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Art Colony “Serbia
and Kosovo: Intercultural
Icebreakers”
Vrdnik, Serbia
... March
6-10, 2017
The Helsinki
Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
has organized the art colony within
“Serbia and Kosovo: Intercultural
Icebreakers” program on March 6-10,
2017. Sixteen young artists from
Kosovo and Serbia, working or
studying in the fields of culture
and arts, spent a creative week
together in Vrdnik, Serbia making a
stop-motion movie. Prior to the
colony, these young artists have
participated in a ten days long
study tour, during which they
attended various lectures,
workshops, visited cultural
institutions and organizations,
enjoyed cultural and artistic events
in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Prishtina and
Prizren, and had an opportunity to
make plans for a joint project, to
get to know each other, as well as
societies and cultures they are
coming from.
During the art
colony, young artists had an unique
opportunity to develop their ideas
and learn about different techniques
for creating a stop-motion movie,
with the help of their mentor
Nebojsa Petrovic, Master of Arts in
the field of graphics and
sociologist Demir Mekic. Their short
film will be based on shared stories
and experiences and will depict some
of the challenges young people face
today in Serbia and Kosovo.
One of the
participants, Shqipe Gashi, who
studies acting at Faculty of
Dramatic Arts in Prishtina shared
her impressions:
“The Art Colony
was a great experience for me! It
was such a pleasure to meet new
peers and spend time again with
people I already knew. It was an
honor for me to be selected as
participant. I think that this kind
of initiatives are a small step to
get things better between Kosovo and
Serbia. I am happy that I had a
chance to made the first steps into
changing things for the better. I
fully enjoyed these seven days in
Vrdnik with all my Albanian and
Serbian friends!
Together, we created our little
creative hub, got to know each other
and one of the most important parts
for me was sharing personal and very
authentic and moving stories, and
making new and meaningful
friendships.
We also learned a
lot about techniques with regard to
creating animation movies, which is
very useful and valuable for us
actors, performers and movie
directors. Working on a scene for
our joint stop-motion movie based on
one of my personal experiences was
very valuable for me.
I am so grateful
that I was given a chance to express
myself freely with the support of my
new friends form the most
understanding and encouraging
project team!”
And, Rade
Obradović student from Belgrade
said:
“The activity that
had great influence on me during the
art colony were workshops with
Demir. I was given a rare chance to
fully express myself by looking
deeply into your heart. I was lucky
enough to participate in this
program and to meet good and
inspiring people, first during the
seminar and later to live the
moments during art colony that will
continue to have positive influence
on my personality in the future.
One can either
easily find a true connection with
someone or not, and circumstances in
which we work with each other can
greatly help or prevent finding that
special connections. In my opinion,
all were given a perfect environment
to get to know each other which
created a flow of amazing creative
ideas!
We were privileged
to have amazingly encouraging
working conditions, and were invited
into open space and felt completely
free to develop our ideas in
directions of our choice, all of
that with full support of Jelena,
Demir and Nebojsa, from whom we
learned a lot about animated movies
and translating each of our skills
and talents onto the screen. While
working on a performance with my new
friend Izabela, another artist from
Novi Sad, I went through different
phases of creative process (from
initial enthusiasm, through fall of
energy, blockade, until discovery of
new excitement and explosion of
ideas which led to new ways in which
I was able to artistically express
myself.)”
The overall goal
of this 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..
Gallery
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