Looking for another space of belonging

A seminar exploring the notion of belonging through the work of artists from former Yugoslavia – especially those who left the country after the 90’s.

Speakers: Among others René Block, Irfan Hošić, Carsten Juhl, Tijana Mišković, Adnan Softić, Jeppe Wedel-Brandt (The full list of speakers will be announced during the first half of July)

Program: August 19th and 20th, 2019

Both days:
10.00-12.30 Cinema-screening program with video artworks related to the seminar theme
13.00-17.00 Seminar Presentations

Tickets here
Venue: Kunsthal Charlottenborg (cinema space at mezzanine on the 1st floor), Nyhavn 2, 1051 Copenhagen K

In 30-minutes afternoon presentations during the 2-day seminar, a group of international speakers will focus on theoretical, curatorial and especially artistic attempts to redefine the notion of belonging by directing us to look in-between and beyond established national and cultural structures. Furthermore, there will be a cinema-screening program in the morning hours, with video artworks related to the seminar theme.

Thematically the seminar program will be organized around three lines that question the notion of:
LAND/ SOIL – Territorial belonging, as well as heritage, in the situation of displacement.
ARCHITECTURE – Protective construction that evokes physical and mental belonging in the context of destruction, trauma, and rebuilding.
CITY SPACE – Urban patterns for thinking, communicating, and social acting in both diversity and unity.

Background:
In the ‘90s, the multinational Balkan country Yugoslavia dissolved. The nationalism took over Tito’s concept of “brotherhood and unity”, and the violent war resulted in millions of people being displaced. However, the Balkan concept of a multicultural coexistence, which can be traced back not only to Tito’s Yugoslavia, but also to the culturally diverse Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, did not disappear. In fact, it has transitioned from a concept of peripheral otherness of Europe into one of diasporic inbetweenness of Europe.

Today, other war refugees, as well as environmental migrants, are fleeing their places of origin to new territories in search of better futures. This increasing worldwide displacement is calling for a redefinition of the concept of belonging by thinking beyond established structures.

The artists who left Yugoslavia after the ‘90s – and now live in what we, for lack of a better word, call a diaspora – might be able to provide a useful “third point of view” amidst Europe’s actual struggle to maintain its concept of coexistence “in unity and diversity” because they are intrinsically connected to several contexts of liminality. (They come from the Balkans, which historically has been considered a periphery of Europe, being both an exotic and obscure “other”. Additionally, they’ve gained yet another layer of “otherness” as a displaced generation of immigrants living between cultures.) Further info here.

The seminar is supported by:
Grosserer L.F. Foghts Fond
Billedhuggeren, professor Gottfred Eickhoff og hustrus, maleren Gerda Eickhoffs Fond