Youth Cultural Centers of Belgrade
Workshop, June 2012
Youth Cultural Centers of Belgrade
Workshop, June 2012
The topic of the workshop is the process of transformation of youth cultural institutions created during the time of socialist Yugoslavia into institutions of the national neoliberal capitalist state. A significant number of institutions in SFRY were founded with the aim of opening space for the youth; we will mention just a few: Youth tribune, Novi Sad (1954), Belgrade Youth Center (1964), Student Cultural Center, Belgrade (1968); Cultural Center “Student City”, Belgrade (1971); Student Cultural Center, Novi Sad; Sonja Marinković Youth Club, Novi Sad; etc. As a starting point for the work, we chose three institutions from Belgrade: Belgrade Youth Center; Student Cultural Center, Belgrade and Cultural Center “Student City”. These institutions were created as a result of the socialist cultural policy that firmly connected culture and education. Although these institutions were not founded in the same cultural and political circumstances and with the same goals, in the long term they served as institutional platforms within which support was provided for alternative and autonomous artistic production, especially that of the younger generation. It should be borne in mind that youth cultural institutions were places of constant ideological conflicts, and that in different periods certain artistic production was more visible, and/or subsequently historicized as such. In the transition period of the nineties, which can be traced back to the eighties, as well as in the neoliberal changes of the 2000s, these institutions, through their work, moved away from the principles on which they were founded. Belgrade Youth Center has become a representative cultural center that treats young people mainly as consumers, while in its management structure it is completely closed to young people. The “Student City” Cultural Center reproduces the conservative nationalist cultural matrix, while the Student Cultural Center is bypassed by today’s “young people” on their way to new cultural centers as places of entertainment and cultural commodification.
Within the workshop, through conversations with the participants of the workshop, reading and discussing critical and theoretical texts as well as considering documentary materials, we want to explore the models of the emergence of these institutions as well as the processes of their transformations.
Plan of work:
Day 1 (25.6): Introduction of the basic goals of the project and research on youth cultural institutions; examinations of theoretical texts.
Day 2 (26.6): Research – Cultural Center “Student City” (DKSG)
Place of implementation: DKSG Small Gallery, Magacin
Workshop guests: Maida Gruden (art historian, editor of the DKSG art program), Aleksandra Sekulić (cultural historian, former editor of the DKSG Academic Film Center)
Day 3 (27.6):
Research – Belgrade Youth Center (DOB)
Place of implementation: Magacin in Kraljevića Marka Street
Workshop guests: Svebor Midžić (theorist and writer; former editor of DOB debate programs), Branko Dimitrijević (lecturer of art history and theory, writer and curator)
Day 4 (28.6):
Research – Student Cultural Center (SKC)
Realization place: SKC Great Gallery, Magacin
Workshop guests: Stevan Vuković (philosopher, curator and writer on art; editor of SKC Filmforum) and Jelena Vesić (independent historian of art, project curator The case of SKC in the 1970s and Political practices of (post-) Yugoslav art: Retrospective 01)
Day 5 (29.6):
Discussion of research results; Browsing materials (films, photos, posters, catalogs, books, etc.); Work on theoretical texts; Discussion on the possibilities of presenting the results of the workshop. Work on the preparation of the presentation of the results of the workshop.
Day 6 (30.6): The exhibition as a presentation of the work process and results of the workshop Place of implementation: Warehouse in Kraljevića Marko Exhibition (as an outcome of the workshop)
Exhibition (as an outcome of the workshop)
The exhibition in a discursive way presents the knowledge that was produced through the presented discussion-workshop principle of work. Also, the exhibition presents the archive, materials and methods we used during our work in order to continue the further production of knowledge.
The form and content of the exhibition will be decided by the participants of the workshops in cooperation with members of the Kontekst collective (Vida Knežević, Marko Miletić, Dejan Vasić, Mirjana Dragosavljević) through joint debates.
As an introduction to the “Youth Cultural Centers” workshop, lectures by Branka Ćurčić and Dušan Grlja were held on June 12 at 6 p.m. in the Magacin at 4 Kraljevića Marka St. The lecture on the Student Cultural Center and the Youth Tribune discussed the work of these social institutions in relation to changes in policies, procedures and tendencies in different periods of the development of Yugoslav socialism, as well as today when culture and public institutions are affected by neoliberal tendencies. These processes open up questions about the position of culture in the Yugoslav socialist system, about the potential of its socialization or (in)direct state management.
Support: Open Society Foundation.