Raw

Raw, view of the set at the Cultural Territories exhibition, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, 2003.

Observing the young artists during their education at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and early public exhibitions, I noticed that their potentials are often impeded by the institutional inability to endorse the essential differences between their authorial positions. The students therefore often become neglectful of some important, and sometimes crucial, aspects of their artistic practices. Their development is further corrupted by the pragmatic social strategies that are required for a successful career but have nothing to do with the artistic thought.

I initiated the Flu ID project with the idea of helping the young artists to realize and to understand these important factors, and to establish their careers through a combination of workshops, lectures, production and presentation of works. Flu ID addressed the artistic knowledge and experience primarily according to the students’ preferences and needs. The aim was to impart information and improve the students’ competence, but also to endow them with critical understanding of the language of the art world, to extend their professional horizons and to help them merge their æsthetic and ethical values.

My contribution to Cultural Territories was a two-channel set of selected video works released through Flu ID, combined with the project documentation. The title Raw alludes both to the artists’ positions and to the nature of the production of their works. The students were far too involved in creating their pieces to indulge in elaborate æsthetic approbation or analysis. They were not concerned with representational politics or with curatorial and theoretical strategies. Their main challenge was, and hopefully still is, to avoid the creative suppression that comes from an overconcern with art as an academic subject and cultural artifact.