Sreten Asanović, Nomina, Plima, Ulcinj, 2011
By: Ivana Ančić
English version will be available soon.
Olja Savičević Ivančević: Goodbye Cowboy (Algoritam, Zagreb, 2010)
By: Nikola Đoković
The tile of the novel ‘’Goodbye Cowboy’’ hints at the sentimental, nostalgic and even bitter-sweet taste. The ecstatic-ethical dominance in the novel corresponds with a longing for the old idealised, ‘’not-for-sale’’ (western) type of hero in today’s civilisation. The absence of this figure in the ‘’West’’ that presented Hollywood, the mythical workshop (that spread the myth of a hero of the time past to the rest of the world through its movie icons), as well as in Croatia, that presents the East in ‘’transition’’ in comparison to the ‘’developed’’ West.
Ana 4 Guns
The plot is set in an unnamed town, in one of its neighbourhoods called the Old Part, where, in a family full of frustration and claustrophobic ambient lives Ruzinava, the main protagonist and the storyteller for the most part of our novel. She grows up here, leaves for school and comes back to Zagreb. She starts to investigate why her brother Danijel killed himself. Hence, the basic plot is that of a thriller. The western motives from the title also play an important part and, what is interesting, are used in an unconventional way. As readers, we are faced with a dislocation of this established myth of the modern society, with its placement in the ‘’wild East’’, in a context completely different to the western spirit, the Balkan context, of international hatred between ‘’Ustashas’’ and ‘’Chetniks’’ (no more cowboys and Indians). This shows the myth of the Cowboy of ‘’strong moral views’’ in a surprising way and pulls him down from the screen and from the mythic heights and brings him down to a society that suffers from chronic lack of ‘’universal’’ moral views because it ‘’cherishes’’ the selfish, nationalist and finally criminal interests. The ‘’promised’ myth, seriously autistic and hermetic due to its conservative, patriarchal matrix, is even more tested by Ruzinava, who needs to revenge the death of her brother and get to the place form which the women in the westerns never come back from…
The fascination for the western’ icons is transferred and supported by Ruzinava’s and Danijel’s father, who worked as an operator in a local cinema that only ‘’played’’ classic Hollywood westerns, before the nationalist wars in the 90’s. The ‘’infection’’ is fast spread to his youngest daughter, who takes in the myth and mixes it with her daily life in which she grows up, giving herself completely to the ‘’war games’’ of local cowboys and Indians, together with the ‘’enemies’’, the Irokeza brothers from the ‘’railway’’. We soon begin to understand that this fascination with war is a lot more than just a naïve game and that the blade of hatred gets used against Ruzinava’s brother, who is a homosexual, which we see from his ‘’mysterious’’ hushed up relationship with the local vet, a paedophile, professor Her Kain. The spirit of homophobia goes hand in hand with the international hatred between tribes during the wars in the 90’s, and closes the horizons of civilisation even tightly, because Ruzinava’s family, on her father’s side, has something ‘’unclear’, an intruding ‘’mix’’ (her grandfather was of German origin and she is also of ‘’rusty’’ blood, which is another association to the Indians). ‘’The pure-blooded white hero’’ of the western movies, is emphasised in a society in which the belonging to a certain nationalist tribe of the Croats ‘’the defenders’’ (and on the other side are the Serbs, ‘’the conquerors’’) is the only ticket to ‘’heaven’’ in which the true heroes rest.
A real size poster, in the new edition of Bravo!
The second part of the novel is titled ‘’The Western’’ (the first part was titled ‘’The Eastern’’) and it continues the demythologisation of cowboys from their very ‘’cradle’’ by introducing a character of Ned Montgomery, who comes with a filming crew to Croatia, to film his version of a ‘’new-millennium’’ western. The saying ‘’go West’’ by which many generations lived by, in love with the West and its ‘’dream-like’’ possibilities of achieving their dreams, was destroyed in the 21st century by America’s global wants – they turned to the East (in a full war gear or with a naïve idealistic desires) to conquer the ‘’innocent’’ markets. In the first part, Ned Montgomery was seen as an ideal figure, a screen projection on Ruzinava’s wall (with Clint Eastwood and John Wayne), but in the second part, he ‘’comes of the poster’’ and is seen as a caricature. Montgomery, all physically sucked up and ruined, completely mentally ‘’detached’’ from any sort of the old western ideal and categorical imperative that clearly defines the difference between the hero and the villain. The movie ideal gets completely ruined by Montgomery’s need to make a one last movie appearance, unplanned by the screenplay, in his fake ‘’glitter’’, as a cowboy in the last scene of the movie, what the western slang calls the final showdown. Hence, the scene of the final gun fight, not represented as a pathetic and epic as much as black-humour clash of civilisations, really becomes a clash between the rundown West and the tribal, rural East. Marija Čarija, relative of the Irokez, a girl that ‘’can hit a birds eye in the sky’’, psychologically demented in her ‘’certainty’’ that the cowboy-actors are stealing her chickens and killing them, decides to take justice in her own hands and as the only female cowboy, marches in front of the cameras, causes great loses to the crew and gets shut down by the fake but many bullets.
Olja Savičević Ivančević’s first novel is a successful piece without any huge flaws. It is sometimes even a masterfully lucid play on myths and stereotypes of East/West, with dark humour softening the pathetic myth of the western hero, which was always the ideal, but never (as far as his moral aesthetics are concerned) so degraded and ‘’universally’’ absent from our lives, as at the beginning of the new millennium.
Sreten Asanović, Nomina, Plima, Ulcinj, 2011
By: Ivana Ančić
English version will be available soon.
OSMI I SEDMI PUTNIK, Aleksandar Bjelogrlić, Citadela, Agora, Zrenjanin, 201
By: Dalibor Plečić
English version will be available soon.
Stjepan Gulin, Paz’te sad, paz’te sad (Meandarmedia, Zagreb, 2011.)
Authors: Ivana Ančić
Igor Marojević, Kroz glavu (Dosije, Beograd, 2012.)
Author: Dalibor Plečić
Damir Miloš, Pisa. Povratak (Meandarmedia, Zagreb, 2011.)
Author: Morena Livaković
POLITIČKE I DRUŠTVENE KONSTRUKCIJE IDENTITETA U VIDEO-PERFORMANSIMA NA BEOGRADSKOJ SCENI 1970-ih
Esej Vladimira Bjeličića
Esej u celini možete pročitati na portalu SEEcult.org
Esej Tihane Bertek
Od promatrača do sudionika
GALERIJA KAPELICA I POST-JUGOSLAVENSKI BODY ART (1995–2010)
Esej – Bojan Krištofić
Esej o radovima Šejle Kamerić, Maje Bajević i Nebojše Šerića Shobe
Piše: Slađana Golijanin
ESEJ – Razvaline socijalizma kao inspiracija za muzejske eksponate Mrđana Bajića i skulpturalne dosetke Ivana Fijolića
By: Milena Milojević
Piše: Nino Kovačić
Gostujuća izvedba šibenskog HNK, Pir malograđana, prema tekstu mladog Bertolda Brechta (napisan 1919.) izvedena je po sljedećoj formuli: na Danima satire u satiričkom kazalištu Kerempuh gledamo satiričan komad. Prema reakcijama publike, bila je uspješna, ali teško se oteti dojmu da je smijeh bio formulaično zagarantiran, jer bi takav instruirani moment humora trebao zauzdati spontani smijeh. Je li se možda radilo o “malograđanskom” humoru?
Glumice i to, KNAP, Zagreb, premijera 12.5.2012.
Piše: Nino Kovačić
Glumice i to, nova predstava u zagrebačkom KNAP-u, neobičan su kazališni ‘slučaj’. Naime, predstavu su, dramaturški i režijski osmislile te, naravno, glumački ostvarile četiri mlade glumice. U trenutačnoj opće-društvenoj, pa tako i kazališnoj situaciji, kojom prijete olovni pojmovi poput recesije, prekarijata i outsourcinga (nedavno su najavljena i otpuštanja “hladnopogonskih” glumaca), one su, kako piše u najavi “nezaposlene i pune entuzijazma, odlučile su preuzeti stvar u svoje ruke i napraviti hit!”. Očito sklone postdramskom pristupu izvedbi koji se, između ostalog, bazira na ekipnoj work-in-progress metodi, izvedbenoj anti-iluziji i autoreferencijalnosti, glumice/autorice su se “trgnule” i napravile parodiju o tome kako rade predstavu, po ironičnom ključu: kad ne ide pravljenje predstave treba napraviti predstavu o tome kako se ne može raditi predstava.
“Nije život biciklo”, Biljana Srbljanović, režija: Anselm Veber, Produkcija: Šaušpilhaus Bohum, Nemačka; Sterijino pozorje 2012, selekcija Nacionalne drame i pozorišta
By: Tamara Baračkov
English version will be available soon.
„Grebanje, ili kako se ubila moja baka“, Tanja Šljivar, režija: Selma Spahić, Bosansko narodno pozorište Zenica/Bitef teatar-Hartefakt (Beograd), premijera: 7. septembar 2012. (Zenica), 11. oktobar 2012. (Beograd)
By: Tamara Baračkov
English version will be available soon.
„Sluga dvaju gospodara“, Karlo Goldoni, režija: Boris Liješević, Grad teatar Budva/Srpsko narodno pozorište Novi Sad/Narodno pozorište „Toša Jovanović“ Zrenjanin, premijera: 27. jul 2012.
By: Tamara Baračkov
English version will be available soon.