#WhatWeDo?
The controversy surrounding graffiti and street art seems to be one of their most attractive qualities. Unfortunately, this feature is almost the only thing that the audience is allowed to see, while behind the scenes there is a whole universe of fresh, exciting and creative ideas.
This is the world we, art historians, want to uncover and share with you. Out there on the streets, in its natural setting, graffiti and street art will get a grip on you, for better or worse. These walks are a part of a wider research project that aims to document the contemporary graffiti and street art scene in Belgrade and will result in an academic publication. One of the goals of the project is to unify research, documentation, academic activities and educational workshops/walks. It is very important to us to share the knowledge we acquire during our research with the widest possible audience and to not restrict the access to a very small academic circle. We love it and we want to share that experience with you.
Ljiljana Radošević
is an art historian and cultural manager from Belgrade, currently finishing her Ph.D. studies about street art at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
The title of her Ph.D. thesis is “Understanding Street Art”. This title
was not chosen lightly, because she has been interested in graffiti and street art since she
started her university studies. They have been her focus of interest throughout most of her
professional life. In 2000 she started following Belgrade graffiti artists on a regular basis
and that was it, she was hooked. She did her MA Art History thesis about Belgrade graffiti and
has continued to follow the scene ever since. She has also organized several exhibitions, given
many lectures and co-organized the graffiti project “New Way, New Life” for BELEF in
2003.
Graphic forms of expression in art and popular culture underline all of her interests in Art
History and she went back to her first love – comics - during the course of her second MA in
Cultural Management. This also resulted in her winning an internship at the most prestigious
comic festival in Europe – FIBD Angoulême.
After several research positions unrelated to street art and graffiti, she returned to street
art in her doctoral thesis in 2009. She did more than 50 interviews with graffiti and street
artists, gallerists and researchers in Barcelona, London, Berlin, Paris and Stockholm. In
addition to her thesis, she has published about a dozen academic articles about graffiti, street
art and comics.
And now, after all this time she thought it was time to put the spotlight on the Belgrade scene
again and dedicate proper academic attention to the new and exciting things happening on its
streets.
http://www.mustekala.info/node/35776
Srđan Tunić
is an art historian and freelance curator from Belgrade, currently
enrolled on the MA programme Cultural Policy and Management (UNESCO chair, University of the
Arts, Belgrade).
His affection for street art was cooking for quite some time and in late 2012 he co-founded
INFILTRI street art project, platform and web archive with a group of people
around the Mediterranean region. The project
aimed at documenting street art from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, with a political
and social focus, triggered by the use of street art in the Arab Spring. After a couple of
research trips, the project went on hiatus in mid 2014 due to lack of funding and a website
hack. One of the members, Caram Kapp, later took part in the Homeland
case hactivism.
Another Mediterranean project was the multimedia festival DJART’14, organized by Trans-Cultural
Dialogues, that took part in Algiers in November 2014. Taking place in
public spaces of the city, activities included: interventions in public space in collaboration
with the Algerian street art collective AKAKIR, a stickers lab with Walid Bouchouchi, a group of
street artists doing Calligraffiti, and the famous eL Seed who made a mural at
Didouche Mourad Bvd.
Both of these projects are part of the Cultural
Innovators Network.
What about Belgrade? Well, in spring 2013, as part of the Kustosiranje / About and
Around Curating platform, he participated in organizing an exhibition
at Dom Omladine Beograda (Cultural Center of the City of Belgrade). The exhibition, titled
„Čekamo vas / We are waiting for you“, made by a collective of authors, tackled the question of
society‘s insensitivity by addressing messages of hate in public spaces in Serbia. He also
organized the production of Muhamed Kafedžić's mural at elementary school Đorđe Krstić in
Belgrade (The
Great Super Mario Wave of Čukarica).
For more about Srđan‘s work, see: https://srdjantunic.wordpress.com/
