On-line publication:
From Consideration to Commitment
Promotion and public interview

Monday, April 11, 2011, at 7pm
Art Center of University Library Svetozar Marković, Belgrade, Serbia

The book entitled From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010) was created as part of the regional project Let’s Talk Critic Arts which was initiated by the cultural portal SEEcult.org (the SEEcult.org Civic Association) from Serbia, in collaboration with the Artservis.orgportal (SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana) from Slovenia, Forum Skopje from Macedonia, and the Kulturpunkt.hr portal (Alliance of Associations Clubture and Kurziv – Platform for Matters of Cultural, Media and Society) from Croatia, with support from the European Cultural Foundation (ECF).

Through various forms of public events the project reviewed critical practices in culture, art and media. In addition to roundtables and public interviews which were held in Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje and Zagreb, interviews and articles were published on the partner portals during the duration of the project.

We conclude the project with this publication which explores practices of critical contemporary fine arts – practices of research, progressive and experimental actions by contemporary fine artists from the 1990s to the present, in four countries in the region – Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia. These are practices which focus on issues such as identity aspects (national, cultural, religious, ethnic), workers’ rights, social integration of minorities, global market fluctuation trends and its impact in the local context, unscrupulousness of capital, the position of women, spatial devastation, art institution system issues, and many others.

Interviewed artists: Igor Grubić, Sanja Iveković, Andreja Kulunčić and Darko Šimičić (Croatia); Stevan Vuković, Milica Tomić, Danilo Prnjat and Živko Grozdanić Gera (Serbia); Neven Korda, Marko Peljhan, Marija Mojca Pungerčar and Maja Smrekar (Slovenia); Bojan Ivanov, Zoran Poposki, Mira Gakina and Žaneta Vangeli (Makedonija).

The artist were interviewed by: Jasna Jakšić (in cooperation with Tihana Bertek, Maja Gujinović, Ana Kovačić, Srđana Latrez, Petra Novak, Tina Novak, Tamara Sertić and Leda Sutlović (Hrvaška); Nebojša Vilić (Macedonia); Miha Colner and Nika Grabar (Slovenia) and Vesna Tašić (in cooperation with Vesna Milosavljević and Miroljub Marjanovićem (Serbia).

We consider the publication to be a type of platform that we are making available to the public, with the wish to encourage further collecting and evaluation of art and cultural endeavours in the past 20 year in these four cities, as well as in those that could not be included in this project (for financial reasons). The book was conceived as a multilingual publication in electronic form, so we present it in English, in addition to the local languages (Croatia, Macedonian, Serbian and Slovenian), as consider it important in order for the international public to have better insight into contemporary artistic practices in post-Yugoslav cities.
Publication will be available on-line on the project website: http://talkingcriticarts.wordpress.com and in limited edition on CD.

The presentation will be accompanied with public interview with artists Sašo Stojanović/Ana Vilenica and Manik (Marija Vauda and Nikola Pilipović).

MORE:

• Editorial statement (pdf)
• SEECult.org

Project Let’s Talk Critic Art was supported by European Cultural foundation and national sponsors and donators.

[Published April 9, 2011]