Nicoline van Harskamp - DeLVe | Institute for Duration, Location and ...

GDJE SE SVE TEK TREBA DOGODITI / WHERE EVERYTHING IS YET TO HAPPEN
Radenko Milak
Banja Luka – A Site for Contemporary Art?
It is not about finally abolishing nationalism for all times, but about civilizing it to some extent –
at least to the extent of letting the others live their lives decently.
- Ugo Vlaisavljević
The issue of constitutional political system has been the most difficult and most important
one for Bosnia and Herzegovina, a state that – fourteen years after the war – still
stagnates in solving some of its crucial problems in terms of reform. Putting it bluntly,
our society is radically divided and the new generations tend to grow up in hatred
towards all that is different and represents “the other”. The confinement of the Bosnian-
Herzegovinian society within its 19th-century ideas seems like a part of the endless
process of national identification that has been ongoing for the past hundred years. But
perhaps it is precisely this political reality that can become a site for contemporary art?
Zones of crisis, a divided society, the question of unsolved national identities – all these
aspects may form an essential context for artists to engage in new projects and new
productions. Moreover, with a regional specificity provided by the geographic position
of Banja Luka: its closeness to Zagreb, its narrow ties to Belgrade, and its orientation
towards Sarajevo as the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The contemporary Bosnian-Herzegovinian art scene exists primarily owing to the
great enthusiasm of artists and artistic organizations or institutions on the territory of
Republika Srpska and all of Bosnia and Herzegovina. SpaPort is an initiative launched
by the Centre for Visual Communications Protok in the framework of a project entitled
Reviving the Local Art Scene. Its aim has been to create, through various initiatives and
programmes, an environment that will be suitable for developing a local art scene and
establish the conditions for artistic production in various cultural contexts. In the past
two years, we have realized various educational programmes within SpaPort (lectures,
presentations, workshops) intended for the students of the Academy of Fine Arts, as well
as for wider audiences, in order to achieve better local visibility and cultural cooperation
in the region.
Owing primarily to the financial support of Swiss Cultural Programme, this has been the
second year in which the Centre for Visual Communications Protok organized an exhibition
of both regional and international character. The Council of SpaPort and especially
the curating duo of Antonia Majača and Ivana Bago, has had a significant role in initiating
this project. The suggestion of the curators, supported by the Board, was to realize a
long-term project entitled Where Everything Is Yet to Happen over the period of 2009/2010