LTCA Publication on Critical Art Presented in Belgrade

The publication 'From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010)', created as part of the regional project Let’s Talk Critic Arts, was presented on April 11 at 7 pm at the Art Center of the University Library “Svetozar Marković” in Belgrade.


Among the participants were Dea Vidovic (Kulturpunkt – Zagreb), Miha Colner (SCCA-Ljubljana – Ljubljana), Ivan Mirkovski (Forum Skopje – Skopje), and Vesna Tasic and Vesna Milosavljevic (SEEcult.org – Belgrade).

Promotion of this multilingual publication was followed by presentation of Belgrade based artists Saša Stojanović/Ana Vilenica and Nikola Pilipović (Manik with Marija Vauda).

The publication 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.

The publication maps out and theoretically reviews critical and research practices, and contemporary fine arts practices oriented towards the contemporary civilization moment, which have been active in the context of the independent cultural scene since the 1990s, but which have also been present in the institutional frame. The authors provide only drafts of the political, social, economic and cultural changes of the local contexts, through four segments, due to a lack of space. Each segment focuses on the practices and context of a given country, i.e. the capital as the primary focus, and in addition to the introductory word by the authors, it includes interviews (with authors, theorists, curators, organizers…) who contribute to the recording of these artistic practices based on their experience, work and knowledge.

The segments deal with the Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, and Zagreb scenes. All the authors devised their approaches in an effort to present the fruitful and creative production of these cities, to the greatest extent possible. The authors involved in the creation of this publication are Jasna Jakšić (in collaboration with Tihana Bertek, Maja Gujinović, Ana Kovačić, Srđan Latrezom, Petar Novak, Tino Novak, Tamara Sertić and Leda Sutlović) from Croatia, Nebojša Vilić from Macedonia, Vesna Tašić (in collaboration with Vesna Milosavljević and Miroljub Marjanović) from Serbia, and Miha Colner and Nika Grabar (Slovenia).

Contemporary visual art is discussed through the works and experiences of 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), and Bojan Ivanov, Zoran Poposki, Mira Gakina and Žaneta Vangeli (Macedonia).

Editorial Board (Dušan Dovč, Vesna Milosavljević, Jasna Soptrajanova i Dea Vidović) believes that selection of 16 voices provides a possible cross-section of the events in the contemporary fine arts scenes of Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, and Zagreb from the 1990s to the present, but it is certainly not the final or only one.

The publication is a type of platform that is 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 English, in addition to the local languages (Croatia, Macedonian, Serbian and Slovenian), in order to enable better insight into contemporary artistic practices in post-Yugoslav cities both for the local and international public.

The publication is made available by the Creative Commons Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported unless it is not differently stated.

The LTCA project is concluded by promotion of the publication From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010), but it is open for comment and further research.

The LTCA project was initiated and implemented by the cultural portal SEEcult.org (the SEEcult.org Civic Association) from Belgrade, Serbia, in collaboration with the Artservis.org portal (Center for Contemporary Arts, SCCA-Ljubljana) from Slovenia, Forum Skopje from Skopje, Macedonia, and the Kulturpunkt.hr portal (Alliance of Associations Clubture and Kurziv – Platform for Matters of Cultural, Media and Society) from Zagreb, Croatia, with support from the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), and national/local donors.

E-book ‘Art in Critical Confrontation to Society’ launched!

The electronic book made within the framework of the international project ‘Let’s Talk Critic Arts’ entitled ‘From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010)’ has been launched. The book is free and could be downloaded from Let’s Talk Critic Arts blog.

Download the electronic version of the book HERE – 52MB (just click Save As when pressing your right mouse button)


The publication 'From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society' (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010), created as part of the regional project Let’s Talk Critic Arts, was presented on April 11 at 7 pm at the Art Center of the University Library “Svetozar Marković” in Belgrade.

Promotion of this multilingual publication was followed by public interviews with Belgrade based artists Saša Stojanović/Ana Vilenica and Manik (Marija Vauda/Nikola Pilipović).

The publication is made available by the Creative Commons Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported unless it is not differently stated.

The publication will be also distributed in CD form to galleries in Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje and Zagreb.

The LTCA project is concluded by promotion of the publication From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010), but it is open for comment and further research.

The LTCA project was initiated and implemented by the cultural portal SEEcult.org (the SEEcult.org Civic Association) from Belgrade, Serbia, in collaboration with the Artservis.org portal (Center for Contemporary Arts, SCCA-Ljubljana) from Slovenia, Forum Skopje from Skopje, Macedonia, and the Kulturpunkt.hr portal (Alliance of Associations Clubture and Kurziv – Platform for Matters of Cultural, Media and Society) from Zagreb, Croatia, with support from the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), and national/local donors.

LTCA Publication – From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010)

The publication From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010), created as part of the regional project Let’s Talk Critic Arts, will be presented on April 11 at 7 pm at the Art Center of the University Library “Svetozar Marković” in Belgrade. Presentation of this multilingual publication will be followed by public interviews with Belgrade based artists Saša Stojanović/Ana Vilenica and Manik (Marija Vauda/Nikola Pilipović).


Among the participants will be members of Editorial Board of the publication, as well as authors of its segments and representatives of the organizations involved in the LTCA project.

The publication 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.

The publication maps out and theoretically reviews critical and research practices, and contemporary fine arts practices oriented towards the contemporary civilization moment, which have been active in the context of the independent cultural scene since the 1990s, but which have also been present in the institutional frame. The authors provide only drafts of the political, social, economic and cultural changes of the local contexts, through four segments, due to a lack of space. Each segment focuses on the practices and context of a given country, i.e. the capital as the primary focus, and in addition to the introductory word by the authors, it includes interviews (with authors, theorists, curators, organizers…) who contribute to the recording of these artistic practices based on their experience, work and knowledge.

The segments deal with the Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, and Zagreb scenes. All the authors devised their approaches in an effort to present the fruitful and creative production of these cities, to the greatest extent possible. The authors involved in the creation of this publication are Jasna Jakšić (in collaboration with Tihana Bertek, Maja Gujinović, Ana Kovačić, Srđan Latrezom, Petar Novak, Tino Novak, Tamara Sertić and Leda Sutlović) from Croatia, Nebojša Vilić from Macedonia, Vesna Tašić (in collaboration with Vesna Milosavljević and Miroljub Marjanović) from Serbia, and Miha Colner and Nika Grabar (Slovenia).

The authors of the segments faced a gruelling task – how to tell the story of a period on only 50 pages (which was predefined for every segment), and how to select only four protagonists for every city, among the many protagonists of the art scene? The authors applied different criteria – they strived to select precisely those respondents who could provide a cross-section of the discipline development, some were selected because their work is a paradigmatic of critical and socially engaging practices, while some were inescapable authoritative and creative minds…

Contemporary visual art is discussed through the works and experiences of 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), and Bojan Ivanov, Zoran Poposki, Mira Gakina and Žaneta Vangeli (Macedonia).

Editorial Board (Dušan Dovč, Vesna Milosavljević, Jasna Soptrajanova i Dea Vidović) believes that selection of 16 voices provides a possible cross-section of the events in the contemporary fine arts scenes of Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, and Zagreb from the 1990s to the present, but it is certainly not the final or only one.

The publication is a type of platform that is 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 English, in addition to the local languages (Croatia, Macedonian, Serbian and Slovenian), in order to enable better insight into contemporary artistic practices in post-Yugoslav cities both for the local and international public.

The publication is made available by the Creative Commons Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported unless it is not differently stated.

The publication will be also distributed in CD form to galleries in Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje and Zagreb.

The LTCA project will be concluded by promotion of the publication From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010), but it is open for comment and further research.

The LTCA project was initiated and implemented by the cultural portal SEEcult.org (the SEEcult.org Civic Association) from Belgrade, Serbia, in collaboration with the Artservis.org portal (Center for Contemporary Arts, SCCA-Ljubljana) from Slovenia, Forum Skopje from Skopje, Macedonia, and the Kulturpunkt.hr portal (Alliance of Associations Clubture and Kurziv – Platform for Matters of Cultural, Media and Society) from Zagreb, Croatia, with support from the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), and national/local donors.

Public interview: Marko Brecelj

The public interview with Marko Brecelj will take place on November 23, 2010 at 5 pm in Project Room SCCA (Metelkova 6) in Ljubljana.

The public interview, moderated by Tanja Lesničar – Pučko (translator and journalist) will be focused on artist and activist Marko Brecelj questioning his long term practice, especially projects that were exposed to censorships by politics, religion or legislation. Amongst them his so called soft terrorism actions.

Marko Brecelj is Slovenian singer/songwriter, self-called youth, cultural and social worker. From 1991, he runs Youth, cultural social and multi-media center (MKSMC) in Koper and the Association of Friends of moderate progress. In 2010 the Association celebrated 20th anniversary. On this venerable anniversary, an exhibition was prepared, originally on display in the Regional museum of Koper, and can currently (until November 19th) be seen in Ljubljana Spanish Fighters Cultural Centre.

“How could we in retrospective condense biography of almost 50-years-old, who for years hasn’t been doing what he would have preferred, but what he thinks is the most urgent? In the seventies he acclaimed confirmation and was immediately in the prime of influence on generations of future artists. In the eighties he has devoted himself to his son less than to himself. He worked on the periphery of public life and, rarely but still, cancelled out those who tried to put him in oblivion with his excellent songs and continuous appearances. With his soulmate he ran into the nineties like in a tunnel with no end in sight, he fought for ‘liberated territories’: youth and cultural facilities, where generations, which will have to battle with defenders of social and civilization collapse, can flourish.” (from Marko Brecelj’s biography)

Soft-terrorist actions file its history since 1999. Pre-event of soft-terrorism has occurred spontaneously on reception of the Ministry of Culture followed by much better conceptualized and prepared actions, from performance to Anton and Pohorski bataljon (1999), the Šeligo’s P-tič award (2001), bombing of U.S. Embassy and the Slovenian Government (2001), to the bell silencing or Tapisirano vnebovzetje (2003), when series of soft-terrorist actions experienced its peak. Brecelj sais that “soft-terrorism is not over, but was never pulled out of time context. Life inspires soft-terrorism, soft-terrorism is not in focus, it’s just method, or tool. Artistic work and fight for it, that’s what’s important.” (source: Mehki terorizem. Interview with Marko Brecelj from Društvo prijateljev zmernega napredka. Written by Alenka Pirman, March 2006.)

Moderator Tanja Lesničar – Pučko studied literary theory as well as French linguistics and literature. She was among the founders of Fiction Production Company (Podjetje za proizvodnjo fikcije) female alternative theatre (1983–89). In 1987 she was employed by Dnevnik Newspaper Company, first as a translator, then as a journalist. She writes essays, interviews as well as literary, theatre and dance reviews. She translates fiction and non-fiction from French. In 2009 she has reviewed and published the columns that she began writing for Dnevnik in 2002, which results in a sharpened image: they read as timeless parables, they hardly leave you cold.

The public interview is a part of the project Let’s Talk Critic Arts (2009-2010) which examines the critical aspects of contemporary arts (round tables, public interviews), documents them, and archives them (online documentation, publication).

The project is conducted by the cultural portal SEEcult.org (Serbia) with the partners SCCA-Ljubljana / Artservis (Slovenia), Clubture / Kulturpunkt.hr (Croatia), and Forum Skopje (Macedonia). The partners are the members of the informal network of cultural portals inSEEcp. It was founded in 2006 with the aim of connecting the editorial boards of the portals and stimulating the international cultural collaboration in the former Yugoslave countries.

The project Let’s Talk Critic Arts is financially supported by European Cultural Foundation.

Open Talks on Contemporary Visual Art Practices in Zagreb (1990-2010)

Kulturpunkt.hr is organizing an event entitled Open Talks on Contemporary Visual Art Practices in Zagreb (1990-2010) which will be held on Thursday and Friday, 9th and 10th of September at 5:00 pm in club Booksa in Zagreb (Croatia). In these Open Talks will participate artists, curators, theorists, cultural managers as well as wider public, and will be moderated by journalists and art critics Marko Golub and Vesna Tašić.


The themes of the Open Talks are critical practices in contemporary arts – practices of research, progressive and experimental character which take critical approach to reality, but also work and role of the institutional system. As the frame is rather wide and comprehends period of twenty years, it also comprehends generational gap, which is why we envisaged these Open Talks as a place of solidifying and exchanging knowledge, information and interpretation of artistic phenomena from the period. The other aspect takes into focus institutional and non-institutional, economic, social, political and other context giving the frame to the practices in focus. Although the focus of the projects are “critical practices”, the intention is to regard them in these talks in the wider context, and instead of one, unique story of two decades, to reconsider them and evoke more different narrative lines.

Open talks on Contemporary Visual Art Practices in Zagreb (1990-2010) are organized by portal Kulturpunkt.hr in cooperation with club Booksa and partners from the region – SCCA/Artservis (Slovenia), ForumSkopje (Macedonia) and Seecult.org (Serbia).

Open Talks on Contemporary Visual Art Practices in Zagreb (1990-2010) are organized in the frame of the regional project Let’s Talk Critic Arts initiated by portal for culture Seecult.org from Belgrade in cooperation with partners from Slovenia – SCCA/Artservis.org, Macedonia – ForumSkopje and Croatia – portal Kulturpunkt.hr. Project is supported by ECF – European Cultural Foundation.

Open Talks also make part of the project In Focus of Kulturpunkt.hr. Let’s Talk Art, Design & Media – Critics or Analytics supported by The Netherlands Embassy in Zagreb (Croatia), and is implemented by portal Kulturpunkt.hr. Events are also supported by City of Zagreb – Office for Education, Culture and Sports, Republic of Croatia – Ministry of Culture and National Foundation for Development of Civil Society.