Report from the Live Sessions:
Day 1: In Search for the Baltic Dimensions> held at Fargfabriken. 13 October. Daniel Urey, Program director.
This combination of seminar and workshop featured an impressive list of international participants. the topics were centered on the Baltic region, and investigated the following topics:
– Propaganda
– City
– Identity
– Water
Participants included:
Frances Hsu, Aalto University School of Architecture
Ekatarina Kalinina (Södertorn University)
Irin Seits (Sodertorn University)
Johan Hedgard (Researcher on Identity and Museums in the Baltic)
Annika Öhrner (Researcher on identity and Museums in the Baltic)
Dan Karlholm (Professor on Art History)
Mats Hellström (former Ministry and Ambassador in Germany)
Johanna Bratel, Urban Planner
Sonya Guimon (Curator for our Kaliningrad project www.val.today. Born and raised in Moscow, now living in NYC)
Oskars Redbergs (Curator, Publisher and Architect based in Riga)
Helena Selder, Baltic Art Centre, BAC
Björn Wumbach (Goethe institute)
Thomas Johansson (Havs och Vatten Myndigheten / Kind of the Sea and Water Department)
Student participants from R-Lab KKH Stockholm, led by Peter Lang, and Aalto University School of Architecture, led by Frances Hsu, engaged 4 selected themes, developing notes and diagrams across 4 tables with graphic spreads arranged within the Fargfabriken hall.
The region’s seas and waterways are in urgent need of reclamation, with surprisingly little awareness about the problems and possible solutions. In many ways, the region’s political instability played a role in obfuscating responsibilities, and in the case of Kaliningrad, the very existence of moats, internal canals and rivers seem to disappear into a lost but vital infrastructure. But as the afternoon workshop revealed, the very nature of water and water bodies, drifting currents, and hidden depths featured numerous and highly ambiguous conditions related to borders, memories, networks and social pressures. PTL
Day 2: (baC & baK) the Live Sessions: held at Hus 28, KKH, and programmed by Peter Lang professor, Architectural Theory and History. 14 October.
Amila Puzic presented her curatorial and artistic pratices focusing on Mostar, provding great insight into the kind of strategies and results that she was able to achieve while working both with her group Abart Mostar, and with students from various international programs, including Bauhaus univeristy in Weimar. Behzad Khosravi Noori, currently a PhD student at Konstfack presented his film “The Black Eyes of Bruce Lee” first screened in 2011, on the illusive figure of Bruce Lee and his full size representation created for the city of Mostar and later goine missing. Bruce Lee’s statue had been conceived as a way to bring communities together through a mutually agreeable projecct. Behzad skyped in after the film was shown at Hus 28 and engaged with the audience. Amila made it clear that working in Mostar, especially as outsiders, would bring much needed attention to the city, but would not necessarily succeed in revealing much about the communities whose conflicts remain deeply buried in the city’s mental landscape. Are these issues that remain at the heart of the Bosnian-Croatian conflict only possible to understand as an insider?
Behzad was asked if there are other divided cities that deserve Bruce Lee monuments, a question which presupposes that neutral symbols, or at least mass media superstar personalities from a world away would help in some way reconcile political tensions and longstanding rivalries, or was this case in Mostar singularly specific? But another line of questioning went the opposite way, once it was revealed that the young protagonists who invented the Bruce Lee project for Mostar, had in the meantime, and over the period the statue sat missing in a disused warehouse, had cynically moved to the right, becoming ultra nationalists. That provoked the reflection, at least from my perspective as one of the two seminar organisers, that the only sustainable symbol for Mostar was a Zelig-like character who could change his or her identity on the spur of the moment. PTL
film still from “the Black Eyes of Bruce Lee,” 2011, Behzad Khosravi Noori, director.
The “Live Sessions” concluded with a Balkan playlist, mixed by Nermin Radaslic, musician living in Stockholm who left Banja Luka, Bosnia Herzegovina during the civil war. Perhaps there is no better way of understanding cultural transformations in this region then listening to its youth sounds: As one of the non-aligned countries, Yugoslavia led the musical vanguard, many of its star musicians coming out of Belgrade’s renowned Art Academy. Nermin put together a comprehensive survey, from early sixties Rock to Electronic and Punk, and moving into the Turbo Folk and Rap era marking the post-civil war period. See the playlist below. Not surprisingly, it was hard to stand still to the beat. PTL
Here is play list (all songs and clips you can find on Youtube):
Siluete u gradskom podrumu sredinom 60ih
GRUPA 220 – Osmijeh (1967)
ЦРНИ БИСЕРИ – Нисам више тај (1968)
Nada Simic – Vodolija 1969
Bele vrane – V vesolje
Mladi levi – Trn v peti
Tomaž Domicelj – Donna Donna
Korni grupa – Put za Istok (1972)
Teska industrija – Ala imam ruznu curu
D.Karanfilovski-Boys & Grupa Madrigali , Zdravo Mladi
Daire – Smak
Kornelyans – Not an Ordinary Life
Bijelo Dugme Na zadnjem sjedistu moga auta live Stadion JNA ’79
PRLJAVO KAZALIŠTE – Subotom uveče
Lačni Franz KO SI RDEČE ZVEZDE ŠIVALA _1986
Buldozer – Novo Vrijeme – iz filma Zivi Bili Pa Vidjeli
Haustor – Šejn
Buldozer – Odmah kazi da (1981)
ŠARLO AKROBATA live @ music biennale zagreb (1981)
Prljavo kazaliste – Crno bijeli svijet
Sarlo Akrobata – Niko Kao Ja
Partibrejkers – 1000 GodinaIdoli – Maljciki
Dorian Gray – Sjaj u tami 1983.
Denis & Denis – Soba 23 1985
BIJELO DUGME – Noćas je k’o lubenica pun mjesec iznad Bosne
Disciplina Kicme – Kicme Disciplina (Decja Pesma)
Branimir Johnny Štulić -Otac mog oca
Rambo – volim zene
Film – Zamisli život u ritmu muzike za ples (LIVE ’81)
Haustor – Šejn
Psihomodo Pop – Ja Volim Samo Sebe
Aerodrom – Obična ljubavna pjesma (Live @ Poljud, Split)
Električni orgazam Ja sam težak kao konj
BIJELO DUGME Zazmiri i broj do 100 (HD) SPOT
Laibach – Geburt einer Nation (Opus Dei) Official Video
Goran Bregović – Kalashnikov (Poznań 1997)
Kultur Shock feat. Edo Maajka – Sloboda [Official Music Video]
Beogradski sindikat – Sistem te laže
Let 3 – Omađijaj me (original HD spot)
Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra Live – Bubamara @ Sziget 2012
Leb i Sol- Raspukala Sarplanina
Bijel Dugme – Ha ha ha
Vatreni Poljubac-Doktor za Rock’n’Roll
Smak – Ulazak U Harem (Kombank Arena 29. 12. 2012)
ijelo Dugme – Djurdjevdan
Vlatko Stefanovski & Miroslav Tadic – Jovano Jovanke
Letu Stuke _ Psycho – official video (2009)
Letu Stuke _ Brojevi Racuna – official video (2010)
Dado Topic & Time After Time – Rock’n’Roll u Beogradu (Belgrade Beer Fest 2012)
DJ Krmak & Reni _ Karai me (2016) FHD
Goran Bregovic – Bella Ciao – ( LIVE ) Paris 2013
Ceca i Aca Lukas – Ne zanosim se ja – Bravo Show – (TV Pink 2014)
TANJA SAVIC I DARKO LAZIC – TI SI TA (OFFICIAL VIDEO 2014)
Ana Nikolic feat. Nikolija – Milion dolara – (Official Video 2013)
KATARINA ZIVKOVIC FEAT. ELLA – LUDILO (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
SANDRA AFRIKA FEAT. COSTI – DEVOJACKI SAN (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
Live Seminar Poster:
DAY 2 Program:
(baC & baK) The “Live Sessions” Baltic and Balkan the Missing Europe, to be held at the Royal Institute of Art’s Hus 28 on the 14th October considers a nearly-fictional view on the polarized communities that live within overlapping urban spaces. In anticipation of the upcoming workshop in Mostar to be held at the Center for Architecture Dialogue And Art – (ADA) in Mostar with 30 students and faculty from the RIA and from Oxford Brookes school of Architecture, “Live Sessions” presents a number of different views on Mostar’s ponderous mythic-fictive landscapes. Amila Pozic, a curator and activist will introduce her brand of curatorial activism including the project “Fake Histories from Mostar,” Behzad Khosravi Noori, artist and filmmaker will screen his film “The Black Eyes of Bruce Lee,” a cinematic digression on the famed Kung Fu actor’s statue in Mostar, and Nermin Radaslic, a Bosnian born guitarist now living and working in Stockholm will present a Balkan playlist sampling songs from early Rock to late Turbo Folk.
(baC & baK) The “Live Sessions” is part of a two-day program developed and organized together with Daniel Urey, Project Leader for Fargfabriken’s Baltic Dimensions project. See DAY 1 below for further information.
Live Sessions begins at 15:00 in Hus 28. Drinks can be purchased after 18:00 courtesy of Club Mejan.
Amila Puzić studied Comparative Literature and History of Art at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo where she has completed her Master degree (MA) in 2014 at the Department of the History of Art. Since 2010 she has been working as an assistant at the Department of Fine Arts, Faculty of Education, University “Džemal Bijedić” in Mostar.
She is a co-founder of art production Abart (Mostar) and curator on projects: Art in divided cities (2009), (Re)collecting Mostar (2011), Amnezion – A collaborative course for rethinking the public (2012). She was a member of the jury at the annual awards for young artists ZVONO (2010), assistant curator at First Biennale of Contemporary Arts “Time Machine – No Network”, Konjic (2011) and curator of the project Bauhaus goes South-East Europe (2013/2014).
She is currently studying on a PhD program in History of Art at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb.
In 2016. Amila co-founded March – association for curatorial and artistic practices (with Anja Bogojević), engaged in discursive exhibition and publishing projects.
Behzad Khosravi Noori is an artist, writer based in Stockholm/Tehran who graduated from Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, with a Master in Motion Picture. Since then, he has been involved in research and teaching endeavors, within the realm of history and theory of art in Tehran in different art school in Iran. In 2011, he achieved his second Master in Art in Public Realm at Konstfack University College of Art and Design, where he focused on multiple identities within the discourse of European multiculturalism and hyper-politicized socio-political environments.
Daniel Urey is a cultural planning strategist based in Stockholm and Project Leader for the Baltic Dimensions. He is currently freelance working at Färgfabriken Contemporary Art Centre in Stockholm. He is responsible for developing international programs in the Baltic, Middle East, Balkan, East Europe and New York.
DAY 1, Program:
In Search of Baltic Dimensions, Day 1 at Fargfabriken: 13 October 10AM -3PM (Please contact peter.lang@kkh.se if you plan to attend.)
Dynamics
The words used in conjunction with our coastal environment are frequently negative: vulnerability, erosion, setbacks and retreat. These descriptions articulate a sense of loss, that how it is or was very recently is how it should always be – and therefore that the coastline is under potential or real threat. Another word is far more appropriate to describe our past and present coastal cities and land-scapes: dynamic. This word is far more enabling for our future. Like the coastal lines that em-brace the Baltic Sea, our cities have never been static but always interconnected, and in con-tinuous and constant flux.
Reasons
Around the Baltic Sea cultural institutions are developing new programs that involve different actors with means in contemporary artistic practice in the ongoing urban development pro-cess. Just as there is a present disconnection between the urban actors known as citizens, politicians, academics and artists, there is also the unconnected gap between the many cultural institutions within the Baltic region. The benefit of collaboration is therefore apparent. Baltic Dimensions aims to make use of the social capital of cities so as to strengthen the trust between different stakeholders and to jointly identify today’s urban challenges and possibilities.
Tools
Baltic Dimensions will highlight how contemporary cities are dealing with and can deal with the successes and failures of the past. Our method is based on horizontal actions, involving similar stakeholders from different regions, and cross sectoral dialogues, that include different stakeholders from the same region. The objective is to create a platform that enables us to step outside our own experience and discover other cities’ struggles and successes.
Directions
The program intends to look at the Baltic cities as a laboratory of the broad-range ways of ur-ban development that emerged due to the strikingly different stories of each nation. By look-ing at the cities as the products of 20th and 21st century political, social and cultural trans-formation, Baltic Dimensions aims to clearly state the differences and similarities of the past which are not to be judged any more, but to be taken as a fact of experience.
Download the PDF of Patchwork of Narratives, click on cover image.
Hus 28, 14 October. 3pm – 7:30pm
r-lab: architecture/ cities/ utopias 