Yearbook of the Independent Performing Arts Scene in Serbia - TkH

powerful institutional resources, achieved significant media attention andentered official systems of representation and documentation. Works andprojects presented here were selected precisely because they do not fallunder the auspices of any of the numerous public cultural institutions designatedto record, archive and promote such inherently ephemeral artisticforms as theatre, performance or dance – leaving behind for the purposesof history only documents and records. It is important to note that the independent,‘other scene’ (and most of the groups and authors representedin this publication are part of the Other scene [Druga scena]), should notbe regarded as a refuge to those (for any reason) lacking access to publicinstitutions but – on the contrary – as a conscious ideological-artistic act,demarcating a new cultural realm in the local context. 8This being the first in, hopefully, long series of yearbooks, the introductoryessays aspire, in covering different time frames, at detailed mapping of thecontexts bringing about these productions. Milena Bogavac’s text thus addressesthe notion of Serbian alternative theatre in the 2000s, in establishingproductive, ethical and aesthetical, differences between the independentand state-sponsored cultural assets. In her contribution, Ana Vilenicaprovides a condensed historic overview of performance art in Serbia in thelast four decades, proceeding with a detailed contextual map of actions/performances produced here throughout the last year. Ana Vujanović examinesand reconstructs the never-before-written local history of the XXcentury dance. Addressing dance as a social symptom, she engages withproblems of broad paradigm shifts from Socialism, via post-Socialism, to theneo-liberal capitalism, occurring in Serbia and the region with the demiseof the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (and concurrently withthe emerging wave of independent theatre groups in the early 90s). As mainproblems of the contemporary dance scene in Serbia (which applies to theoverall independent artistic scene, even the institutional one), among otherthings, Vujanović specifies slow advance and lack of critical-theoreticalreflection.Since its launch in 2001 TkH Journal for Performing Arts Theory has regularly(in issues 2, 3, 6 and 9 9 ) published features dedicated to critique of contemporaryartistic practices. Featured critical reviews were not solely aboutdiscussing and promoting particular productions, but demonstrated differentways of writing on performing arts – forming a solid ground for inven-8 More in Milena Bogavac’s text “EX Theatre in Serbia – alternative has noalternative!”, pages 13-20 of this publication.9 Issues of the magazine available at: www.tkh-generator.net/sr/casopis.