"Well-intentioned people tend to impose their good intentions on others. Now, students are liberators of hope and pent-up feelings, but they are not our personal liberators. We have to help ourselves, we need to see what happens with those feelings, the awakened dignity, we have to take responsibility and not place it on someone else because we will fall asleep again at the first next opportunity. We need complete liberation, not just a temporary valve”
Belgrade group Car park will hold a concert in Dorćol Platz on March 22, as part of the "Kontakt 25" festival. It's their first performance in six years, but it's also a celebration of the band's 25th anniversary and the promotion of their fifth album. The Reunion (Great Hamster). It's a double vinyl, a compilation of New Year's singles released over the last 12 years. Car park is a group with a specific sensibility and recognizable sound that could be described as alternative pop. "We move things" is the name of one of the group's hits, and the title can be perfectly connected to the current student protests that, in recent months, have overshadowed almost everything else. "We are excited," says Ognjenka Lakićević, the frontwoman Fleet, in an interview for Time. "We love these songs and we try to make them sound as good as possible, we practice a lot. On the other hand, in ideal circumstances I would only think of a concert, but now that's not possible. Something big is happening in society, we are in the lobby of liberation, and everything else is kind of in the shadow of it. It's not easy to do anything else, especially to do it dedicatedly, as we always do."
"WEATHER" You said the group's motive was Car park to be with "share comfort and beauty with the audience in this uncertain and strange period".
OGNJENKA LAKIČEVIĆ: I often joke about how Car park was always there when it was the hardest, although that joke is a little true. That's why, after a lot of thinking, we decided to hold the concert. Let's try to embrace the audience through music. Art always and at every moment has meaning, gives strength, freshness, it questions, comforts, supports, ennobles, worries, saddens, disturbs, makes you happy, makes you better. Certainly, everyday life is on hold until further notice, as if we are in some kind of interim. The expectation of resolution is in the air, it is tense and full of different, often contradictory feelings, there is anxiety, hope, apprehension, love, anger, empathy, impatience, despair, hope again, overwhelm, fear, strength, sadness, anxiety again due to uncertainty, hope again. For a long time we repressed all of that due to the injustices and humiliations we observed, building defense mechanisms to somehow survive psychologically. It is important that the fear is broken and there is no going back.
It is difficult to concentrate on anything else, everything seems very far away, sometimes unimportant, but it is necessary to breathe, remember yourself, check how you are, enrich your soul again with some art to refresh you, maintain motivation. Otherwise, you burn like a match. Rehearsals save my head, although it is very difficult to be on multiple fronts, although it is all the same front, the fight for justice and goodness, the order of tenderness.
You are the only member of the band from the original lineup. What an experience it has been to work with so many different people over 25 years? What have you learned about yourself and others??
Mostly about how people are divided into hard-working, brave and passionate and those who are not passionate enough, a little lazy, maybe scared. I was passionate and partly brave, not worthy enough. When Nikola Berček (guitarist and music author) came to the band in 2004, with his incredible talent, still extremely hard-working, incorruptibly brave and completely unencumbered by anyone's opinion, I realized that I would have to pull myself together so that I could somehow follow him, to step forward. I was insecure about my musical knowledge and talent, and I didn't have enough experience, so it was easier to sit in the safe zone. I had to become much braver and much more diligent. He is the key to the survival of the band and my growth as a kind of creator, he moved me forward. I understood: those who cannot do without creation - will create. For others, it will be just a hobby, a passing phase, they will get a job in banks, go to tim-buildings, they won't eat after 17 p.m., they'll replace guitars with gyms and phones, there won't be time to create. Because creation requires courage and a lot of renunciation, and you also have to be in touch with yourself. Music and literature are the basis of me, of my existence, that's what I learned about myself.
You are one of those bands that has a loyal following, you identify with people by sensibility. What is your audience like?? Who are these people??
Sometimes I also wonder where these gentle, sensitive, smart people are bred. How are they in such a rough society? It wasn't easy to follow us all this time, we disappeared so many times, we didn't behave normally for a rock and roll band. The loyalty of our audience has become unquestionable. Also, our songs are not for the first time, they require a special sensitivity and devotion to be discovered and loved, a sensitivity for beauty, a tendency to think. It's a privilege to have such an audience, just like you say, we recognize each other by our sensibility: as if there is a code for recognition in the songs.
Let's get back to the protests.. What do you think the epilogue will be? Do you feel that the end of this regime is near?
I am always an optimist, what else is left for me. However, there is no way to predict the outcome. Everyone has their own assumptions and assumptions, but these are some personal constructions, pub, friendly conversations. It would be frivolous for me to publicly predict anything. With their courage, sacrifice and persistence, the students moved Serbia, unpacked suppressed feelings, broke through fears, awakened dormant dignity, sadness, anger, anger, tears, and most of all, they awakened hope, which, after so many lost and failed opportunities, was in hibernation. We have underestimated evil, well-intentioned people tend to impose their good intentions on others. Now, students are liberators of hope and pent-up feelings, but they are not our personal liberators. We have to help ourselves, we need to see what happens with those feelings, the awakened dignity, we have to take responsibility and not place it on someone else because we will fall asleep again at the first next opportunity. We need complete liberation, not just a temporary valve. For us, this is a huge opportunity for growth, maturation of the entire society. We'll see how we use it, I can't imagine any disappointing outcome, it would break my heart. I don't know how durable it is to continue living in this vulgarity.
You practice family psychotherapy, it is one of your many interests. Do you think artists, essentially, they create from their pain, and when it is (and if it is) solutions lose their artistic potential? Or is it all prejudice??
It really seems like I'm some kind of crazy person who has many interests, but in fact they are strongly connected: both art (writing) and psychotherapy answer the questions of why we are the way we are and why and how something happens.
Your question is very interesting and, let me say right away, it is about prejudice. I think that artistic potential and creativity develop more the deeper you go into yourself, a huge space opens up that you didn't know existed before, nor did you see it. Also, it is a prejudice about psychotherapy that, after solving the main topic, the problems will not appear again. We cannot change the past, we have to accept it for a healthier future. Therefore, the scars remain, but in therapy we learn to react differently to triggers, we are more aware of what belongs to the past and what belongs to the present, we integrate experiences, strengthen our own resources of self-regulation, understand patterns and know how to intercept them instead of feeding them, take responsibility. Growth is painful and requires awareness. Then you want more from life. Creativity can only be unlocked even more, you become braver, you have more confidence in your processes, your judgments. All this does not mean that everyone has to go to therapy to be a better artist, but only that psychotherapy does not make us calm and boring, and that we release part of that enormous power that we used for suffering, running away from pain, rumination, stuckness and use it to create.
You are a very active person socially, Are you interested?, among other things, animal protection problem. How many of us as a society are affected by this topic in general, What is your experience??
Bad. Very few people are interested in that topic. And what kind of society it is can be seen by its attitude towards the weakest, therefore also towards animals, completely meek, innocent, good, intelligent, extremely sensitive beings who are completely dependent on us. Aside from the story about the exploitation of animals. As a society, we are not yet mature for that, so I will limit myself only to the topic of abandoned dogs in Serbia. Even those with their owners have a difficult fate, they are often on chains, hunting dogs in boxes, and if they are not good for hunting, they are thrown out into the street. In Serbia, in some places, hunters kill abandoned dogs en masse, and some people throw the dogs out into the street as soon as they "remember" that they are not toys for children and after they get a little tired of them. Shelters for dogs are a particular problem - they are death camps. We are literally Nazis to dogs, all because of terrible corruption with state money for shelters. The situation is literally terrible, and while we are solving some other problems, dogs in Serbia are dying in the most terrible agonies, and all this is due to impunity for crimes against animals, i.e. non-application of the Law on Animal Welfare. The rule of law is an imperative of an orderly and mature society. So far, we are neither of those two, but we resist both the law and empathy.
What about poetry?? Can we expect a new collection or is it a little bit different? "calmed down" as a poet?
No way! The poetess never sleeps. In order to write, you have to observe a lot, think, live, arrange it all. Since the last collection, there have been a lot of turbulent years, first covid, then a health problem that has plagued me for years... then it's hard to focus, but I wrote and continue to write. I think I can now say with a fair degree of certainty that the collection will be released this year. This will be an exciting year, the album, the collection, in addition to all this social turmoil, you need to take care of your psychophysical health. As you can see, I'm slow because I'm not haunted by the imperative that I have to constantly publish something in order to exist on the public's radar, I follow my own dynamics. The poet does not sleep, she follows and observes and participates in everything.
Stephen Patrick Morrissey, former frontman Smiths, your great love since childhood, is coming to Belgrade again in the summer. Do you forgive him for all the outbursts he has been prone to in recent years? I guess you have an ambivalent relationship, but that you will still be at the concert.
Alas, that Morrissey gave me a hard time. When he was in The Smiths he represented really good values, he led a bunch of generations on the right path. It is not easy to integrate those outbursts into the immense love I feel for his work, and to some extent for him. He is like a family member, he has meant a lot to me since my teenage days, how can I forget that, for me he is the most important artist. But I can't support almost anything he's been saying for a long time now. I don't know how and when it happened that he went from being a constabulary on duty to right-wing, it really affected me, his values are completely opposite to mine. Of course I'm coming to the concert.
The ballet ensembles of the National Theater in Belgrade and the Serbian National Theater in Novi Sad are seeking the replacement of their directors, Ana Pavlović and Aja Jung.
The Ministry of Culture is seeking sanctions against Andrej Josifovski the Pianist, because of his intervention at the monument to Stefan Nemanja. The artist says - it hurts them that I did it in front of their noses
Certain members of the Commission have resigned, this is the explanation why the City Assembly made a decision to cancel all this year's competitions for co-financing cultural projects
Neither the Ministry nor the City Secretariat for Culture have announced the results of the competition for co-financing projects, although the deadlines have long been exceeded, so the question arises as to whether there is any money for culture in the budget at all
The author of the message for this year's World Game Day, Mikhail Baryshnikov, says that "art is still the best way to give shape to the unspoken, and ask the questions: Where is my truth? How can I respect myself and my community? To whom or what do I owe responsibility?"
Who mentions the extraordinary elections when the rating of the party in power is falling, and according to all surveys, Vučić is not the most important political factor in the country, but the students?
The brutal beating of students and citizens in Novi Sad shows that the regime is not only ready to take revenge - it is actually carrying it out
If in reality the principle of balance is violated - the way the incompetent regime violated the relationship between the concrete elements at the Novi Sad Railway Station - reality will behave like a canopy: it will fail to obey
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