People compete in the discipline "whose lie is truer"

In "Chamber Theater 55" in Sarajevo Kokan Mladenovic staged a dramatic piece based on the motifs of the novel Blank writer, actor and musician from Sarajevo Fedje Štukan. The premiere took place in March. At the same time, Štukan wrote eight tracks for the play, which he also released as an album, which, let's say, rounded off an important chapter in his creativity. Along with his artistic life, Štukan appears in the public of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an active citizen, he is a welcome guest in the region, and until recently he regularly visited Belgrade, but the current Serbian regime declared him an undesirable person in Serbia.

"WEATHER" Actor, producer, musician, writer, persona non grata in Serbia, once a soldier... How do you manage with all those identities?? Do they interfere in your life or do you all live in a relatively peaceful coexistence?

photo: private archive

FEĐA ŠTUKAN: I don't have identity problems, those problems are for those who have to show and prove to themselves and others the purpose of their own existence, I don't live in that world, nor do I understand people who care about it. My identity is my first and last name and the word behind it. You are doomed to be "You" no matter how you turn it, and you can't be anything other than that. I differ from others in that I have, one might say, a slightly wider sphere of interests, as well as the will to try my hand at different things. It's all a matter of training, even Beethoven, when he sat down at the piano for the first time, didn't know how to play "Gypsy Woman Treads Water", so he overcame it with practice and progressed, people usually give up immediately after trying something for the first time, and say "this is not for me". I don't give up because I know that everything is in the training and there is no thing that a living person cannot overcome, any person. I mastered various skills and that I wouldn't have to depend on other people. If I need a video for something, I can do everything myself, shoot, do color correction, record and process sound, make music, edit, do full production, because if I waited for other people to do it for me, I wouldn't have time to finish anything. Let's be clear, I'm not a virtuoso in any of those professions, but I know the basics, and in relation to what I can and do know, I try to do the best I can. I play all the instruments in the band, but I'm not a virtuoso on any of them, maybe I could impress you on each of those instruments, but not for more than a couple of minutes. With those basic, rather modest musical capabilities, I rely solely on the idea. The song "Justice" on the album is completely based on just one single chord, but you can play that chord in a thousand completely different ways and in a thousand rhythms. The idea is the most important, as well as the willingness to extract and give the maximum within the framework of the possibilities you have. I'm probably the best at piloting, not because I'm super talented at it, but because I've spent a lot of hours in the air. I wouldn't call it identities, I don't know what they are important for and to whom. Probably when you're not qualified for anything, you need to be considered anything, I don't need to fit into anything. I just exist, that's enough for me.

Roman Blank was well received by readers. You stated (thinking of such and such a reception): "I didn't think the truth was such a sought-after commodity". What it means?

As far as I understand, people are most impressed by the truth that I wrote about myself in the book, so it's a little strange to me, if I'm already writing an autobiography, shouldn't I write how it really was, otherwise, what's the point of an autobiography?! Lie and present yourself in a better light? It doesn't make much sense to me. It is strange to me that people are surprised by the truth, as if it is completely foreign to them.

At what point do you know you've reached a generality in your writing that allows it to take on a life of its own? - which, in principle, just your thing - offer it to others on a platter?

In writing, as in other arts, you never seem to know, there are always things you can work on, you simply have to stop and say "enough is enough", so whatever happens. Why do you think I do it? So what else could I do? This story helps people to understand that they are not alone in the problem, that a bunch of people are in the same shit. We are all almost the same, some a little dumber, some a little smarter, but that's basically the only difference. We have the same fears and the same reactions to fear, the same emotions and reactions to them. This is not only my life and my book, many people found themselves in it.

Da, but the truth of writing is never in the author's claim that what he wrote is true. The truth is in the work itself.. What do you think?, how people recognize the truth of your novel? Ili, what makes your novel true?

The truth simply sounds different from a lie, I don't know how to explain it, the truth is always short and simple, you can say it in one sentence, a lie requires excessive detailing and that overstepping the mark exposes it. There is no pathos here, no narration, it is the way it is. You can see it. I don't know what kind of writer I am, and how much imagination I have at my disposal, I simply could not invent all this, it is simply somehow visible.

Kokan Mladenović staged the play Blank based on the motifs of the novel. How does it feel to meet your own text in another medium?

I find it interesting to watch someone else's vision of me, honestly, much more interesting than watching the same version of myself, which is not interesting to me. It's great to watch the actors build my character and think about it. I have a cameo role, and the main task was music.

You write and sing about your own experience. In one verse you say about yourself that you are "serious disturbance".

Apart from the fact that I was a serious nuisance to myself for a good part of my life, that verse also refers to the situation with which the play begins, which is my arrest at the Belgrade "Nikola Tesla" airport.

Once again we return to the truth. BIA tells its story (they lie, of course), You tell your story too., and then Kokan Mladenović does it too. It is certain that you believe that art is able to reveal a more solid truth than the truth offered by the Service.

Humans have been living a lie for as long as they have existed, competing to see whose lie is more true. A lie is a powerful tool, you can achieve anything with it. But the truth is also powerful. If you want to accept the truth, then you can't do it partially, you have to decide whether you want to know and accept the whole truth and live according to it, or you have to persist in lies that can comfort you better. Red or blue pill. If you accept a comforting lie, you must accept a complete set of lies and narratives, because if you were to accept just one truth, it could collapse the entire system of subjective truth that you have carefully and carefully created and therefore is difficult for most to accept. Objective truth will always exist without the possibility of interfering with it. Art deals with that truth, and that's why it's unbearable and unacceptable to the authorities and the BIA, because it destroys and exposes a system that is completely based on lies and myths, that's why they have to silence it, that's why they hate art and artists and try in every way to remove them from the public scene.

The Vučić regime declared you an undesirable person in Serbia. To that regime, however, It doesn't seem to be going very well.. How are you?, from a relative distance, this seems to be happening in Serbia?

Things always look better when you get out of the way. What is happening there is genius, it gives us all hope. I knew that I would be banned from entering, because that is the only thing that can be expected from such a regime. Nationalists are completely predictable, they are driven by only one emotion, so it is easy to guess the next step. I think that the students have done absolutely everything right so far, especially on March 15.03, when they stopped the protest after the sound cannon attack and prevented a stampede and bloodshed, their non-violence is inspiring. You don't need 1,6 million people to topple a regime, a few thousand people in the right place at the right time can be quite enough. It's good that they are not singling anyone out and delegating yet, they will do that when the time is right. In this way, anyone who came forward could be arrested and imprisoned, and this is an unnecessary sacrifice of people.

It's OK that they carry flags, but they should be aware that Chetnik iconography, which is often seen at protests, is actually the only cause of those protests and if they don't get rid of it, their children will have to go through the same thing in a few years. Nationalism is EVIL, it got them where they are, nothing else.

Chetnik and church iconography cause deep uneasiness. Do you, however, you leave the possibility that this generation of young people will not accept the evil of nationalism, or that he at least has the strength to resist him?

I believe that the majority of students cannot support such a thing, but sincerely want to simply try to re-educate the nationalists and tell them: "Hey, look at this, we're all together and it's great, don't hate anyone." I want to believe that it is so, because looking through history, it is not. But then again, there was a period when people lived here in peace and harmony, I saw it with my own eyes, so I know it's possible, but in the end it turned out that the people here were simply not up to such an advanced idea either spiritually, mentally or civilizationally. We're too stupid for better, it seems. All our hopes are in the hands of the students right now and I hope it is clear to everyone that there is no going back, because otherwise they will all be the subject of persecution, investigations, abuse, imprisonment, torture and very possibly murder, as we all know very well, since '92. that this regime is both willing and ready for such things.