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Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Lecture by Elena Filipovic / Marcel Duchamp, the most influential curator of the 20th century? Saša Tkačenko, Flags from the WCSCD series, 2018. Photo by Ivan Zupanc THE CURATORIAL COURSE WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE A PUBLIC TALK BY: ELENA FILIPOVIC Marcel Duchamp, the most influential curator of the 20th century? MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART BELGRADE MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2018 AT 6 PM In collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, the lecture within the series of public programs organized by WCSCD will be presented by Elena Filipovic — the director and curator of Kunsthalle Basel. The series is designed to offer new and different perspectives on the theories and practices of exhibition-making. The lecture by Elena Filipovic, entitled Marcel Duchamp, the most influential curator of the 20th century?, will evolve around the history of art as a discipline that has been constructed through the analysis of individual artists and their objects and images. Monet’s Water Lilies, Picasso’s Demoiselles, Giacometti’s Walking Man… And it is no different for Marcel Duchamp, who is largely celebrated for the objects he produced—whether a store-bought urinal named Fountain or a cryptic, erotic-mechanical diagram known as the Large Glass. But what if the impact of the most influential artist of the 20th century lay elsewhere? This lecture asks you to take seriously Duchamp’s activities not normally seen as artistic—from his art dealing, administrating, and reproducing to his publicizing and exhibition-making. Across a variety of projects spanning from 1913 to 1969, we will see that Duchamp’s “non-art” labor, and in particular what could be seen as his curatorial strategies, were both central to his conception of the work of art and deeply influential to generations of artists after him who learned from him that the frame around the artwork might actually make the artwork as such. ABOUT THE LECTURER: Elena Filipovic has lead Kunsthalle Basel as its director and curator since November 2014. She previously served as senior curator of WIELS from 2009-2014, and co-curator of the 5th Berlin Biennial in 2008 with Adam Szymczyk as well as editor or co-editor of a number of anthologies on global exhibition histories, including The Artist as Curator: An Anthology (Mousse Publications, 2017), The Biennial Reader: Anthology on Large-Scale Perennial Exhibitions of Contemporary Art (Hatje Cantz, 2010), and The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe (MIT Press, 2005). She has curated numerous solo exhibitions of emerging artists in addition to organizing several traveling retrospectives. She is author, most recently, of The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp (MIT Press, 2016) and David Hammons, Bliz-aard Ball Sale (Afterall Books, 2017). The WCSCD curatorial course and series of public lectures are initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric together with Supervizuelna. The lecture by Niels Van Tomme is made possible with the help of MoCAB and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with the additional support of Zepter Museum and Zepter Hotel. Project partners: The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; GRAD—European Center for Culture and Debate; EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial, ’Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’ Foundation and Zepter Museum. The project is supported by: the Goethe Institute in Belgrade; Istituto Italiano di Cultura Belgrado; the Embassy of Sweden; the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; the Embassy of Ireland in Greece; the Embassy of Indonesia; the EU Info Centre; Pro Helvetia – Swiss Art Council; and galleries Eugster || Belgrade, HESTIA Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau, and Zepter Hotel, Royal Inn Hotel and CAR:GO. Media partners: EUNIC Serbia, RTS3. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

Mentors Mentors of WCSCD program so far included: Dorothea von Hantelmann (Bard College, Berlin); Antariksa (co-founding member of KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, Yogyakarta, Indonesia); the Flash Art Magazine editorial team (Flash Art is a bimonthly magazine focused on contemporary art, based in Milan); Elena Filipović (director of Kunsthalle Basel);Tara McDowell (director of curatorial practice at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia); Maria Lind (director of Tensta konsthall, Stockholm); Matt Packer (director of EVA International); Hou Hanru (artistic director of MAXXI Rome, Italy); and What, How & for Whom (a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, Croatia), Branislav Dimitrijevic ( art historian based in Belgrade), Ares Shporta ( Lumbardhi Foundation, Kosovo), Zdenka Badovinac ( Moderna Galeria Ljubljana), Nikita Yingqian Cai ( Times Museum, Guang Zhou), Charles Esche ( Van Abbe Museum), Sinisa Ilic (artist based in Belgrade), Ekaterina Degot (Director and Chief Curator of steirischer herbst), Lisa Rosendahl (Associate Professor of Exhibition Studies at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and Curator of GIBCA—the Gothenburg biennial in 2019 & 2021), Luca Lo Pinto (director of MACRO in Rome), Suzana Milevska (curator and a visual culture theorist), Lejla Hodzic (cultural worker) , Xiang Zairong ( scholar), Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez (independent curator, editor and writer), and ruangrupa ( artistic directors of Documenta 15), Lejla Hodzic ( art practitioner, Sarajevo), Jelica Jovanovic ( architect), Skart Collective ( Belgrade), Katalin Szekely ( OFF Biennale, Budapest), Massimilliano Mollona ( Institute for Radical Immagination), Manuel Borja Villel ( Museo National Renia Sofia), Amelie Aranguren ( INLAND), Aslihan Demirtas ( architect). < How to Apply Educational Program Events >

< Back Gigantic dwarfs of Lake Balkhash: Journey into a microscopic world of phytoplankton. Veronika Dashkova “Nature has created a wealth of wondrous forms whose beauty and diversity way exceed anything that has been created by man”. Ernst Haeckel What do you see standing on the lake, river or sea shore and looking attentively at the water surface in front of you? You will surely see the colour of the water, the moving or steel surface, reflection of the sky, trees, buildings and other objects. If the water is transparent enough, you might see some floating bugs, small fish in the water column and bottom with sand, stones, mud or even corals. However, there is much more that our human eye cannot catch, a tremendous underwater world full of tiny microscopic organisms called plankton. These planktonic organisms drift in the water column, following a current anywhere it brings them. Plankton populate almost all water bodies on the Earth, from small ponds and lakes to the oceans. Although they are invisible to a naked eye, they play a gigantic role in the functioning of a whole aquatic ecosystem. As all terrestrial plants, phytoplankton use sun energy to synthesize organic elements from inorganic through the process of photosynthesis, and produce about 50% of all oxygen on the Earth. It is believed that the activity of ancient phytoplankton Cyanobacteria resulted in the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere and oceans around 2,4 billions years ago, which facilitated the diversification of Life on our planet. Diatomea. Ernst Haeckel. Kunstformen der Natur (1904). http://www.silentplankton.com/Gallery/View/Haeckel But that is not all. Every cell of phytoplankton is uniquely shaped and coloured, forming an incredible diversity of beautiful forms. Mother Nature created astonishing artwork, that blows up the imagination and fascinates with the perfect geometry of a cell structure architecture. Likewise, a 19th century German biologist, Ernst Haeckel, was so fascinated by the beauty of these forms and inspired to publish graphical illustrations of plankton in a monograph Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature) in 1904. Images of phytoplankton from Lake Balkhash (10x magnification) Not an exception, Lake Balkhash is inhabited by hundreds forms (species) of phytoplankton. Covering the territory of 15,730 sq. kilometers, Lake Balkhash is one of the largest endorheic lakes in the world, enclosed inside the continent without a connection to the ocean. This feature makes the lake susceptible to climate change mediated or man-made impact. The strongest example of the fragility of endorheic lakes and the dependence on human activity is the current fate of the Aral Sea, a similar lake located in the arid region. You can think of it as a cyclic process: any substantial and long-standing change brought by the environment, whether it is natural or man-made, mediate changes in the aquatic trophic webs, which in turn will affect the quality of life of local human communities and the economy of a whole region. For example, phytoplankton are the base of an aquatic trophic web, responsible for primary production and serving as food for larger plankton and fish, fueling the energy up to the higher trophic levels. The availability, composition and quantity of phytoplankton will therefore affect the diversity and quantity of fish stock in the lake, which is important for us. Images of phytoplankton from Lake Balkhash (10x magnification) The unique symbiosis of freshwater and brackish water and availability of micro-niches in the lake creates a ground for co-existence of various phytoplankton communities. There are about 400 different species of phytoplankton found in Lake Balkhash spanning taxonomic groups from Bacillariophyta, Cryptophyta, Haptophyta, Dinoflagellata, Chlorophyta, Charophyta, Euglenida, Cyanobacteria and others. Each species has found a place in the lake with favourable conditions of water with appropriate range of salinity, pH, oxygen level, organic and inorganic substances. For example, phytoplankton community of freshwater sites in the western part of the lake is completely different from the community inhabiting brackish water in the eastern part. You may think of phytoplankton as a natural indicator of what is going on outside. Despite their small microscopic size they sense and reflect any changes ongoing in the surrounding environment by changing their cell shapes, colour, size and abundance. By identifying the composition of the phytoplankton community, we can judge about the state of the ecosystems and presence of disturbants. Some phytoplankton are even able to withstand thermal and heavy metal pollution associated with the activity of the metallurgic plant nearby the city of Balkhash.Hidden in the water column, these organisms have always been witnessing different changes the lake was experiencing and have always been interacting with them. Expedition to Lake Balkhash. June 2016. Veronika Dashkova is a professional ecologist, PhD candidate in ecology, Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. Previous Next

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Events Lecture Series Participant Activities WCSCD Annual Lecture Series 2022 WCSCD Annual Lecture Series 2022 Presented in collaboration with Kolarac Educational program What Could Should Curating Do Annual lecture series 2022 is proud to partner with Kolarac this year Number of mentors of this years educational program will have public moment during stay in Belgrade to share their own practice. As every year this will not be possible without kind support from colleagues and institutions in Serbia and around the world including Kadist Foundation, Italian Cultural Institute of Belgrade, The Group of Architects, Embajada De Espana en Belgrado who support our vision towards pedagogies. Public lectures will be as usual free of charge and open to public. Public lecture series will start in November and we are proud to present following speakers this year. November 9th 2022 18:00 Hajnalka Somogyi is a curator based in Budapest. Since 2014, she has worked as leader and co-curator of OFF-Biennále Budapest , which she initiated. In 2022, OFF-Biennale is participating at documenta fifteen as member of ‘lumbung interlokal’. November 30th 2022 18:00 Aslıhan Demirtaş is a practicing architect, artist, writer and educator. Her practice is situated on and around the boundaries of disciplines engaged in making, often in the forms of buildings, gardens and art projects, while searching for a revised mode of existence and practice on our planet. She lives in Istanbul and together with Ali Cindoruk runs KHORA Office, a climate for design, making and thinking. December 5th 2022 18:00 Massimiliano Mollona teaches anthropology at Department of the Arts at Bologna University and at Goldsmiths College, London. His practice is being situated at the intersection of pedagogy, art and activism which he explores from within projects he co-initiated like the Institute of Radical Imagination and the Laboratory of Urban Commons (Athens). December 13th 2022 18:00 Amelie Aranguren, head of artistic programming at INLAND’s Center for the Aproach to the Rural (CAR) in Madrid and Inland member since 2010. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

VERNACULAR GESTURES AND EMBODIED KNOWELDGE “…intelligence is not located in any body part but is distributed throughout the entire field of relations comprised by the presence of the human being in the inhabited world.” (“Feet, footwork, footwear and ‘being alive’ in the modern school” by Dr Catherine Burke, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge) A focus of a contemporary art system on the notions of ‘contemporary’ often disregards vernacular practices that actually connect us to personal and collective history, open space for rooted knowledge of peoples and territories and give a perspective for conscious action for the future. By introducing to contemporary art thinking and art practice the notions of indigenous and embodied knowledge, we encourage you to find inspiration in learning by doing, to redefine the meaning of failure and establish connections with vernacular practices of you region and/or family. BLOCK 3.1 An input for this task is provided by Biljana Ciric, WSCSD program initiator. Intro Look closely into your surroundings. Where is the vernacular around you? Do you live near a village, a rural area, an ethnographic museum? Do you have something crafted in your apartment? List your findings ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Now look at what you’ve got in your closest social strata. Are there practices in your family that are vernacular? Ask your senior family members. We encourage you to trace these vernacular gestures, learn about them. Task Choose a vernacular practice and trace it backwards and forwards. Where did it come from? How is it preserved today? Is it evolving? Is it affected by technology? Are there contemporary artists / practitioners trying to reactualise it? Compose your research into a presentation. Additional materials Listen to “Futurefarmers” podcast by AHALI Conversations w/ Can Altay Read an article “Feet, footwork, footwear and ‘being alive’ in the modern school” by Dr Catherine Burke, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge Self-feedback Reflect on your research. Do you feel inspired, happy, sad or devastated on how this vernacular practice lives through today? Expand your thoughts on how indigenous practices should be maintained, implemented in contemporary life. BLOCK 3.2 Together with artist and curator Anastasia Albokrinova we encourage you to look closer into your habitual practices and let a vernacular gesture pass through your body and affect your thinking. Intro How are the habits of a body shaped by digital reality? In which ways grasping a vernacular practice can expand your body consciousness? What practices of commonness are developed through the embodied knowledge? How does an embodied knowledge transform into ‘knowing'? This task offers you to focus on a particular vernacular practice of your choice and trace the process of learning in a diary. It also questions the means of transmission, both acquiring and passing the knowledge forward. Task Choose a vernacular practice you would like to grasp. If you can't think of something - make a bread or cook something according to your family recipe. Create a diary: make notes on the ways you learn, what you notice on the way. Think about failure. What does it mean - to fail? How failure can be a driving force for learning and creativity? After doing a vernacular gesture, transmit it to one more person. Additional materials Listen to a podcast “Foragers” with Jumana Manna, created by “Docs in Orbit” Listen to a podcast of your choice from the podcast series “Promise No Promises!” by Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW in Basel Self-feedback Take a moment to reflect on your body: what inspirations, fatigues did you experience? What gestures did you grasp, how did they evolve in the process of learning? How would you describe the knowledge you have acquired?

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Comradeship: Curating, Art, and Politics in Post-Socialist Europe by Zdenka Badovinac This is the third book in the PERSPECTIVES IN CURATING series, which offers timely reflections by curators, artists, critics, and art historians on emergent debates in curatorial practice around the world. Venue:Ostavinska , Kraljevica Marka 8, Belgrade Date: September 21st 2019 19:00 Comradeship is a collection of essays by Zdenka Badovinac, the forward-thinking Slovenian curator, museum director, and scholar. Badovinac has been an influential voice in international conversations rethinking the geopolitics of art after the fall of communism, a ferocious critic of unequal negotiations between East and West, and a historian of the avant-garde art that emerged in socialist and post-socialist countries in the last century. She has been, moreover, an advocate for radical institutional forms: museums responsive to the complexities of the past and commensurate to the demands of the present. Gathering writings from disparate and hard-to-find sources alongside new texts, this book offers an essential portrait of a major thinker, and a crucial handbook of alternative approaches to curating and institution-building in the 21st century. “Whip smart, politically astute, curatorially inventive:
Zdenka Badovinac is nothing less than the most progressive and intellectually rigorous female museum director in Europe. This anthology includes key essays accompanying her series of brilliant exhibitions in Ljubljana, and is essential reading for anyone interested in the differences between former east and former west. For anyone seeking curatorial alternatives to the neoliberal museum model of relentless expansion and dumbed- down blockbusters, Badovinac is a galvanizing inspiration.” —Claire Bishop, art historian and critic About the Speaker: Zdenka Badovinac is a curator and writer, who has served since 1993 as Director of the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, comprised since 2011 of two locations: the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova. In her work, Badovinac highlights the difficult processes of redefining history alongside different avant-garde traditions within contemporary art. Badovinac’s first exhibition to address these issues was Body and the East—From the 1960s to the Present (1998). She also initiated the first Eastern European art collection, Arteast 2000+. One her most important recent projects is NSK from Kapital to Capital: Neue Slowenische Kunst – The Event of the Final Decade of Yugoslavia, Moderna galerija, 2015 (Traveled to Van Abbe Museum , Eindhoven, (2016), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2016) and the Museo Reina Sofía Madrid (2017)); NSK State Pavilion, 5tth Venice Biennale, 2017, co-curated with Charles Esche; The Heritage of 1989. Case Study: The Second Yugoslav Documents Exhibition, Modena galerija, Ljubljana, 2017, co-curated with Bojana Piškur; Sites of Sustainability Pavilions, Manifestos and Crypts, Hello World. Revising a Collection, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin; Heavenly Beings: Neither Human nor Animal, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana, co-curated with Bojan Piškur, 2018; Her most recent book is Comradeship: Curating, Art, and Politics in Post-Socialist Europe (Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, 2019. Founding member of L’Internationale, a confederation of six modern and contemporary art institutions. Badovinac was Slovenian Commissioner at the Venice Biennale from 1993 to 1997 and 2005. and Austrian Commissioner at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 2002 and is the President of CIMAM, International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, 2010–13. The event is free and open to the public. The WCSCD curatorial course and series of public lectures have been initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric. The lecture by Zdenka Badovinac is produced by WCSCD < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Program Participant Activities Tonight we invite you to encounter a collective archive of the 2022 What could/should curating do educational programme, which took place in Belgrade and other locations around the Post-Yugoslav region, between September and December this year. The departure point for this archive is a proposal by Biljana Ćirić, program curator and facilitator, to consider the means by which the discussions, events, inquiries and relationships developed during this time might be recorded or documented. Archiving is never neutral. Determinations are always made—by individuals, by collectives, by collecting institutions—about what knowledge is worth saving, the means by which knowledge is indexed, housed and cared for, who has access and on what terms. Within the framework of an alternative educational platform—with a loose and evolving curriculum, and no formalised method of assessment or grading—this exercise presents an opportunity to consider what alternative measures we might allow ourselves for the production of knowledge when freed from institutional modes of transmission and circulation. As such, these archives—both individually and collectively—do not simply record a series of shared (and at times differing) experiences. They include questions around how the embodied, linguistic, political, intimate, relational nature of experience and remembering, ranging in scope from the personal, to the national. Each contribution is informed by the “baggage” we carried with us, as a group of individuals from many different geographic and cultural contexts, many of whom had little relationship with Belgrade, Serbia or the Balkan region prior to this course. This “baggage” includes our different relationships to contemporary art’s infrastructures; our different fields of knowledge and networks of relationships; cultural and linguistic differences; differing relations to histories of colonialism, resource extraction and capitalist exploitation; and varying habits of thought, modes of making, inhabiting and formulating questions about the world. Through differing strategies of presentation and circulation, we hope to open up questions about what we have in common, as well as what separates us; what of ourselves is dispersed, and what is withheld. But the physical “archive” we share with you tonight is only a part of a wider set of relationships, experiences, idea exchanges, occasional encounters, gossip and experimenting. Tonight we celebrate the beauty and fragility of these moments. Be our guests at the two tables. Read silently. Read aloud. Whisper. Describe what you see. Share what you feel. Eat. Drink. Embrace. This archive is staged as something living, developing and transformational, ever evolving as our moments with you. Thank you for sharing this journey with us. We hope it’s not the end, but only a stop on the way. WC/SCD 2022 Adelina, Anastasia, Ginevra, Giuglia, Jelena, Karly, Lera, Sabine, Simon < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities The educational program What Could/Should Curating Do is proud to announce lecture by Aslıhan Demirtaş Hosted by Kolarac Venue: Student square no 5 Date: November 30th 2022 18:00 On constellations and earth by Aslıhan Demirtaş “I wait for those lights, I know some of you do too, wherever you are, I mean when you are standing by an ocean, alone, within the calmness of your spirit. Be planetary.” Shifting the Silence, Etel Adnan A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. Ever since prehistory, constellations were woven into stories, beliefs, experiences for mythologies. Each star is distant, distinct and unique in the way they move, in their physical qualities, age and are connected only through a fixed point of view–in our case our planet Earth. As an alternative imaginary to the concepts of community, collectivity and perhaps even the definition of the commons, this lecture will be a contemplation on the concept of constellations articulated with architectural and artistic works made with and about earth–connected and positioned together with related people and places. About Speaker Aslıhan Demirtaş is a practicing architect, artist, writer and educator. Her practice is situated on and around the boundaries of disciplines engaged in making, often in the forms of buildings, gardens and art projects, while searching for a revised mode of existence and practice on our planet. Aslıhan has an undergraduate degree from METU and a graduate degree from MIT. Prior to establishing her own practice in New York, she worked for Pritzker Laureate I.M. Pei as the lead designer for the Museum of Islamic Arts in Doha, Qatar and the Miho Chapel in Japan. She is the recipient of Graham Foundation Grant for her e-book Graft to be published by SALT and is an active member of the Initiative for the Protection of the Historical Yedikule Urban Gardens. Most recently she has designed the Winter Garden at SALT, Istanbul, a rammed earth space bordered by plants and has been working with Lumbardhi Foundation on the conversion of Kino Lumbardhi, Prizren. She lives in Istanbul and together with Ali Cindoruk runs KHORA Office, a climate for design, making and thinking. The event is free and open to the public. The WCSCD educational program and series of public lectures have been initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric. The lecture by Aslıhan Demirtaş is organized in collaboration with Grupa Arhitekata Project Partners We thank following partners for supporting selected participants for 2022 program: Romanian Cultural Institute. Artcom platform , Kadist Foundation, William Demant Foundation For more information about the program, please refer to www.wcscd.com Project contacts: what.could.curating.do@gmail.com Follow us: FB: @whatcscdo Instagram: @whatcouldshouldcuratingdo < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Borderlines July 2024 – ongoing Organized by WCSCD in collaboration with Sreda Obitaninya WCSCD is honored to announce a series of lectures, workshops and gatherings with and at Sreda Obitaninya, a cultural space established by two scientists from Saint Petersburg. This collaboration with Sreda Obitaninya is an extension of our educational program and alliances that welcome new communities that call Belgrade their home in recent years. According to Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa, the term “borderlands” refers to both a physical and metaphorical space of crossing and intersection, particularly concerning cultural, social, and identity boundaries. In her seminal work, “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza”, Anzaldúa describes the borderlands as a space of hybridity and tension where different cultures, languages, and identities meet and interact. For Anzaldúa, the borderlands are not just geographic regions, but also psychological, social, and spiritual spaces where individuals navigate and negotiate their complex identities. This concept highlights the experiences of those who live on the margins or in between different worlds, emphasizing the fluidity and multiplicity of identity and the transformative potential of these in-between spaces. The borderlands represent a place of struggle but also a site of creativity and resistance, where new identities and ways of being can emerge. In the post-pandemic world, we have witnessed the migration of humans and more-than-humans due to climate change, wars, political and economic recessions, and tighter border controls of the European Union. In the past three years, the influx of Russian communities and those from economically struggling regions, engaging in precarious work in Belgrade, has become our everyday reality. Through collaboration with Sreda Obitaninya, we aspire to equip both locals and new neighbors with the tools needed to comprehend and navigate a place like Belgrade. This will allow us to situate ourselves within the city and facilitate the collective production and exchange of knowledge. The city of Belgrade, with its rich history of migration, has long played a pivotal role in fostering Global South alliances and navigating Cold War politics between the so-called Former East and Former West, while consistently remaining on the periphery of the European Union. However, its troubled history is marred by power struggles and political missteps, which have ignited deadly civil conflicts throughout the Yugoslav region. In the present day, as Belgrade undergoes gentrification and the commercialization of its public spaces, new waves of migration are once again transforming the city into a complex and multifaceted environment. Bringing different communities together is essential for fostering a harmonious and progressive society. When diverse groups interact, they become more familiar with each other's cultures, experiences and perspectives, which helps reduce stereotypes and prejudices. This engagement promotes mutual respect and understanding, leading to social cohesion. Using culture as a means of integrating different communities enriches the social fabric. Cultural exchange broadens the collective worldview and promotes global awareness, fostering a deeper appreciation for the richness of human diversity and helping to overcome the isolation of diaspora communities. The encounters in Sreda Obitaninya that will start from July will share marginal histories, silenced histories, from feminist and partial perspectives that will serve as a platform for exchange of ideas and dialogue through presentation and workshops. Format Every month we will be organizing lectures, workshops, and gatherings led by local artists, curators, and cultural workers that will be set around the extensive history of Belgrade that is relevant to understanding the current city's constantly changing environment and social fabric. Migrant communities have the potential to create a wide array of presentations through collective music listening, reading groups, food tastings, and workshops that share their culture, experiences, knowledge, and perspectives with diverse audiences. Storytelling sessions provide a platform to share folktales, personal stories, and historical narratives from their countries of origin, fostering understanding and empathy. Discussions with speakers from diverse backgrounds tackling topics such as cultural identity and migration policies. Cross-cultural workshops foster mutual understanding by allowing participants to share their backgrounds, beliefs, and customs interactively. Anti-discrimination sessions can raise awareness about challenges like racism and xenophobia, promoting inclusivity and respect. 1) July 4, 7 pm Part 1. Feminizing the City: A Workshop on Gender, Mapping, and Memory A workshop with Dunja Karanović Language: English Duration: 2 hours Admission fee: 900 RSD We invite you to take part in Feminizing the City: A Workshop on Gender, Mapping, and Memory, led by journalist and visual artist Dunja Karanović. This workshop will serve as a follow-up to our Walking as a Way of Knowing program, a series of artist-led walks organized in Belgrade from March to June 2024 by the educational platform WCSCD. Participants will have a chance to engage in a feminist reading of cultural policy and politics of remembrance in the city of Belgrade, investigating questions like who gets commemorated in public spaces, how women’s bodies, names, and actions show up in monuments, what’s missing and what we can learn from looking at margins. Street names, squares, and monuments often reflect a revisionist, one-sided historical narrative that celebrates violence and oppression – by looking into what gets sidelined and forgotten, we will attempt to co-create a more caring perspective, mapping out the contributions of feminist activists, scholars, artists, and community leaders. By engaging in collective reading, discussion, mapping, and collage, we will have an opportunity to learn about women who shaped the city’s history with their pioneering initiatives, personal histories, and artistic endeavors. 2) July 18, 7 pm Part 2. “Not in Our Name”: Women’s Anti-war Movement in the 1990’s A lecture by Dunja Karanović Language: English Duration: 2 hours Admission fee: 900 RSD A lecture and discussion continuing our exploration of feminist perspectives on Belgrade’s history. The 1990s conflicts in the ex-Yugoslav region prompted a re-traditionalization of gender roles and heightened nationalism, evident in contemporary cultural policies and public spaces. The lecture will delve into the historical and social backdrop of the 1990s Yugoslav wars, highlighting the critical role women played in opposing the conflict. It will cover the formation and actions of anti-war groups and their connections with the Yugoslav feminist traditions of the 1970s, focusing on prominent figures like Žarana Papić, Jelena Šantić, Borka Pavićević, the origins of Women in Black (Žene u crnom), Center for Anti-war Action, and other initiatives, their strategies, challenges, and legacy of bravery, resilience, and solidarity. Part of the lecture will also involve discussing how remembrance culture, archiving, and feminist heritage equip us for reading, recognizing, and resisting revisionism and media obfuscation in today’s increasingly polarized world. Location: Sreda Obitaniya, Šafarikova 6, Belgrade Dunja Karanović is a visual artist and journalist based in Belgrade, Serbia. She holds an MA degree from the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Management at the University of Arts in Belgrade and an MFA from the China Academy of Arts. In her practice, she explores ways of bridging cultural policy, theory, and practice through interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches that foster radical friendship and collective care. Her research is focused on mainstreaming care in cultural institutions and reimagining them as slower, softer, and more inclusive spaces. She is a regular contributor of Liceulice magazine. She is passionate about feminist art histories, embroidery, the small, and the marginal. 3) August 1, 7 pm Feminism in Iran A lecture by Rosie Raha Language: English Duration: 2 hours Admission fee: 900 RSD This lecture will explore the history and current state of women's rights in Iran, beginning with the first women's rights movement during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution between 1905 and 1911. While significant legal advancements were made, any activity towards achieving more freedom and rights for women was allowed only under government supervision during Reza Shah's rule. After Reza Shah, during the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, new groups and organizations were formed, but their activities were also under government control and monitoring. Most of the legal advancements made during the previous decades were slowly dismantled following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, leading to increasing restrictions on women under the new regime. Despite widespread protests, the regime's grip has remained unyielding. We will examine Iran's Islamic constitution, where political leadership is dominated by clergymen and religious figures. The Supreme Leader holds absolute authority over politics, religion, governance, military power, and social affairs, and has the power to implement laws impacting and discriminating against women. Beyond these laws, we will discuss the institutional misogyny evident in daily life, such as the criminalization of non-compliance with 'Islamic standards' of dress, leading to severe penalties. Women live under constant surveillance, stifling their individuality and personal freedom. The focus will be on the resilient ways a large group of Iranians, both women and men, resist oppression and strive for self-expression despite restrictions on forming groups. In a society where a woman's body is seen as a source of sin, any act of feminine self-expression is attacked. Yet, more women than ever are fighting back in unique ways. When the regime constrains women within rigid societal frames, even the smallest public acts of femininity become powerful symbols of defiance. Location: Sreda Obitaniya, Šafarikova 6, Belgrade Rosie Raha is an accomplished educator and researcher with a diverse background in English Language and Literature, Fine Arts, and Art History. Born in Iran, she pursued a BA in English Literature and explored her passion for fine arts by attending classes at the University of Art in Tehran. Preparing for an MA in Art History and Research, Rosie also wrote a column on fine arts for a widely circulated newspaper in Iran. Throughout her career, Rosie has continually engaged in writing and painting, learning from various artists and educators. Her professional experience spans multiple roles in education, including assisting a social worker for a Dutch NGO in Iran, serving as an educational manager at a language academy, and working as a researcher at the University of Medical Sciences, focusing on the internationalization of education. Rosie's international experience includes teaching English in China for two years. In 2021, she moved to Serbia to pursue an MA in Cultural Policy and Management. Subsequently, she worked as a 4th grade teacher at an international school in Belgrade. Over the past year, Rosie has shifted her focus towards painting and writing. Together with her husband, she is developing the idea of opening a cultural center that emphasizes permaculture and sustainable practices in art. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >