of Tenement Museum, New York
Discussion
Closing remarks: Urša Jurman, curator and art pedagogue, Ljubljana
16.30: Break
16.50: Urban Zoon Politicon: Reading and Writing Urban Cultural Memory
as Political Statement
Pillow Fights and Bloody Memories: Public Space Bucharest. Raluca Voinea, art historian, Bucharest
On Solidarity: Reconstruction of the Mural on Belgrade Student Centre. Darinka Pop-Mitić, visual artist, Belgrade
Mapping the Black Holes: Art Centre Lazareti and the Fight Against Urban Criminal Politics. Slaven Tolj, visual and performing artist, Director of Art Centre Lazareti, Dubrovnik
366 Rituals of Liberation. Igor Grubić, visual artist, Zagreb
Discussion
Closing remarks: Borka Pavićević, dramaturg, Director of Centre for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade
18.50: Ends
Dinner at Student Centre Club
20.00: The Night of Foreign Cultural Institutes in Student Centre: various
programmes (performances, videos, installations, exhibitions) all over Student Centre
Sunday, May 10, 2009
10.00: Shadow Casters Journey Through the City
11.15: Final Discussion
Urban Cultural Memory as Tool for Reflection, Criticism and Creation. Moderator: Dragan Klaic. Guest Speaker: Nina Obuljen, Councillor to the Minister of Culture, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia
13.00: Ends
Lunch
Workshop language: English
Reporter: Ines Horvat
Location: Student Centre, a cultural complex that unites different cultural venues and student services, including ITD theatre and the biggest cinema hall in the Balkans. Address: Savska 25, 10000 Zagreb. Tel: +385 1 4593 621
U srijedu 13. oktobra 2010. godine, u Domu mladih će biti predstavljena knjiga “Sarajevo – moj grad, mjesto susreta”, autora Jasminka Halilovića. 
SAUDIN BEĆIREVIĆ 
