Shadow Casters (Bacači Sjenki)
in collaboration with Student Cultural Centre (
SHADOWING THE CITY:
HYPERTEXTUALITY OF URBAN SPACES
Research workshop
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,
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
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
Lecture at
Post-workshop event
Monday, May 11, 19.00:
Marc Augé: Architecture and ‘Non-Places’
Lecture at the
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,
16:30: Re-threading Urban Textures
Women’s Guide Through Zagreb. Barbara Blasin, artist and designer,
Bring it on to the Streets: Alternative October Salon of Visual Arts. Ivan Zupanc, photographer and artist,
Placc Festival. Fanni Nanay, Art Historian,
Talent en Route. Laura Cull & Samuel Steer, visual and performing artists, sProUt,
17.30: Break
17.45: Discussion
Closing remarks. Srećko Horvat, philosopher,
19.00: Ends
Dinner in Student Centre Club
22.00: Theatre performance:
Vacation From History, Shadow Casters. Mosor Cinema,
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,
Famous
Apartment Project. Serra Ozhan, art historian and theoretician,
Post-Capitalist Cartography: Red Plan and Plan Mediterraneo. Red Plan Group,
Discussion
Closing remarks: Feđa Vukić, architect,
11.30: Break
11.50: Traumas and Dreams: Unraveling the Burried Memories
Travelling Through Collective Unconscious: L’île. Fiona Templeton, director and performing artist,
Time Patrol. Janos Sugar, visual artist,
A Peak in the Future: Exodus 2048. Michael Blum, visual artist,
Discussion
Closing remarks: Marc Augé, anthropologist, Professor at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales,
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,
Memory of Space: Scole. Valeria di Modica, performing and visual artist,
Place Matters. Chris Neville, historian, performing artist and cultural anthropologist, curator of
Discussion
Closing remarks: Urša Jurman, curator and art pedagogue,
16.30: Break
16.50: Urban Zoon Politicon: Reading and Writing Urban Cultural Memory
as Political Statement
Pillow Fights and Bloody Memories: Public Space
On Solidarity: Reconstruction of the Mural on
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,
366 Rituals of Liberation. Igor Grubić, visual artist,
Discussion
Closing remarks: Borka Pavićević, dramaturg, Director of Centre for Cultural Decontamination,
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
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