PARLIAMENT OF TRANSITION (POT)
Nikos Doulos & Bart Witte (Expodium) Commission: 53rd OCTOBER SALON: ‘GOODLIFE’ (22 Sept. - 04 Nov. 2012) curated by Branislav Dimitrijevic and Mika Hannula. Location: ‘Geodetski zavod’ (Shareholder Society of Belgrade building), Savamala – Belgrade.
PARLIAMENT OF TRANSITION was a multifaceted project consisting of a transcribed interview (The Good Life of A), a mobile installation (architectural prosthetic & Bubble Gum Globe), a series of 11 postcards (archive of impressions), a questionnaire for the visitors to fill in and an extensive program of talks and performances (including two NIGHTWALKERS sessions).
The Good Life of A is a a transcribed sixtyminute interview of a Serbian immigrant, living in the Netherlands for twenty-two years. He left Belgrade in October 1990, after the rise of Milosevic in the presidency of Serbia (and afterwards in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). Parts of the interview/monologue were read out by Nikos Doulos during the opening of October Salon.
Parliament of Transition is a constitution of voices in opposition. It is a space for personal narratives and local views to take shape and functions as stimulus for criticality and creative response. Within that space, Expodium operates as a host, an agent provocateur, a collector and a moderator. Parliament of Transition is an actual place that calls for some serious story telling. It’s a staircase with an entrance as an exit and an exit as an entrance. It’s going up and going down and going all around the past, present and future while it assembles Belgrade as a dreamland - a curse - a saving raft.
Architecture Prosthetic Three wooden custom-made structures, placed in the middle of the predominant hall of the building, constituted a physical blockage in the space itself. With references to the architecture of a parliament and that of an amphitheatre and as a response to the communist propaganda sculptures in Former Yugoslavia, the istallation was designed to host a series of informal gatherings and discussions. All pieces were mobile and were placed in different formation accordingly to the talks and performances arranged.
Bubble Gum Globe Addressing issues of superficiality and exclusion and the notion of the city as a ‘bubble’, as a reference to the transcribed interview, a souvenir glass globe of Belgrade was placed in between two bowls of local bubble gums. The visitors where asked to blow up bubbles and stick them on the globe during the exhibition, accumulating to a ‘pink” mass of gum..
Archive of Impressions is an accumulation of visual impressions from the city of Belgrade, accompanied by quotes, statements and textual abstracts from various resources. It comes in the form of eleven postcards that visitors were free to collect and take home.
Talks and performances organized by Expodium were a constellation of narratives from autonomous and organizational forces that address the transitional state of Savamala area, as well as the past and current state of Belgrade. They functioned more of a stimulus rather than a statement. They were highly informal and open to external input by all visitors at the POT. Talks and performances were moderated by Andrej Bereta and Srđan Tunic (curators /art historians, authors of the project About and Around Curating / Kustosiranje). Among others:
Parliament of Transition‘s Questionnaire is a survey - an endoscopic question mechanism composed on an A4 paper. A set of eleven questions borderlining between the banal, straight forward and critical, was devised to challenge the visitors to position themselves within the conext of contemporary Belgrade. The questionnaire was filled in at the site and posted on the walls of the space mirroring the responses back to the visitors.
Talk: Miodrag Ninic (Architect, member of 360°BEOGRAD) Performance: NIGHTWALKERS_POT #2 by Dalija Acin Thelander Talk: Dubravka Sekulick (Architect/researcher) Performance: Dismantling The Machine Talk: Danijela Gasparac (PR manager, KRUG club -Savamala)
NIGHTWALKERS_POT #1 aimed in highlighting the transitional state of the area through the paradoxical alignment of zones of decay and wealth. The first session included a visit to the regional bus station, an old prostitution area, a vacant property of old train wagons (now an informal homeless shelter) and concluded in an empty nightclub. It additionally included a fireworks spectacle by an unregistered company. DISMANTLING THE MACHINE addressed the notion of disassembling a structure, a social body, a nation. Local - Savamala car mechanic Bojan Bjelobaba dismantled a car engine, while a slide-show of quotes, news articles and visuals runned as a backdrop. The slide-show consisted of facts of Belgrade’s current history that subjectively correspond to a new era for the city and Serbia in general. The performance runned for approximately 45 min. The setting remained informal. Guests were allowed to stroll around the space and ask Bojan questions. All dismantled components were carried by the audience to the wooden platform at the main hall. The components were exhibited in the POT till then end of the 53rd October Salon.
NIGHTWALKERS_POT were two collective night strolls in the area of Savamala.
NIGHTWALKERS_POT #2 was a participatory performance by choreographer Dalija Acin Thelander. “Attention was focused on the distances and spaces between the walkers as well as the distances between walkers and the built environment. Reducing the sound of the city and closing down all verbal communication between the walkers, the awareness was shifted towards experiencing the possible meanings of the proximities, feel them, explore and use them as a mean of communication. It was a “sound off” hour of observing, sensing, understanding and exploring the meaning of the spaces between us. Consequently, this walk was the choreography of attention.” Dalija Acin Thelande
PARLIAMENT OF TRANSITION (POT) - 53rd OCTOBER SALON: ‘GOODLIFE’ (22 Sept. - 04 Nov. 2012) - curated by Branislav Dimitrijevic and Mika Hannula. - ‘Geodetski zavod’ (Shareholder Society of Belgrade building), Savamala – Belgrade ©EXPODIUM(Nikos Doulos/Bart Witte) 2012