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

as an initiative comprised of different phases and program lines, developed with numerous
collaborators from deverse areas. The Second edition of SpaPort represents the first
chapter of the project and bears the subtitle Can You Speak Of This? Yes, I Can and was
developed by the curators Antonia Majača and Ivana Bago in collaboration with Anselm
Franke, Nina Möntmann, Ana Janevski, Erden Kosova, Vit Havránek/Zbynĕk Baladrán,
and Jelena Vesić.
The vision of SpaPort’s Council and Protok, as the organizers of this event, is to transform
the exhibition into a Biennial in 2010, thus converting SpaPort into a platform that
will seek to respond to the radically changed social, geographic, cultural, and artistic
circumstances, which has also been the aim of the two-year project Gdje se sve tek treba dogoditi
/ Where Everything is Yet to Happen. Same as last year, SpaPort takes place at various
locations in the city of Banja Luka, including several prominent exhibition venues such
as the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Republika Srpska, Gallery Terzić, and
this year, according to the suggestion of the curators’ duo - within the Fort Kastel.
SpaPort has also continued with its other activities in 2009, including networking and
education, which contributed to its regional and international visibility. The realities of
the Bosnian-Herzegovinian society, with its absence of a clear cultural policy, has had
an impact on the status and position of cultural events and artists, but also on cultural
institutions. The lack of a strategic plan in the domain of culture or a cultural policy that
would determine the criteria and the priorities on the level of various entities and the
state as such, makes it difficult to plan anything definite for the future. In this sense, the
pragmatic decision of the Council of SpaPort to proclaim the Biennial in 2010 reflects the
efforts of the organizers to secure SpaPort’s continuity.
I would like to express my gratitude to all those who generously offered their support
in realizing SpaPort: the Council of SpaPort, the curating team of Antonia Majača and
Ivana Bago, the co-curating team of Anselm Franke, Ana Janevski, Vit Havránek/Zbynĕk
Baladrán, Erden Kosova, Nina Möntmann, and Jelena Vesić, as well as to all those artists
who participated in any way. I likewise thank the following institutions: Swiss Cultural
Programme, the Ministry of Education and Culture of Republika Srpska, City of Banja
Luka, and the Ministry of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
GDJE SE SVE TEK TREBA DOGODITI / WHERE EVERYTHING IS YET TO HAPPEN