Salon

The main concept of the exhibition “One Day” is to turn the gallery space into production space. Sequences of the production processes, work methods and explorations that are ongoing, finished or continued by different means and in a different medium constitute the basic structure of the exhibition, but at the same time, they are open for cooperation in the production of the “common good” – the key product and common denominator of all these work processes. This, of course, also implies the creation of a relationship and communication network, as well as different policies that become an integral part of the works during production. The starting point of these processes is Belgrade as the basic place of my production, in other words, the place from which I think and speak.

The piece The Last Letter – A (2003/2010) deals with the breakup of Yugoslavia. In Venice, in the Giardini, on the façade of the then Pavilion of Serbia and Montenegro, has remained the inscription YUGOSLAVIA in bas-relief. I took the space within the letter A – the final letter in the title of today’s national pavilion of Serbia – as a model for molds from which I cast two lead objects.

Photo and video installation “One day” (2009/2010) documents an action/intervention of building a non-material monument in places of successful anti-terrorist actions that were carried out by the citizens of Belgrade and Copenhagen during the German occupation in the Second World War. The piece also speaks of anti-fascism today and its erasure from public history and public memory, of its actuality in regard to new circumstances and new forms of fascism. Today it is easy to recognize fascism in its excess forms, but what about the fascism that is all around us, which cannot be easily recognized at first sight, but which is built into the laws and administration?

“Safety on the Path” (2007–2008) is a confessional video-record of a trip into the center of post-genocidal trauma, to Srebrenica, to a world of women without men, houses without families, village without people… Three years ago, I took a trip in order to make drawings of the people murdered during the genocide, according to memory of the survived family members. Very soon it turned out that the main reason for my journey were not the drawings, but an attempt to understand what the loss meant for the survivors, namely that each woman that I met had her own way of confronting the irretrievable loss, as well as a policy of survival in spite of the circumstances that all spoke in the favor of the fact that life could not be continued after what they had survived.

“Four Faces of Omarska” (2010–) is a work in process, constituted by the public work meetings of the Work Group “Four Faces of Omarska” in the Salon of the MCA during the length of the exhibition. The public meeting of the WGFFOO is a dislocation of the social sculpture outside the place of terror that by this becomes a place of exhibition and a place of production of policy of solidarity and equality. In this phase of the project, public meeting is the first form of common good and an interface for the inclusion of the existing archives, new participants and audience. By way of public meeting, the WGFFOO explores strategies and policies of exhibiting art that is in process, makes visible the relationship networks of people, alive and dead, and the things that by their actions produce common good. Creators and participants in the project: Mirjana Dragosavljevic, Srdjan Hercigonja, Viktor Milanovic, Vladimir Miladinovic, Marija Ratkovic, Dejan Vasic, Sandro Hergic, Zoran Vuckovac, Milica Tomic, Heartefact (Andrej Nosev, Milica Milic, Stanislav Tomic), DELVE (Ivana Bago, Antonija Majaca) and others.

We invite you to take part in the public meetings of the Work Group “Four Faces of Omarska” and in the Reading groups of the Archive-library-bookstore “Teacher Ignoramus” in the Salon of the MCA.

September 11th, 4PM
Two Faces of Omarska. Camp as a place of production of memory based on solidarity and equality
Guests of the public work meeting: Nusreta Sivac, Sudbin Music and Satko Mujagic.

During the exhibition:

Solidarity and the Politics of Presence
Guests of the public work meeting: Women in Black.

Policies and Strategies of Artistic Production and Exhibition/Policies of Memory and Cultural-Artistic Production
Guests of the public work meeting: Ivana Bago, Antonija Majaca, Vida Knezevic, Radenko Milak, Borka Pavicevic, Branko Dimitrijevic, Milena Dragicevic-Sesic, Andrej Nosev, and Danilo Prnjat.

Reading groups
What’s left to us after the camp?
Branimir Stojanovic – moderator

Reading group “Society should be defended”, Michel Foucault
Reading group “3 theories: ideology, nation, institution”, Rastko Mocnik
Reading group “What’s left to us after Auswitch?”, Giorgio Agamben

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Milica Tomic is an artist whose works are based on the conceptualization of the relationship between art, politics, memory and contemporaneity through different media. She graduated and took her master’s degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1990. From 2001, she has been working as a visiting lecturer and workshop leader at art academies and institutes for contemporary art in Helsinki, Rotterdam, Salzburg and Vienna, as a leader of international educational projects with students from Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Austria, Vienna, Belgrade and Pristina. Milica Tomic’s artistic work at the international art scene begins in 1997. She took part at the biennials in Sao Paolo (1998), Venice (2001, 2003), Istanbul (2003), Sidney (2006), Prague (2007), Gyumri (2008) and Trondheim (2010). Milica Tomic’s works are a part of the collections, as well as a part of numerous exhibitions in international art institutions, including: Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, Arnhem, Netherlands, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria, MUMOK - Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria, Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, Spain, Ludwig Muzeum, Budapest, Hungary, Malmo Konsthall, Malmo, Sweden, Palazzo Della Triennale Milano, Milan, Italy, Museum of the Contemporary Art in Belgrade, GfZK- Galerie fur Zeitgenussische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany, State Museum of Contemporary Art Thessaloniki, Greece, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kasel, Germany, Kusthallen Nikolaj, Center for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, ZKM Karlruhe, Germany, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA, Freud Museum London, England, KIASMA, Nykytaiteen Museo, Musem of the Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland, Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, Arkitektur og Design, Oslo, Norway, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Neues Museum, Nurenberg, Germany etc.

Milica Tomic lives and works in Belgrade
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Support:
Heartefact Fund, Cyber entertainment, Goethe Institute Belgrade, Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, Serbian Film Center.