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The first seminar
of the project "Serbia and Kosovo:
Intercultural Icebreakers",
organized by the Helsinki Committee
for Human Rights in Serbia with the
support of the Embassy of the
Federal Republic of Germany in
Belgrade and the Embassy of
Switzerland in Belgrade, was
successfully completed. The
participants visited Belgrade,
Pristina, Novi Sad and Prizren for
ten days.
The seminar was
opened with lectures by writer Saša
Ilić, editor of the National Library
of the Republic of Serbia, and one
of the editors and founder of the
international festival of
literature, Polip, from Priština.
Saša Ilić talked with his
accomplices about the literature of
separate worlds and cultural
exchange as a tool for peace
building. After the lecture, the
group visited the Center for
Cultural Decontamination, where they
spoke with the founder and director
of the Center, Bork Pavićević, about
the emergence and role of the Center
as a meeting point for the two
cultures. On the first day of the
seminar, the workshops “Personal
Identities in a Cultural Context”
and “Intercultural Dialogue and
Intercultural Sensitivity” began and
will continue in the following days.
The second day of
the seminar was reserved for a visit
to the Faculty of Dramatic Art and
the Museum of Contemporary Art in
Belgrade, where participants had the
opportunity to become acquainted
with adacematic education aimed at
artists, opportunities for
collaboration and the contemporary
creative scene.
A day later, a
visit to Novi Sad followed, where
the first stop was the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Vojvodina, where
besides the permanent exhibition,
participants had the opportunity to
be greeted by artist Dragan
Vojvodić, who led them through his
exhibition "Portrait of a Migrant in
Youth“. Afterwards, the group
visited the independent LAB Cultural
Center, whose founder was a
participant in one of the previous
generations of the project "Serbia
and Kosovo: Intercultural
Icebreakers“. The lecture of
Aleksandra Đurić Bosnić, an
associate of the Helsinki Committee,
on the culture and value system as
well as an activist and engaged
approach to art, was also held at KC
LAB. Afterwards, the group also
visited the Black House 13 Cultural
Center (CK13), which presented their
work and the latest project for the
Young Poets Colony, where they would
translate works from Serbian into
Albanian and vice versa, to the
participants.
The group
continued to Priština the next day,
which was also the first visit by
some of Kosovo's young artists. On
the first day of their stay in
Priština, the participants visited
the Academy of Arts where they met
one of the professors, the director
Ismet Sijarina. Ismet Sijarina
talked with them about the prospects
of collaboration between artists
from Kosovo and Serbia, and one of
the students presented her student
film which sparked an interesting
discussion. In the afternoon, the
group continued with the workshop
"Personal experiences as a starting
point of transformation".
The visit to
Prizren was interesting because of
the city itself, but also because of
the conversation with the DOKU
festival team taking place in this
city. The conversation about the
current cooperation with the
Belgrade film festivals left an
impression on the participants and
showed that cooperation is possible
with a lot of will and effort.
Afterwards, the group visited the
Museum of the Albanian League in
Prizren, where a lecture on social
engineering, myths and nation was
given by Baškim Fazli. Another
interesting discussion followed
about mutual ignorance and different
nationalist narratives.
On the last day in
Priština, a lecture was given by
Zana Hodžaj Krasnići. The founder of
a Priština feminist festival spoke
about gender and art and activism
and art. The lively discussion
focused on various topics concerning
the gender perspective of art. The
program ended with a workshop on
transformation through art, during
which the artists presented their
ideas for works, an exhibition and
shared with each other their
inspiration gathered during the
seminar.
Each day of the
program was a separate time for an
interesting workshop designed for
the needs of the project "Serbia and
Kosovo: Intercultural Icebreakers“.
The workshop, called “Intercultural
Pedestrians,” allows participants to
host for ten days at a time. Namely,
divided into mixed couples, the
participants each day chose where to
lead and whith what to meet their
colleagues from another city.
Participants from Serbia led
participants from Kosovo to
different places concerning culture,
history, meaning to them and through
which they wanted to show the
cultural scene of Serbia, and then,
upon their arrival in Kosovo, they
switched roles.
The seminar ended
with a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of
ambitious ideas for the papers and a
desire to send a clear message
through them.
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