Sreten Asanović, Nomina, Plima, Ulcinj, 2011
By: Ivana Ančić
English version will be available soon.
Igor Marojević: A Mother’s Hand (Laguna, Belgrade, 2011)
By Nikola Đoković
Igor Marojević’s new novel is a mix of a historical novel and of a coming-of-age novel. It tells a story of a 16 year-old young man, the main character and the storyteller, who moves up North with his mother, to Novi Vrbas to save their lives after an earthquake in Perast. The house that ‘’inalienably’’ belongs to his aunt Bonja, belonged to a German family, whose descendents are sisters Hertha and Sonia (the main character is in love with them and organises an erotic ‘’strategy’’ on losing his virginity and becoming a man). Gradually, along with growing up and with the full swing of exploring his curiosity, the bitter truth about banishment of German families and civilians after the Second World War comes out.
The Categorical Imperative of Investigation
The chapters in the novel are organised to follow the logic as the storyteller grows older. There are two bigger sections: ‘’The School’’ starts with chapter titled ‘’The Recess’’, while ‘’The Practice’’ starts with ‘’The Investigation.’’Such composition of the novel matches the key shift of the main character from a confused adolescent taken by the ‘’element’’ of events to an active explorer ‘’armed’’ with civil courage. Marojević noticed well one of the true facts of anyone’s growing up – complete individualisation of a socially awakened individual is not possible without personal engagement which shakes up the family and social secrets and lies and at the same time, breaks any strings attached. The young man’s search is motivated by ‘’a categorical imperative’’ that he almost instinctively possesses and feels and that leads him to this kind of individual emancipation.
The storyteller is presented as a very sensitive and unusual person. As a child, he contracted an unusual and very traumatic abscess of the lungs. This illness catches up with him during the novel, while he tries to make use of it for a more effective research of the historical injustice and crimes. The ‘’benefit of hallucinations’’ caused by this inflammation that gets transferred from his lungs to his sinuses, is to ‘’imagine’’ a scene from the past, since he can not get any archive data that could be a confirmation or a verification (for instance, a scene where the Partizans rape a German girl in a concentration camp).
Resistance and Violence
Marojević’s storyteller is unusually strongly attached to his mother. The symbolic presence of his late father in his (sub)conscience, is marked by negative memory of a contradictory figure of a bully – be would beat his mother and him, but he was very calm in front of their cousins. In order not to repeat this negative experience, the young man uses the memory of his father as a ‘’springboard’’ for development of various forms of behaviour. The young man finds out that his father’s bullying behaviour partly comes from his strong feeling of injustice that was done to the previous, rightful owners of their family home, an injustice which he could not make peace with until the end of his life. Due to this shift, the storyteller’s idealisation of his mother’s authority weakens. Mother’s need for physical contact and understanding summarised as ‘’a hand to hand’’, which the young man adopts and actively applies as a positive form of behaviour, revels itself at the end of the novel in a completely new, negative light. ’’A hand to hand’’ is used to cover up a part of reality and gives the family a feeling of peace.
The circle of violence in the family is based on absence of historical responsibility. The covered up violence from the past results in eruptions of violence in the present, which is not a made up, straight-line connection, but a line with its highs and lows in the family and collective conscience. At the very end of the novel, the young man relates with his father. He stands up straight and enters the room, walking like his father, making a clear performed gesture of separation by which he can (maybe), once and for all, step out of the never-ending circle of family violence.
The Sexuality of the Love of Truth
The young man’s sexual maturity is also ‘’unusual’’, because it does not come down to a biological need and natural lust. The physical excitement he feels when in company of the German sisters, Hertha and Sonia, at moments overcomes his intellectual composure. The excitement is such that he imagines the raping scenes in the camp, with Sonia as the victim and him as a masturbating bystander. The process of individualisation means physical (and sexual) separation from the position of power, so that the storyteller at first feels shame because of this fantasy ‘’participation’’ in the abuse, and later develops strategies by which he will translate the feeling of his own historical responsibility into a need for revealing the complete truth.
The characters of the German sisters, Hertha and Sonia have interesting concepts. Hertha is a typical teenager, with interests; she likes punk and electronic music, Sex Pistols and Kraftwerk, that make her more urban and modern than her school mates. Sonia is a contemplative, complex and contradictory character. From a modest and good-hearted nurse, that cares for a young man, she becomes a present figure of the ‘’historical victim’’, that carries the burden of cruelty of the so-called winner, i.e. abuser (she was in a concentration camp with her mother). Sonia’s figure gets extra flavour with the position of a seducing woman, i.e. a woman with a vendetta. The seduction turns to hatred and vendetta the moment Sonia steps over the threshold of her former home, steals a picture and a gun as parts of her family’s heritage. Her ‘’tirade’’ at the end of the novel is full of spite towards ‘’them’’, i.e. the colonisers that took her home, our young man being one of them. Her character remains fixed on the ‘’status’’ of a woman with a vendetta, due to her trauma and to the lack of adequate socialisation that would help her ‘’process’’ her trauma.
Igor Marojević’s new novel ‘’opens’’ another neglected chapter of history with great success. The author managed to criticize the constant silence of our society on crimes of the Yugoslavian rule over the local Germans, that continues even in the 21st century.
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.