EroticUnion

Dear Friends, I’m happy to announce the cooperation with Noa Treister in the following Workshop. sorry for crossposting!

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Art Interventions
The Return of the Gastarbeiters
22.7-10.8.2008

Location: Požarevac, Eastern Serbia

Media: all media

Organizers: KUD “Art Klub”, Kucevo
Partners: Serbian Ministry of Diaspora, Požarevac Cultural Center, Citizens of Europe, Berlin, Neocom, Vienna

Colloquium description:
The subject of the colloquium is returning guest workers from Europe to Eastern Serbia and their influence on the local economy, politics, culture and environment.
It will consist of:

• 3-week field research by students of the anthropology department of the Philosophical faculty of Belgrade
  University
• a week long seminar that will include lecture on the history of the area and its current situation, on the
• subject of returning economical immigration and on engaged art and art in public space
• a 2-week artist’s workshop in which will participate 20 artists, 10 Serb and 10 international,
• 3- week exhibition  in Požarevac
• Seminar and presentation in Belgrade

The artists will work and exhibit in public spaces in order to allow maximum communication with the returning immigrants and the population that stayed behind. The documentation of interviews with returning immigrants and decision makers done as part of the pre-colloquia research, students’ research, the lectures given in the seminars and the artists work will be collected in catalogues and presented in Belgrade to create a reaction on a national level.

Concept:
The area of Eastern Serbia is a traditionally poor agricultural area and therefore had much immigration to different developed countries. Now many immigrants are returning with their interpretation of the experience they have got in the West which often deteriorates to corruption, nationalism, nouveau riche culture and lack of respect to the environment. Since the area is dependent on that income there is no public debate on the phenomenon and no directives, no regulations or laws regarding these issues.
The relation between the immigrants – host community distinctly affects the relation immigrants – home community but there is an agreement of silence between the home community and immigrants to keep these worlds apart. When in Serbia they very rarely talk about their experiences and difficulties abroad. In that way they maintain an illusion that they do not really work abroad and conceal their real status their and assert the powerful image of the patron and their status of power. Consequently, people in these areas talk about people who “have money” or “do not have money” but never about working for money. That money is either “given or not given” to them as reward or punishment for how they behave, again without any relation to work. To fulfill their side of the bargain the local community plays the role of an obedient, respectful, needy kin which makes them even more helpless and lacking initiative. This project will raise taboo in the public of discussing these issues and pressure public institution to create regulation concerning the disturbing aspects of the phenomenon.

Conditions: the artists will be provided with accommodations and food and will use local material. An additional sum of up to 75 Euro will be provided for materials.

For further details and registration please contact: noa.treister(at)gmail.com

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Sex in Transition
15-31.8.2008

Location: Kucevo, Eastern Serbia

Media: all media

Organizers: KUD “Art Klub”, Kucevo
Partners: Serbian Ministry of Culture, Municipality of Kucevo, The Kattenbak Collective, Amsterdam, Citizens of Europe, Berlin,

Colloquium description:
The subject of the colloquium is returning guest workers from Europe to Eastern Serbia and their influence on the local economy, politics, culture and environment.
It will consist of:

• 3-week field research by students of the anthropology department of the Philosophical faculty of Belgrade University
• a week long seminar that will include lecture on the history of the area and its current situation, on the subject of returning economical immigration and on engaged art and art in public space
• a 2-week artist’s workshop in which will participate 20 artists, 10 Serb and 10 international,
• 3- week exhibition  in Kucevo
• Seminar and presentation in Belgrade

The artists will work and exhibit in public spaces in order to allow maximum communication with the returning immigrants and the population that stayed behind. The documentation of interviews with returning immigrants and decision makers done as part of the pre-colloquia research, students’ research, the lectures given in the seminars and the artists work will be collected in catalogues and presented in Belgrade to create a reaction on a national level.

Concept:
When we speak about communities or countries in transition, we usually refer to economical transition in this we underestimate the abyss that lays before the sides facing each other. The difference rests within the basic concepts (such as truth, time, security, privacy, intimacy, communication, etc.) on which each person builds his/her life. The main discrepancy lies in the grasp of a person as an individual, which is a modern concept, from which grow notions of love, happiness, accomplishment, freedom, etc. Marriage, in this community structure, is one of the institutions that insure its continuum in the same way. Both men and women fill preconditioned roles before and during their married life and in that pay their dues to the community and are held in check by the rumor economy and the threat of excommunication that would penetrate even their basic means of existence. What happens inside the marriage (form love to neglect or violence) is irrelevant to the surrounding as long as the institution is maintained and therefore is accepted by the partners themselves. As was perceived by one of the community members:

“When you ask men what they think about it, most of the would answer that about intimacy that have never heard but sexually they are very active, great lovers (a legend close to Greek mythology ϑ) and that they can seduce any women. On the other hand, most women would say, with allusive irony, that of intimacy they have long forgotten and that sex they accept as a duty, something they have to “execute” with their man, like preparing lunch, housekeeping or similar things.
[…] in a small town, in which are still performed many old, even pagan customs, in which there is still fear of occultism (Vlah magic) and in which people are still closely (and shallowly) connected with their families, land, past, life revolves around “practicalities”. Most people think: “if I sow the land, it will give birth, if I sow a woman she also will give birth ϑ” and everything will function well on a superficial level because I am a monkey and not a man! If I tough intimacy, it will touch me, which can be extremely fuck up, and I don’t wish to have a fucked up life!” (Davor Radulj)

No person or community is located in one end of this scale or another, we are all somewhere in the middle with our fears of losing our economical and emotional security, our standing in society, or our future continuity on the one hand and a wish to become and be loyal to the event of love on the other hand.
It is this diversity that our project aims to map and about which we wish to create a public debate.

Conditions: the artists will be provided with accommodations and food and will use local material. An additional sum of up to 75 Euro will be provided for materials.

For further details and registration, please contact: noa.treister(at)gmail.com

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