Syndicate: belgrade report by gordana

["shirt" <shirt@EUnet.yu>]

A SHORT HISTORY OF ELECTRONIC ART, PART ONE

11 â?? 17 of April, Belgrade

To discuss electronic art nowadays in Belgrade sounds pretty bizarre. But
we did. Belgrade has always been a crossroad of different initiatives and
exchange from all parts of our ex-country.

The series of presentations and lecturing on that topic started in this
first phase of the project with the pioneers of that kind of art in ex-Yu. 

So we have begun with the computer music and videoart, as a natural
starting point, leading to the complex interactive projects via internet or
environments/installations. Artists from Ljubljana (bor Turel, computer
music an video), Maribor (Marjan Sijanec) , Novi Sad (Vojin Tisma, Jozef
Klacik, Boris Kovac), Holland (Predrag Sidjanin) and Belgrade (Cedomir
Vasic, Sveta Nikolic, Mihailo Ristic, Misa Savic and Gordana Novakovic) who
formed long time ago (May, 1991) The Association of Electronic Media
Artists, presented their old and new works. It was a good possibility to
follow the developing thread leading us to the contemporary computer art.

The event was daily updated on the web-site, contenting also short artistic
statements by the participants concerning the topic. And technical support
done by Cinema Rex was a real support.

It was real pleasure to collect all the memories and the results, not
talking on good old days, but talking on future.

But there is also some not very pleasant conclusion: the theory of new
media art does not follow the results of artist here. Very few of
theoreticians writes from time to time, but we are out of competent and
consequent critics. And it was one of the reasons for organizing such a
manifestation: to try to establish the archive of that new contemporary
art, as a basis for funding a coherent artistic scene with adequate critics
and theory. All presentations are audio/video taped. It is a great
collection of data concerning previous events and authors. A book/catalogue
and CD-ROM out of thus collected materials are the next step. (The last
book on that topic, on videoart, "Videosfera" by M. Ristic was published in
1986!)

And the decision of transforming the idea of Association into a mailing
list seems also as a good result. Here is the text of "Manifesto" from the
meeting on 15 of April, by: Gordana Novakovic, Misa Savic, Cedomir Vasic
and Mihailo Ristic :

------------------------------------
Once upon a time, there was a city named Belgrade. It was the time when
its' citizens did not need to carry transparents saying "Belgrade is the
world", it was a fact. These were the times when artists who marked this
century visited it, from all over the world and from all ex-Yu countries,
to promote their work and ideas and to exchange them with Belgrade artists.

Then, in a few years everything changed. Everything has been forgotten, due
to the great magi of war. That was also a time of desperate street protests
that changed nothing. But it was also the time when Belgrade started to
live and communicate emanating its' spirit to the rest of the world through
the internet and by radio-waves. 

Now, all over again, in Belgrade a new huge group of intellectuals and
young people are packing their suitcases facing another chapter of going on
catastrophe.
That is reality and we must accept it. We have no country, but however sad
it sounds we should not spend our lives crying over our bad luck and
destiny, for the whole world became our country, whatever our current
address is at the moment. We all became nomads in a way: those who are
spread all over the world as well as those who are staying. It is a new
quality that has been generated out of great disaster, death and suffering.
We have to face it and to take it as a certain form of human vitality.

Those who have left long ago, and the ones who are just about to, together
with the ones that are brave enough to stay and try once again to resist,
feel the need for keeping contacts and exchanging energy and ideas. Many
artists are dispersed in different countries, slowly loosing connection
with people and the essence of  their surrounding that has been generated
their creative energy. The ones that are staying are unhappy feeling
loneliness and
isolation. We need each other, and we all need our friends from all over
the world. We need a place where we can be together. But there is no
Belgrade any more. Our Belgrade does not exist as a notion.
Nowadays, it could only be a virtuallity. The need to unite our personal
contacts is obvious, and the Internet, something that for a great number of
us is a part of our everyday communication, is as a logical solution for
creating our new artistic scene.

The idea of an Association of Media artists, that has been proclaimed in
Belgrade in May 1991, has to be transformed into a mailing list for artists
(not only media, but all kinds of art) and theorists, not only born or
living
in Belgrade, but for everyone who feels bonded with the artistic scene of
this city, or has any interest for its' abstract geography as a place for
exchanging ideas and information concerning art and artistic theory.
------------------------------------------------

Now we are preparing the second part of our project. It will be a series of
guests, artists and theoreticians from different countries, to discus and
present their works and ideas on media-art.

It will be continued, in the future, with the presentation of nowadays
results of diverse forms of electronic art, by artists of all generations,
as a continuity of archiving the data.

All the info about artists (biographies, works, texts, URL, etc) and about
the event on URL
http://www.rex.opennet.org/electronicart

Gordana Novakovic, visual artist, author of the project, shirt@eunet.yu