Capital of experience

The independent art association Remont, which celebrated its birthday at the end of February, was founded in October 1999, while it opened its exhibition space a year ago. Therefore, in difficult and obscure times, when the repression of all spheres of activity was entering its culminating phase, Remont embarked on a creative adventure with an uncertain outcome. The primary aspiration of the Independent Art Association Remont, whose initiator is i spirit movens art historian Darka Radosavljević, was to carry out certain overhaul operations on dilapidated facilities of the local art scene. From the very beginning of the activity, the basic proclaimed goals concerned the promotion of the connection between scattered parts and elements of the current art scene, the intensification of the exchange of information, the establishment of contacts and exchanges with world art centers, but also the presentation of the creativity of our artists who left the country during the nineties and whose work little known here... However, the intense intensity and quality of Remont's program activities in the first year indicate that the planned norms were even exceeded. Over the past year, Remont has realized more than 30 program units - exhibitions, promotions, presentations, video projections, guest appearances, actions. The culminating point was this year's guest appearance of the cult Russian artist Oleg Kulik in Belgrade, but the exhibitions of young Bulgarian artists Iva Mudova and Desislava Dimova, later Lučezar Bojadžijev, and then Tanja Ostojić, a Belgrade artist who has been exhibiting and working around the world for several years, are also of great importance. Europe, etc.

DIFFERENT RECEPTION: A particularly significant segment of Remonta's activities is publishing. In the middle of October last year, a CD-rom edition called Virtual Exhibition. It is a group virtual exhibition of artists, participants and members of the Association, whose works were conceived and designed specifically for the CD-ROM medium - which is also the first artistic project of this type realized in our area. In addition to the units that contain information and documentation about the operation and concept of Remont, a promo film, then, a piece with interactive biographies of artists and members of the Association, the very core of the edition consists of the works of sixteen Yugoslav authors of the younger and middle generation: Jovan Čekić, Branko Pavić, Mileta Prodanović, Era Milivojević, Uroš Đurić, Stevan Markuš, Dragana Žarevac, Saša Rakezić, Saša Marković, Mihael Milunović, Tanja Ostojić, Valentina Tomić, Žana Poliakov and others. Realized in the range of completely reduced digital audio-visual-textual records, to very complex interactive creations, all the works are referential to reality and the environment, so that they have explicit or implicit comments and artistic interpretations of events from our recent past, or differently formulated personal statements and reactions to lived experiences. Virtual Exhibition confronted the local audience with the demands of a different reception and communication with the work of art, while the foreign audience, which is also the target group of this edition, was thus exposed to the unusual creative potentials and specifics of a segment of our current art scene. But that's not all. At the end of last year, the first issue of the art magazine "Remont" was published. This dynamic and unpretentious quarterly contains information about the activities of Remont, but also a series of news, notes, reviews, comments, translations, theoretical texts, interviews concerning relevant events on the local scene, as well as the activities of our artists within the international art scene.

"Renovation, in my opinion, played an important role on the stage, it showed that something can still be done in crazy conditions." It has become one of the city's most important checkpoints, as well as a place where interested parties turn to for information. Foreign journalists, even curators, started stopping by to make inquiries, to ask for contacts with artists. There was no such place before. Everything that has been done so far, especially the projects in preparation, shows that this kind of point is needed in our environment", is the direct observation of Darka Radosavljević.

RESEARCH SIMILARITIES: Richer for the capital of lived experiences and completed programs, as well as good feed-back established with the audience and the public, Remont entered the second year at an even faster pace. Undoubtedly, the year will be dominated by the recently promoted project Renovation Review conceived as a review and recapitulation of the Belgrade art scene of the 90s, where a series of 12 exhibitions will present the works of about 40 Belgrade artists who marked the 90s. This project, which was conceived by art critics Darka Radosavljević, Jasmina Čubrilo and Stevan Vuković, will be followed by a series of thematic discussions and ultimately translated into a CD-ROM edition. In addition to a series of exhibitions and projects that are planned for the second year, among other things, Remont is preparing a CD-ROM Virtual exhibition II, as well as two editions of the publication Balkans Umbrella - within the first one Beograd/Zagreb, whose theme is "Culture-Media-Politics", explores the similarities, differences and specifics of the current art scenes of two cities that once existed in the same country; second number, Beograd/Sofija, with the theme "The artist as an individual and society", searches for the identities and close experiences of the art scenes of the two centers.

At the time when Remont started its activities, it was the only specialized point of contemporary fine art in Belgrade that had a continuous exhibition activity. In the period after October 5, things changed - several centers and institutions were reactivated whose activity was frozen, obstructed, focused on guerrilla work, which creates a positive climate of competitiveness and pluralism. The dilemma of whether renovation is possible has been resolved. Currently - Renovation is in progress.