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ON CONTEMPORNEITY, ART AND SOCIETY

Review of Belgrade contemporary art scene in 2011.

By: Ana Bogdanović

Contemporary artistic practices with progressive aspirations presuppose critical involvement in the broader social context, implying a responsible, subversive or any reactionary attitude towards current issues and the phenomena that brought them on. Within the conditions of a new order, in times of faster flowing information and sudden global shifts which create political tension not only on a national level, but also economic and social instability on an individual level, the relation between art and society inevitably becomes extremely intense.  Artists infrequently turn into commentators, anticipating and warning about the consequences to come. In the light of apparent turbulence, do the dominant spheres of art in out parts relate to our contemporaneity and how much are they capable of communicating with society?

During the past twenty years, there have been events that have profoundly marked change on every level of our day-to-day life – collapse of the SFRY, wars, inflation, riots, bombardments, a revolution, economic transition, unsuccessful euro-integrations, a large number of elections, several remappings of state lines, with plenty of side effects. Artists, sensitive towards their circumstances and able to deal with them, reacted through their work on what was happening, establishing an artistic practice which is very politically and socially aware, in the traumatic period of the 90’s and the first promising years of the 00’s. The enthusiasm of the early 00’s, after a series of political and economic failures, grew into disappointment in recent years, where the marketing simulacra are the only sustainable growth. These conditions created a situation in which a society, torn between trying to achieve a national, pro-European or regional identity, while turning back to the glories of the past, where all the present downturns find their justification. In search of lost time, as a consequence of unsustainable and discontinuous social growth, it is taking back more and more.

Yugonostalgia has entered the domestic public spotlight big time – through pop culture, media, consumerism and daily politics. Promotion of the cult of Tito, SFRY and authentic phenomena related to the old state seems the best strategy for distracting attention from the actual problems. Even in art, which is dealing less and less critically with the nostalgic outbursts, avoiding to face the present, the yugo trend is more dominant. Heritage of dissassembled state, tragicomically, appears to be the only authentic brand we have to offer. In the last years, attempts to organise international events are more present, which question the recent past in search of broken ties and meaning of present relations from today’s perspective. Last year’s megalomaniac regional project of the Contemporary Art Biennial Time Machine – No network D-O Ark Underground, in Tito’s nuclear bunker in Konjic (BH), the recently closed October Salon, exhibition Serbia – Frequently asked questions, organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (late 2010) and Political Practice of Post Yugoslav Art in the May 25 Museum (late 2009), but also commercial and entertainment events, such as last year’s Mikser festival and mythologically historical overview like the Last Youth in Yugoslavia 1977-1984 in the May 25 Museum, are the finest examples of institutional promotion of these artistic contents. Although history as a starting point in contemporary art can bring very successful visual elaborations, recycling themes of the Yugoslav past and wars, represent only successful flirtation with popular tendencies and a discrepancy with current interpretations and the needs of today’s audience. It seems that in art, as well as in other spheres of social and political everyday life, we repeat what should have been done in the mid-90’s, unaware of the fact that we have been almost late to question our past for the last twenty years.

There are noticeable hints of contemporaneity in small doses, despite the dominant post-Yugoslav wave. With artist of a younger generation, unburdened by local memories and myths, maturing in he information society, it can be said they exemplify dialogue between art and the present moment. By observing various aspect of social phenomena which reflect our political, economic and social reality, without neglecting the visual domain in which they operate, artist with general tendencies are Aleksandar Jestrović Jamesdin, Dušica Dražić, Ivana Ivković, Branislav Nikolić, Mirjana Boba Stojadinović, Aleksandrija Ajduković; stil insuffuciently articulated within the institutional and expert public framework.

Both of these tendencies, however, are not realized enough to represent more relevant phenomena in the development of art practice in Belgrade and Serbia. Moreover, they are inevitable products of discontinuity in he development of a local scene – a post-Yugoslav tendency as a mutant form of art in the 90’s and new contemplations of contemporaneity as a lonely attempt to find an answer to current events. Together, they are part of the confusion in which, due lack of communication between artists, art, contemporaneity and society, leading to self-provincialism of a very slowly developing milieu where the past often plays the part of the present.