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Seminar “Serbia
and Kosovo:
Intercultural Icebreakers”
Prishtina,
March 31 - April 4, 2015
The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia and its partner
organization from Prishtina, the Liberal Democratic Centre,
organized the seminar titled “Serbia and Kosovo: Intercultural
Icebreakers” on March 31 - April 4, 2015 in Prishtina. Young people
from Kosovo and Serbia, active and interested in culture and arts,
spent five creative and working days, making friends and exchanging
experiences and knowledge about their societies and cultures.
Participants in the seminar had an opportunity to listen to lectures
by prominent authorities in arts and culture. During the first day
Zlatko Pakovic held a lecture “Towards a Dialectical Theater”,
focusing on dialectical theatre which is questioning everything that
society imposes as unquestionable, that is usually considered to be
well known; as a method for discovering the hidden truth of society.
Film director and investigative journalist Birol Urcan tackled the
topic “Culture and Arts in Closed and Open Societies”, while
socio-anthropologist Eli Krasniqi delivered the lecture titled “The
Other, Pop Culture and Work of Memory” dealing with stereotypes,
collective memory, cultural and art products, etc.
At the end writer Sasa Ilic delivered a lecture on “Literature of
the Separated Worlds - Cultural Exchange as Peace-building
(Kosovo/Serbia)” addressing the history of divided societies,
cultural and political developments since early ‘80s until today,
the culture and politics of denial, the avenues for cooperation in
arts and culture, especially at the literary scene, and the
importance of cultural exchanges. “Communication is being created
through culture and arts. It is necessary to show that kind of
openness in the communication and to allow the inflow of information
and stories in order to change ourselves, and through our change we
can make changes in societies we live in,” he said among other
things.
Besides lectures young artists were attending the workshops held by
sociologist Demir Mekic and psychologist Tamara Tomasevic. During
the workshops they teamed up for creative campaigns for mutual
respect, understanding and tolerance to be staged in the period to
come. In this way, the program helps the promotion of young artists
from both societies, who will be working together for breaking
prejudices and stereotypes, and promoting good relations between
Kosovo and Serbia.
The participants in the seminar also visited different cultural
institutions and organizations in Prishtina in order to learn more
about cultural and artistic programs on Serb-Albanian relations.
They toured the Ethnographic Museum in Prishtina, and the
Contemporary Art Center “Stacion” where they had an opportunity to
talk to artist Alban Muja. We have also visited Kosova Oral History
Initiative, where film director Kaltrina Krasniqi presented the oral
history method and the work of their initiative.
Furthermore, they enjoyed some of the cultural events in Prishtina,
such as the International Festival of Young Musicians – DAM
Festival.
One of the participants, Sonja Radakovic, student of Faculty of Fine
Arts in Belgrade speaks about her impressions saying: “Seminar
“Serbia and Kosovo: Intercultural Icebreakers” was a great
opportunity for me to visit Kosovo and Prishtina for the first time,
and to meet with people of Albanian nationality. I’m glad our
meeting was guided by the idea of friendship and mutual cooperation
within cultural and artistic context. Besides spending really good
time with all the participants, it was a great pleasure to meet
different lecturers whose presentations encouraged me to think about
and initiate the idea of our new joint action. I’m so looking
forward to continue to work with other participants and to implement
our new project both in Belgrade and Prishtina, in order to break
the prejudices created by influence of bad Serb-Albanian political
relations.”
Edin Alija, student of University of Arts in Prishtina says, „I had
lots of fun. I met those ingenious people and mainly discussed ideas
which really matters to me. The lecturers were stunner. I can say
that after the end of workshops I gained a wider horizon of point of
views, mainly artistic and philosophical.“
The overall goal of the program is to contribute to renewing old and
create new ties between young people, academic and artistic
community, media and civil society from Belgrade and Prishtina by
promoting intercultural dialogue, reconciliation and normalization
process.
Program is realized with the assistance of the European Union under
the Support to Civil Society Facility 2013.
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