SHADOWING THE CITY: HYPERTEXTUALITY OF URBAN SPACES

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

documentary
pored seada i nihada o meni se brinu još Stariša, alias Bob Guchone, Luka Perović, Stariša, MELINA KAMERIĆ, DMAJA (dopisnica iz Austro-ugarske monarhije),Žaklina E. KENEDY (ekspertica za Italiju i dopisnik iz Australije na privremenom radu u Sarajevu, povremeno Šoba nešto sroči svima, a mi objavimo, Blecker-Decker, nešto se jednostavno prepiše, a nešto objavi uz odobrenje eminentnih autora rasprostranjenih širom planete...

Komentariši