MUSEUMS AND THE CITY 14 – 17 NOVEMBER, 2011 – LJUBLJANA, ZAGREB, SARAJEVO Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Muzej suvremene umjetnosti MSU Zagreb and Ars Aevi Sarajevo CIMAM 2011 Annual Conference ‘Museums and the City’ 14 –17 November, 2011 – Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Muzej suvremene umjetnost MSU Zagreb and Ars Aevi, Museum of Contemporary Art Sarajevo – Slovenia, Croata and Bosnia – Herzegovina. A three-day conference examining these three cites as special case studies that are both interestng in themselves and in many ways comparable to other places in the world. [Published on the occasion of the 2011 CIMAM Annual Meetng 14 –17 November, 2011 – Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Muzej suvremene umjetnost MSU Zagreb and Ars Aevi, Museum of Contemporary Art Sarajevo – Slovenia, Croata and Bosnia – Herzegovina]; texts edited by Josephine Watson; sessions transcribed by Mireia Bartels; publication coordinated by Inés Jover. The video recordings can be found at www.cimam.org. INDEX WELCOMING REMARKS 05 Dr. Boštjan Žekš, Minister for Culture, Republic of Slovenia Zdenka Badovinac, President of CIMAM, Director Moderna galerija, Ljubljana Tihomir Milovac, Museum Advisor, Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb KEYNOTE I - Art between Violence and Identification 11 Renata Salecl. Philosopher and sociologist, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics CASE STUDY I - The Time Capsule 22 Akram Zaatari. Artist and curator, Beirut CASE STUDY II- Long March- Ho Chi Minh Trail Project 28 Lu Jie. Founder of Long March Space; curator of Long March Project UNDERSTANDING LOCAL CONTEXT I - The Metelkova Case: From Army Barracks to Museum of Contemporary Art 33 Bojana Piškur. Curator Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (MSUM) UNDERSTANDING LOCAL CONTEXT II - City as a Museum. The Workers’ and Punks’ University 41 Asta Vrečko. Doctoral student of Art History at the Faculty of Arts and Junior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana UNDERSTANDING LOCAL CONTEXT III - The Other Museum. P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporay Art 48 Tadej Pogačar. Artistic Director UNDERSTANDING LOCAL CONTEXT IV - POGON - Zagreb Center for Independent Culture and Youth - Dvorana Jedinstvo 58 Emina Višnić (POGON), Zvonimir Dobrovic (Domino), Ana Kutlesa (BLOK), Tomislav Medak (BADco) and Tomislav Pokrajcic (KONTEJNER) UNDERSTANDING LOCAL CONTEXT V - What, How and for Whom of WHW 67 Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION 99 Snježana Pintarić. Director Muzej suvremene umjetnosti MSU Zagreb KEYNOTE III – Notes on Forensic Architecture 101 Eyal Weizman. Architect; Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, and of the ERC funded research project Forensic Architecture. Founding member of the architectural collective DAAR in Beit Sahour/Palestine www.decolonizing.ps CASE STUDY III - The Third Hand, Bandjoun Station, Cameroon 118 Barthélémy Toguo. Artist and founder of Bandjoun Station, an artistic and cultural building project, Cameroon CASE STUDY IV - Venezuelan Museums 120 Gabriela Rangel. Director Visual Arts, Americas Society, New York CASE STUDY V - The Capitalist Truth of the Communist Past: A Short Reminder 131 Boris Buden. Writer and cultural critic, Croatia WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION 144 Enver Hadžiomerspahić. General Director Ars Aevi Sarajevo Amila Ramović. Executive Director Ars Aevi Sarajevo Ivica Šarić. Minister for Culture of the Sarajevo Canton UNDERSTANDING LOCAL CONTEXT VI - Ars Aevi Art Depot 147 Amila Ramović. Executive Director Ars Aevi Sarajevo WELCOMING REMARKS Dr. Boštjan Žekš, Minister for Culture, Republic of Slovenia Ladies and gentlemen, there are certain rules here which I do not understand; therefore, I will speak Slovenian. And the lady here will translate. I shall be brief but you will have a rare opportunity to learn a few Slovenian words. Ladies and gentlemen, may I welcome you most cordially here to this lovely conference in Ljubljana. You are still a young organisation, twelve or thirteen years old if I’m not mistaken, and although you are dealing with problems and questions that are not new, you are introducing something new into them, especially in the area of art and culture. I’m very pleased that you have made the decision to hold this conference in Ljubljana, in Zagreb and Sarajevo. In the past these various nations have lived together although, due to some historic events that we will not discuss here, we sort of broke up and are no longer living together. We come together now, however, to speak about questions that are common to us all in various areas in the field of art and culture. For us here in Slovenia, holding this conference is very important, because it is a mark of recognition for our country. In this regard, I should really like to commend the director of the Moderna galerija, Ms. Zdenka Badovinac, who in fact plays a triple role as director of the Moderna galerija, head of this organising board, and chief organiser and president of your organisation. I must say I’m always happy to see somebody perform three jobs for the same pay! As I was saying, this conference is important for Slovenia, and your presence is important, because to us it means a connection with the rest of the world. Our country still faces a few problems. Afer obtaining our independence twenty years ago and creating a new state, a new country, we have moved from a closed system to a more open system. We no longer have any borders, and yet I believe that we are still afraid of crossing borders. Another problem we face is that there are obviously quite a few areas that are still under the domain of the state, such as culture, art, science (science is my own area of work) and education, all of which are financed by the state that is responsible for culture, science and also taxes. In case I have not made myself clear enough in Slovenian, I will repeat what I’ve said in English: people here in Slovenia believe that it is right for the government to finance culture, sport, science and everything and yet they want to pay as liTle tax as possible, which doesn’t work. As a result, there is no private investment in culture, science and the like. CIMAM 2011 Annual Conference ‘Museums and the City’ 5 This afernoon you will be visiting several cultural institutions, which will be a good opportunity for you to see that Ljubljana is indeed a city of culture and is also apposite to the theme, the topic, of the conference, ‘Museums and the City’. You will also be visiting the new gallery, the new museum, which will be inaugurated shortly. I do hope you will like it or, let’s put it otherwise, you will have to like it! Thank you. CIMAM 2011 Annual Conference ‘Museums and the City’ 6 WELCOMING REMARKS Zdenka Badovinac, President of CIMAM, Director Moderna galerija, Ljubljana Dear colleagues, CIMAM members, Minister Žekš, Welcome. It is a great honour for me to be one of the hosts of this year’s CIMAM conference. My colleagues from Zagreb—Tihomir Milovac and Snježana Pintarić— and I are delighted that the annual conference is at last being held in our region. The theme of conference, ‘Museums and the City’, concerns not only the working conditions for museums in the host cities of Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Sarajevo; it also opens a debate about how the museum should function in the city of today, which has lost its traditional population and doesn’t know exactly who it belongs to. How can the museum escape the pressures of politics and economics? How can it enter into global dialogues as an equal partner and resist the various hegemonic positions of knowledge? How does the museum contribute to the polis as a space of commonality? At least one answer springs to mind right away: there is power in unity, in the unity of city residents who share similar urgencies. The topic ‘Museums and the City’ raises questions about how the museum communicates with its own local community and how it communicates within the global city. Working in the global city should mean not only the universalisation of museum work standards, but also the recognition of diferent kinds of institutional models that are beTer suited to the specific conditions they face. In areas where there are undernourished infrastructures and still unconstructed histories of the local tradition, it does not seem wise to invest more in extravagant buildings than you do in knowledge. In the former Yugoslavia, the years that followed the collapse of the common state and the ensuing wars meant more difcult working conditions for our museums, but this also compelled us to look for alternative and more creative ways to operate. In this efort, the synergies between diferent groups in the cities played a decisive role. This was true not only in the former Yugoslavia, but also in other countries where, afer the collapse of Communism, opportunities appeared for creating stronger international ties, whichwere followed—although not at the same speed—by the development of an art system and its infrastructure. In the Balkan region, in areas where there were no adequate museums, the artists themselves ofen took the initiative to fill the gap. In Sofia, for instance, Nedko Solakov and a group of artists and curators launched an entire platorm for contemporary art; in Bucharest, it was Dan and Lia Perjovschi; in Tirana, Edi Rama, a painter who became the mayor, had the entire city painted, so that it became, in its own way, a work of art. Recently, in Prishtina, the artist Erzen Shkololli became the director of the National Gallery. In Ljubljana and Zagreb, where there exists a significant tradition of art museums, the museums have forged ties with artists as well as with smaller, more fexible spaces, to create new platorms for contemporary art.