CONFERENCE: EUROPOLY BELGRADE
CONFERENCE/EXHIBITION/FILM SCREENINGS
EUROPOLY, BELGRADE
#1
Past, Present and Future of the Balkan Migrations in Countries of Central and Western Europe
Opening: 6. April 2017, 5pm
6. ‒ 7. April, conference and film screenings
6. ‒ 13. April, exhibition
Museum of Yugoslavia
Botićeva 6
11000 Belgrade
A first multidisciplinary event in the framework of the project EUROPOLY takes place in Belgrade. Series of regional conferences EUROPOLY is a multidisciplinary project realized in collaboration with four independent organisations – Bijeli val (Croatia), Crvena (Bosnia and Herzegovina), BLOCKFREI (Austria) and Krokodil (Serbia). The intention of the project is to research and map the intense social, cultural and artistic influence which this long-term wave of migrations made on the West Balkan countries, as well as the countries that mostly represented final migrant destination.
The framework and a starting point of EUROPOLY is the art project EUROPOLY – The European Union Identity Trading Game (2004) by artist Dejan Kaludjerović.
EXHIBITION:
Art project EUROPOLY – The European Union Identity Trading Game is created in the form of a social game inspired by Monopoly. It questions the position of the immigrants in EU, general idea behind the EU, as well as the gap between ideals and practice. Citizens of the non-EU countries, who are working in the EU countries, have been photographed and with their professions are featured in the installation. Luck, to a great extent, determines the possible rise or fall of the players who wish to become part of the EU and acquire new European identity. The European Union defines European identity as something that is provided only within the Union and only to European Union citizens, although Europe does not end at the borders of the Union. However, the EU does have the power to define identity, the power to set up the rules of a game others have to join. The consumer society of the European Union has created a rule, that ’everything is for sale’, including even notions of identity.
CONFERENCE / FILM SCREENINGS:
Thursday, 6. April
5pm: Opening Ceremony
Conference participants Boris Buden, Vladimir Ivanović and Želimir Žilnik will symbolically play the game EUROPOLY ‒ The European Union Identity Trading Game.
6pm: Jugodojč (debate)
Participants: Tatomir Toroman and Vladimir Ivanović
Moderator: Ivan Velisavljević
7pm: Parallel Stories (debate)
Participants: Boris Buden
Moderator: Ljubica Gojgić
8pm: Kennedy returns home and Kennedy lost and found by Želimir Žilnik (film screenings)
Friday, 7. April
5pm: Juga, my Juga – Gastarbeiter stories, (guided tour through the exhibition by the co-curator Tatomir Toroman and EUROPOLY conference participants Boris Buden, Vladimir Ivanović and Želimir Žilnik)
6pm: Critical Communities in Exile (debate)
Participants: Boris Buden and Vladimir Ivanović
Moderator: Filip Balunović
7 pm: Future of Migration (debate)
Participants: Želimir Žilnik
Moderator: Ana Otašević
8pm: Unemployed, Inventory and Fortress Europe by Želimir Žilnik (film screenings)
Conference participants:
Boris Buden ‒ Writer, Cultural critic, Professor at the Faculty of Art and Design, Bauhaus University, Weimar
Vladimir Ivanović ‒ Historian with research areas in labor and refugee migration from the former Yugoslavia, Lecturer at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Department of South-Eastern European History
Želimir Žilnik ‒ Film director, a pioneer of Yugoslav Black Wave film movement who in his work deals with the experiences of immigrants, refugees, returnees.
Installation EUROPOLY ‒ The European Union Identity Trading Game will be on display from 6. ‒ 13. April.
Applications for participation in the game EUROPOLY ‒ The European Union Identity Trading Game are made through the e-mail address: office@krokodil.rs
The Belgrade event of the EUROPOLY project is implemented in a co-relation with the currently ongoing exhibition in the Museum of Yugoslavia Juga, my Juga – Gastarbeiter stories, dedicated to Yugoslav workers who were temporarily employed in Austria and Germany. The exhibition is a part of a broader research project connected to 50 years since the signing of the Agreement about hiring the workforce from Yugoslavia with Austria in 1966, and Germany in 1968.
The program EUROPOLY in Belgrade is organized by the association KROKODIL.
Local partner: Museum of Yugoslavia
The project is supported by Allianz Kulturstiftung, ERSTE Foundation, Federal Chancellery of Austria, The City of Vienna, Austrian Cultural Forum in Serbia, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, The City of Zagreb, 8th District of Vienna, Eurocomm-PR GmbH.
