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Bojana Videkanić

University of Waterloo, Fine Arts, Faculty Member

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Bojana Videkanic is an art historian, curator and performance artist. She was born in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Videkanic is an Associate Professor of contemporary art and visual culture in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. Her research interests focus on 20th-century socialist art in the former Yugoslavia and its relationship to socio-political ideas. Her book Nonaligned Modernism: Socialist Postcolonial Aesthetic, 1945-1985 was published in 2020 by McGill-Queens University Press. Some of her other publications include: “Affect and Identity in the work of Tanja Ostojic,” "As a Body Remembers: Work of Vessna Perunovich,” "Yugoslav Socialist-realism: An Uncomfortable Relationship" for the Artmargins: Journal of East European and Latin American Art (2016), and "Americans in Belgrade: MOMA's 1956 Exhibition, Cold War and Artistic Diplomacy” (forthcoming). Most recently Videkanic has developed a large archival and curatorial project entitled Unsettled with the grant she received from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fund, Canada. She has curated festivals and shows such as 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival in Toronto (2014, 2016), This Could be the Place (2014, 2016, 2018), In-Between Long Distance Relationships (2006) for Toronto Photographic Workshop, Unsettled/Unsettling Doris McCarthy Gallery (2017). Videkanic presented her work at Nuit Blanche, Toronto, M:ST International Performance Art Festival, 7a11d International Performance Art Festival, Leona Drive Project, Toronto, Toronto Free Gallery, IMAFestival Novi Sad, Hemispherica, Montreal and IPA, Bristol, Hamilton Biennale.

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Books by Bojana Videkanić

The Long Durée of Yugoslav Socially Engaged Art and Its Continued Life in the Non-Aligned World

Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries, 2023

Non-Aligned Modernism

Decoloniality in Eastern Europe: A Lexicon of Reorientation First edition, 2023

Tanja Ostojić Mis(s)placed Women? 2009-2021

by Dejan Vasic, Bojana Videkanić, Tanja Ostojic, and Paula Chambers

Tanja Ostojić Mis(s)placed Women? 2009-2021, 2021

Contesting Settler Colonial Accounts: Temporality, Migration and Place-Making in Scarborough, Ontario

by Bojana Videkanić and patricia landolt

Unsettling Exhibition Catalogue

by Bojana Videkanić and Ranu Basu

Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto, Toronto ON, 2019

To unsettle means to disturb, unnerve, and upset, but could also mean to offer pause for thinking... more To unsettle means to disturb, unnerve, and upset, but could also mean to offer pause for thinking otherwise about an issue, or an idea. This catalogue seeks to explore and unsettle the site of Scarborough, (part of Toronto, ON Canada) offering subtle and not so subtle gestures of reversal, of questioning, of disturbance, inviting readers to pause and think about the space and place they occupy. The exhibition was a culmination of a longer project that artists participated in, involving The Guild Park and Gardens in Scarborough where the artists completed a number of site-specific interventions during the early summer 2017, and a followup exhibition at Doris McCarthy. This catalogue is a record of those events, while it also provides some historical and contemporary socio-political background to which the works responded.

Participating Artists: Lori Blondeau, Duorama (Ed Johnson & Paul Couillard) Basil AlZeri, Terrance Houle, Lisa Myers.

Writers: Elwood Jimmy, Ranu Basu, Shawn Micallef and Bojana Videkanic.

Nonaligned Modernism: Socialist Postcolonial Aesthetics in Yugoslavia, 1945–1985

McGill-Queens University Press, 2019

In less than half a century, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia successfully defeated F... more In less than half a century, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia successfully defeated Fascist occupation, fended off dominating pressures from the Eastern and Western blocs, built a modern society on the ashes of war, created its own form of socialism, and led the formation of the Nonaligned Movement. This country's principles and its continued battles, fought against all odds, provided the basis for dynamic and exceptional forms of art.

Drawing on archival materials, postcolonial theory, and Eastern European socialist studies, Nonaligned Modernism chronicles the emergence of late modernist artistic practices in Yugoslavia from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1980s. Situating Yugoslav modernism within postcolonial artistic movements of the twentieth century, Bojana Videkanic explores how cultural workers collaborated with others from the Global South to create alternative artistic and cultural networks that countered Western hegemony. Videkanic focuses primarily on art exhibitions along with examples of international cultural exchange to demonstrate that nonaligned art wove together politics and aesthetics, and indigenous, Western, and global influences.

An interdisciplinary book, Nonaligned Modernism highlights Yugoslavia's key role in the creation of a global modernist ethos and international postcolonial culture.

First and Last Emperor: Representations of the President, Bodies of the Youth

Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday Life in the Socialist Yugoslavia, 2010

Papers by Bojana Videkanić

"Tranzicija Tryptichs by Tamara Vukov" Exhibition Essay

OBORO Gallery , 2023

Tamara Vukov I n 1992, at the height of Western euphoria over the fall of East European socialist... more Tamara Vukov I n 1992, at the height of Western euphoria over the fall of East European socialist states, Aijaz Ahmad wrote that Mikhail Gorbachev's belief in the Soviet Union's painless reintegration into common European space through the unilateral dissolving of existing socialist organization of production was "unmindful of the obvious fact that the [Soviet's] global position rested directly on that international social organization." 1 It quickly became apparent that socialism, with its economic, political, and social structures, was the system that kept late 20th century capitalism at bay. With socialism's passing, the Eastern European region was thrown into a new era of neoliberal capitalism, euphemistically termed 'transition. ' In the West's parlance the word signalled a transition from socialism to capitalism, promising a brighter, more prosperous future within the framework of a new democratic, capitalist Eastern Europe. Of course, as is the case with most neoliberal euphemisms, the actual process of transition was the exact opposite, bringing brutal devastation, not just to economy but to all spheres of life. Subordinated, defeated, and 'brought to heel,' the former socialist countries were easy pickings for various local thugs-turnedoligarchs, international corporations, NGOs, political manipulators, spokespersons,

The Long Durée of Yugoslav Socially Engaged Art and Its Continued Life in the Non-Aligned World

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Jan 15, 2023

Thick Descriptions: Socialist Yugoslavia in Construction

by Bojana Videkanić and Vladimir Kulić

Nonaligned Modernism

Nonaligned Modernism, 2020

Vessna Perunovich : Points Frontaliers

Balkanization and Global Politics: Remaking Cities and Architecture. By Nikolina Bobic. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2019. xvi, 211 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Maps. $112.00, hard bound

Slavic Review

Contesting Settler Colonial Accounts: Temporality, Migration and Place-Making in Scarborough, Ontario

Studies in Social Justice, 2021

The paper considers how the logic of settler colonialism, the active and ongoing dispossession of... more The paper considers how the logic of settler colonialism, the active and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples, shapes scholarship on migration, race and citizenship in Canada. It draws on the insights of settler colonial theory and critiques of methodological nationalism to do so. The concept of differential inclusion and assemblages methodology are proposed as a way to understand the relationship between Indigeneity and migration in a settler colonial context. The paper develops this conceptual proposal through an analysis of a single place over time: Scarborough, Ontario. Authors present portraits of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada to understand how migration and Indigenous sovereignty are narrated and regulated in convergent and divergent ways. Together, the portraits examine historical stories, media discourses, photography and map archives, fieldwork and interviews connected to Scarborough. They reveal how the differential inclusion of migrant, racialized and Indigenous peo...

Yugoslav Postwar Art and Socialist Realism: An Uncomfortable Relationship

ARTMargins, 2016

This text examines the first official exhibition of the Yugoslav Association of Fine Artists, and... more This text examines the first official exhibition of the Yugoslav Association of Fine Artists, and the theoretical, socio-political, and institutional contexts of the Socialist Realist period in Yugoslav art (spanning roughly the years between1945 and 1954). Post-war artistic and cultural environment, the first exhibition, and critical aesthetic debates around Socialist Realism exemplify Yugoslavia's struggle to make sense of, and implement, Socialist Realism as an official artistic, cultural, and political category. Its development paralleled the state's own wrestling with notions of socialist governance and its proper implementation. Difficulties with Socialist Realist aesthetic and the ensuing paradoxes in its adaptation in Yugoslav art are at the core of the dialogs, theoretical discourses, and critical responses to the first exhibition. My analysis uses accounts and reviews of the exhibition, as well as official writings and arguments presented by the state and cultural ...

Nonaligned Modernism: Yugoslav Culture, Nonaligned Cultural Diplomacy, and Transnational Solidarity

This article examines aspects of the history of socialist Yugoslavia’s contribution to creating a... more This article examines aspects of the history of socialist Yugoslavia’s contribution to creating a transnational Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) culture. It does so by analyzing cultural diplomacy on the Yugoslav cultural and political scene between the 1950s and 1980s. The cultural diplomacy of Yugoslavia and its nonaligned partners is seen as a form of political agency, paralleling and supplementing larger activities of forming economic and political cooperation in the Global South. Yugoslavia’s role in building NAM culture was instrumental in nurturing nascent transnationalism, which was born out of anti-colonial movements following World War II. Cultural events, bilateral agreements, and cultural institutions were used to complement Yugoslav participation in an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist struggle; they promoted NAM ideals and sought to create transcultural networks that would counter Western cultural hegemony. Such examples of solidarity were based in a modernist cultural ethos, b...

7A 11D Festival of Performance Art 2016 Toronto

Postidentity And The Aesthetics Of Affect In The Work Of Tanja Ostojić

Non-Aligned Modernism: Yugoslavian Art and Culture from 1945-1990

This thesis seeks to understand and recover contemporary social, political and aesthetic value fr... more This thesis seeks to understand and recover contemporary social, political and aesthetic value from the often dismissed or marginalized history of Yugoslavian modernism. The significance and complexity of the Yugoslavian experiment with modernism has often passed unrecognized. It has been dismissed as derivative and marginal or else eclipsed and tainted by the collapse of the Yugoslavian state in the early 1990s. To understand Yugoslavian modernism’s particularity we must recognize that socialist Yugoslavia existed as an in-between political power that negotiated the extremes of the Cold War by building a version of socialism independent from the Soviet model. Its art and culture were equally idiosyncratic. Although Yugoslavian cultural and political elites accepted modernism as a national cultural expression, the way that modernism developed did not strictly follow Western models. As a mixture of various aesthetic, philosophical, and political notions, Yugoslavian modernism can onl...

Vessna Perunovich : Border Stitching

The Long Durée of Yugoslav Socially Engaged Art and Its Continued Life in the Non-Aligned World

Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries, 2023

Non-Aligned Modernism

Decoloniality in Eastern Europe: A Lexicon of Reorientation First edition, 2023

Tanja Ostojić Mis(s)placed Women? 2009-2021

by Dejan Vasic, Bojana Videkanić, Tanja Ostojic, and Paula Chambers

Tanja Ostojić Mis(s)placed Women? 2009-2021, 2021

Contesting Settler Colonial Accounts: Temporality, Migration and Place-Making in Scarborough, Ontario

by Bojana Videkanić and patricia landolt

Unsettling Exhibition Catalogue

by Bojana Videkanić and Ranu Basu

Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto, Toronto ON, 2019

To unsettle means to disturb, unnerve, and upset, but could also mean to offer pause for thinking... more To unsettle means to disturb, unnerve, and upset, but could also mean to offer pause for thinking otherwise about an issue, or an idea. This catalogue seeks to explore and unsettle the site of Scarborough, (part of Toronto, ON Canada) offering subtle and not so subtle gestures of reversal, of questioning, of disturbance, inviting readers to pause and think about the space and place they occupy. The exhibition was a culmination of a longer project that artists participated in, involving The Guild Park and Gardens in Scarborough where the artists completed a number of site-specific interventions during the early summer 2017, and a followup exhibition at Doris McCarthy. This catalogue is a record of those events, while it also provides some historical and contemporary socio-political background to which the works responded.

Participating Artists: Lori Blondeau, Duorama (Ed Johnson & Paul Couillard) Basil AlZeri, Terrance Houle, Lisa Myers.

Writers: Elwood Jimmy, Ranu Basu, Shawn Micallef and Bojana Videkanic.

Nonaligned Modernism: Socialist Postcolonial Aesthetics in Yugoslavia, 1945–1985

McGill-Queens University Press, 2019

In less than half a century, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia successfully defeated F... more In less than half a century, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia successfully defeated Fascist occupation, fended off dominating pressures from the Eastern and Western blocs, built a modern society on the ashes of war, created its own form of socialism, and led the formation of the Nonaligned Movement. This country's principles and its continued battles, fought against all odds, provided the basis for dynamic and exceptional forms of art.

Drawing on archival materials, postcolonial theory, and Eastern European socialist studies, Nonaligned Modernism chronicles the emergence of late modernist artistic practices in Yugoslavia from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1980s. Situating Yugoslav modernism within postcolonial artistic movements of the twentieth century, Bojana Videkanic explores how cultural workers collaborated with others from the Global South to create alternative artistic and cultural networks that countered Western hegemony. Videkanic focuses primarily on art exhibitions along with examples of international cultural exchange to demonstrate that nonaligned art wove together politics and aesthetics, and indigenous, Western, and global influences.

An interdisciplinary book, Nonaligned Modernism highlights Yugoslavia's key role in the creation of a global modernist ethos and international postcolonial culture.

First and Last Emperor: Representations of the President, Bodies of the Youth

Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday Life in the Socialist Yugoslavia, 2010

"Tranzicija Tryptichs by Tamara Vukov" Exhibition Essay

OBORO Gallery , 2023

Tamara Vukov I n 1992, at the height of Western euphoria over the fall of East European socialist... more Tamara Vukov I n 1992, at the height of Western euphoria over the fall of East European socialist states, Aijaz Ahmad wrote that Mikhail Gorbachev's belief in the Soviet Union's painless reintegration into common European space through the unilateral dissolving of existing socialist organization of production was "unmindful of the obvious fact that the [Soviet's] global position rested directly on that international social organization." 1 It quickly became apparent that socialism, with its economic, political, and social structures, was the system that kept late 20th century capitalism at bay. With socialism's passing, the Eastern European region was thrown into a new era of neoliberal capitalism, euphemistically termed 'transition. ' In the West's parlance the word signalled a transition from socialism to capitalism, promising a brighter, more prosperous future within the framework of a new democratic, capitalist Eastern Europe. Of course, as is the case with most neoliberal euphemisms, the actual process of transition was the exact opposite, bringing brutal devastation, not just to economy but to all spheres of life. Subordinated, defeated, and 'brought to heel,' the former socialist countries were easy pickings for various local thugs-turnedoligarchs, international corporations, NGOs, political manipulators, spokespersons,

The Long Durée of Yugoslav Socially Engaged Art and Its Continued Life in the Non-Aligned World

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Jan 15, 2023

Thick Descriptions: Socialist Yugoslavia in Construction

by Bojana Videkanić and Vladimir Kulić

Nonaligned Modernism

Nonaligned Modernism, 2020

Vessna Perunovich : Points Frontaliers

Balkanization and Global Politics: Remaking Cities and Architecture. By Nikolina Bobic. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2019. xvi, 211 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Maps. $112.00, hard bound

Slavic Review

Contesting Settler Colonial Accounts: Temporality, Migration and Place-Making in Scarborough, Ontario

Studies in Social Justice, 2021

The paper considers how the logic of settler colonialism, the active and ongoing dispossession of... more The paper considers how the logic of settler colonialism, the active and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples, shapes scholarship on migration, race and citizenship in Canada. It draws on the insights of settler colonial theory and critiques of methodological nationalism to do so. The concept of differential inclusion and assemblages methodology are proposed as a way to understand the relationship between Indigeneity and migration in a settler colonial context. The paper develops this conceptual proposal through an analysis of a single place over time: Scarborough, Ontario. Authors present portraits of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada to understand how migration and Indigenous sovereignty are narrated and regulated in convergent and divergent ways. Together, the portraits examine historical stories, media discourses, photography and map archives, fieldwork and interviews connected to Scarborough. They reveal how the differential inclusion of migrant, racialized and Indigenous peo...

Yugoslav Postwar Art and Socialist Realism: An Uncomfortable Relationship

ARTMargins, 2016

This text examines the first official exhibition of the Yugoslav Association of Fine Artists, and... more This text examines the first official exhibition of the Yugoslav Association of Fine Artists, and the theoretical, socio-political, and institutional contexts of the Socialist Realist period in Yugoslav art (spanning roughly the years between1945 and 1954). Post-war artistic and cultural environment, the first exhibition, and critical aesthetic debates around Socialist Realism exemplify Yugoslavia's struggle to make sense of, and implement, Socialist Realism as an official artistic, cultural, and political category. Its development paralleled the state's own wrestling with notions of socialist governance and its proper implementation. Difficulties with Socialist Realist aesthetic and the ensuing paradoxes in its adaptation in Yugoslav art are at the core of the dialogs, theoretical discourses, and critical responses to the first exhibition. My analysis uses accounts and reviews of the exhibition, as well as official writings and arguments presented by the state and cultural ...

Nonaligned Modernism: Yugoslav Culture, Nonaligned Cultural Diplomacy, and Transnational Solidarity

This article examines aspects of the history of socialist Yugoslavia’s contribution to creating a... more This article examines aspects of the history of socialist Yugoslavia’s contribution to creating a transnational Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) culture. It does so by analyzing cultural diplomacy on the Yugoslav cultural and political scene between the 1950s and 1980s. The cultural diplomacy of Yugoslavia and its nonaligned partners is seen as a form of political agency, paralleling and supplementing larger activities of forming economic and political cooperation in the Global South. Yugoslavia’s role in building NAM culture was instrumental in nurturing nascent transnationalism, which was born out of anti-colonial movements following World War II. Cultural events, bilateral agreements, and cultural institutions were used to complement Yugoslav participation in an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist struggle; they promoted NAM ideals and sought to create transcultural networks that would counter Western cultural hegemony. Such examples of solidarity were based in a modernist cultural ethos, b...

7A 11D Festival of Performance Art 2016 Toronto

Postidentity And The Aesthetics Of Affect In The Work Of Tanja Ostojić

Non-Aligned Modernism: Yugoslavian Art and Culture from 1945-1990

This thesis seeks to understand and recover contemporary social, political and aesthetic value fr... more This thesis seeks to understand and recover contemporary social, political and aesthetic value from the often dismissed or marginalized history of Yugoslavian modernism. The significance and complexity of the Yugoslavian experiment with modernism has often passed unrecognized. It has been dismissed as derivative and marginal or else eclipsed and tainted by the collapse of the Yugoslavian state in the early 1990s. To understand Yugoslavian modernism’s particularity we must recognize that socialist Yugoslavia existed as an in-between political power that negotiated the extremes of the Cold War by building a version of socialism independent from the Soviet model. Its art and culture were equally idiosyncratic. Although Yugoslavian cultural and political elites accepted modernism as a national cultural expression, the way that modernism developed did not strictly follow Western models. As a mixture of various aesthetic, philosophical, and political notions, Yugoslavian modernism can onl...

Vessna Perunovich : Border Stitching

Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojic and feminism in transition

Sociologija, 2018

The Tribes of New Fascism

kulturpunkt.hr, 2021

Tribes of Europa, a new Netflix series treats the Petrova Gora Monument in Croatia as a playgroun... more

Plemena novog fašizma

kulturpunkt.hr, 2021

U seriji Plemena Europe, čiji je politički podtekst po mnogočemu problematičan, spomenik na Petro... more

Contesting Settler Colonial Accounts: Temporality, Migration and Place-Making in Scarborough, Ontario

Studies in Social Justice, 2020

The paper considers how the logic of settler colonialism, the active and ongoing dispossession of... more The paper considers how the logic of settler colonialism, the active and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples, shapes scholarship on migration, race and citizenship in Canada. It draws on the insights of settler colonial theory and critiques of methodological nationalism to do so. The concept of differential inclusion and assemblages methodology are proposed as a way to understand the relationship between Indigeneity and migration in a settler colonial context. The paper develops this conceptual proposal through an analysis of a single place over time: Scarborough, Ontario. Authors present portraits of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada to understand how migration and Indigenous sovereignty are narrated and regulated in convergent and divergent ways. Together, the portraits examine historical stories, media discourses, photography and map archives, fieldwork and interviews connected to Scarborough. They reveal how the differential inclusion of migrant, racialized and Indigenous peoples operates through processes of invisibilization and

Thinking and doing in between

by Bojana Videkanić, Tamara Vukov, and sonja zlatanova

Disorder of Things, 2020

A visual essay on Yugosplaining co-authored with Žana Kozomora, Tamara Vukov, Saša Rajšić, Una di... more

Bojana Videkanic "LEXICON OF TANJAS OSTOJIĆ AND FEMINISM IN TRANSITION" "Leksikon Tanje Ostojić i feminizam u tranziciji"

The text examines artist Tanja Ostojic's interdisciplinary research project entitled Lexicon of T... more The text examines artist Tanja Ostojic's interdisciplinary research project entitled Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojić, in the light of feminist materialist theories, participatory art, and socio-political analysis of the former Yugoslav region. Tanja Ostojić decided to frame her project around the lives of women who share her first and last name. Ostojić's name-sisters became her collaborators as the work turned into a large-scale, long-term project involving 33 women and their personal histories. The women all share a mutual connection to the Yugoslav region that has directly or indirectly shaped their lives through its turbulent recent history. Artist's intent was to use the stories encountered by collaborating with her name-sisters as a foil to uncover and highlight the connecting personal narratives following Yugoslav wars of succession in the 1990s and in doing so point to the detrimental legacies of war and transition on women's lives. In this article, author's main argument borrows from Karen Barad's discursive-material ontology to point out that Lexicon activates a form of material feminism which functions intra-actively, in other words, in both its form and content the work recognizes that women's lives are continuously constituted and reconstituted through multiple linguistic and material formations, or through complex relationships between humans, non-humans, and various discursive and material contexts. In using materialist feminist analysis, the author argues that Lexicon gives primacy to women's agency and proposes a sustained, growing forms of resistance to the forms of post-socialist exploitation.

How Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right- Still Missing the Point, Reinscribing Stereotypes about Eastern Europe (2016)

by Jasmina Tumbas, Bojana Videkanić, and Irina Ceric

Balkanist

Queer and Feminist Yugoslav Diaspora Symposium: University at Buffalo, April 24-27

by Jasmina Tumbas, Dijana Jelača, Bojana Videkanić, and Ana Grujić

Queer and Feminist Yugoslav Diaspora Symposium:, 2023

Please join us for a 4-day hybrid symposium (partially on zoom, partially in-person) from Monday ... more

Nonaligned Modernism Book Interview

New Books Network, 2022

Jill Massino interviews Bojana Videkanic on her book Nonaligned Modernism for the New Books Netwo... more

I am Jugoslovenka, Remembering Yugoslavia Podcast

by Jasmina Tumbas, Bojana Videkanić, and Tanja Ostojic

Remembering Yugoslavia, 2022

Generations of Yugoslav women fought for Yugoslavia and then against the patriarchy in it. Many o... more Generations of Yugoslav women fought for Yugoslavia and then against the patriarchy in it. Many of them were artists, whose primary medium for their work were their own bodies. Art historian Jasmina Tumbas took the image of Jugoslovenka (Yugoslav Woman) from Lepa Brena’s eponymous song to tell the story of women’s emancipation within and through art in her new book, I Am Jugoslovenka! Feminist Performance Politics During and After Yugoslav Socialism.

With Jasmina Cibic, Tanja Ostojić, Jasmina Tumbas, and Bojana Videkanić. Featuring “Jugoslovenka” cover by Nejra and Almir Kalajlić.

Panel Discussion for Althea Thauberger's "Preuzmimo Bencic"

Panel discussion around Althea Thauberger's new work "Preuzmimo Bencic" at Susan Hobbs Gallery.

The Official and the Unofficial Street: Socialist Visual Practices as Countercurrents

While totalitarian regimes often keep visual representation tightly controlled there are always m... more While totalitarian regimes often keep visual representation tightly controlled there are always moments at which that control fails. Such failures of the state show fissures in the social fabric pointing towards the ways in which oppressive societies are in a sense incapable of fully subsuming citizenry into the phantasmagoria of their politics. My paper will address one such instance which shows such a failure of the political system in the former socialist Yugoslavia. I will closely analyze a short documentary by a dissident Yugoslavian film director Dusan Makavejev produced in 1962. The seven minute documentary entitled Parada or Parade was commissioned by the state-owned film company for the occasion of the celebrations of May Day in Belgrade (the capital of former Yugoslavia,) and president Tito`s visit.

While seemingly innocent this film offers a sharp critique of the socialist system by focusing its visual narrative on the ephemeral, transitory, yet crucial moments of everyday life. Instead of concentrating his camera eye on the grand narratives of the socialist state-building, brotherhood and unity, and the beautiful ideal body of the people, Makavejev shows us anonymous and often invisible masses on the streets. The multitudes that made up the fabric of the socialist society and whose actions were imperfect were never shown in the official glossy images of various public parades. Minutes before Tito`s arrival the director shows a farmer pulling a pig across the street to be slaughtered, and another one carrying a sheep on his shoulders. People walking around, picking their noses, doing the most mundane things in preparation for the all-important May Day is not what the state wanted to see. Makavejev’s film was bunkered at the time. Imperfections of the citizenry and their behaviors which did not conform to the needs and future plans of the state is what disturbed those in power. Parada as well as other similar dissident works of art shows the socialist state in a different light. It show the socialist city and its form of modernity as a space of multiplicity of voices and lives which intersected, collided, opposed, and mixed with the official state rhetoric. Unlike usual depictions of the totalitarian societies I am arguing for a more nuanced view of this period which shows that the citizenry was often involved in acts of disobedience, many of which were barely noticeable yet very powerful. I call these oppositional currents countercurrents borrowing from de Certeau and his theory of the city as text and citizens as writing that text.

The Ukrainian Diaspora Women Artists, 1908-2015, catalogue review

Woman's Art Journal , 2016

“Gender, Sexuality and Museums: A Review"

Journal of Curatorial Studies

Bojana Videkanic, "Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts and Non aligned Diplomacy"

This paper examines aspects of the history of Non-aligned culture in the socialist Yugoslavia by ... more This paper examines aspects of the history of Non-aligned culture in the socialist Yugoslavia by studying its role in cultural diplomacy on Yugoslav cultural and political scene between 1950s and 1980s. More specifically, it does this by looking at the history of The Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts. Established, this large international show is the oldest of its kind in the world. During the socialist era, one of the main mandates of the biennale was to promote the work of the artists who were coming from the Non-aligned countries, and with it promote Yugoslav participation in anti-colonial, anti-capitalist struggle. Along with other large international exhibitions organized in Yugoslavia at the time, the Biennale showcased and legitimized modernist ethos as an accepted political, social, and cultural form solidifying country’s transition from a hardline Soviet-style state, to a more open, humanist-socialist one. In 1955 when the Biennale started during Tito’s trip to Bandung Conference, Yugoslav elites searched for alternative (anti-Stalinist) political models that were found in idiosyncratic social forms: ideas of Non-align movement; theories of self-management; and socialist modernism in its cultural forms. The Ljubljana Biennale is one among many examples of Yugoslav attempts at building political agency and international cooperation through promotion of Non-aligned ideals. Buttressing these large international artistic gatherings were numerous international cultural cooperation agreements between Yugoslavia and other Non-aligned countries which further solidified Yugoslav commitment to emancipatory politics, to culture as a way to maintain Cold War neutrality, and flexing diplomatic and political muscles on the post-WWII international scene.

TANJA OSTOJIĆ: Mis(s)placed Women? 2009-2022 A Collaborative Art Project ENGL

by Tanja Ostojic, Tan Tan, Bojana Videkanić, Azra Ismen, Arzu Yayintas, and Azad Colemêrg

TANJA OSTOJIĆ Mis(s)placed Women? 2009-2022 A Collaborative Art Project, 2022

This publication, edited by Tanja Ostojić, is a reader based on “Mis(s)placed Women?" (2009-2022)... more This publication, edited by Tanja Ostojić, is a reader based on “Mis(s)placed Women?" (2009-2022), a collaborative art project by Tanja Ostojić, published in English and Turkish to accompany the exhibition at Depo Istanbul, September 15–October 30, 2022. Due to constraints of space, only a selection of the artworks and texts have been included. First published in 2022 by Depo Istanbul and Anadolu Kültür

About: "Mis(s)placed Women?", is a collaborative, multi-layered art project that I have been developing since 2009, consisting of solo and group performances, delegated performances,
performance art workshops, and an online platform that includes contributions by over 170 individuals from six continents. Many of them are artists who identify as women
from diverse backgrounds.

The project’s participants embody and enact some of everyday-life’s activities that thematise the displacement known to migrants, refugees, and itinerant artists traveling the world
to earn their living. The performances deal with migration issues, gender equality, climate change, feminism, queerness, gentrification, inclusion, accessibility, power relations, and vulnerability, particularly as they relate to women and nonbinary people, an aspect that figured prominently in
the past almost three decades of my artistic practice. While investigating privilege by distinguishing between working mobility, forced or desired migration, and how arbitrary laws
apply to moving bodies, Mis(s)placed Women? also explores diverse public spaces and the invisibility of certain groups within them, using feminist emancipatory methodologies and
artistic community-building practices.

I have conducted numerous workshops across the world where the participants are selected by open call. Individual and group artworks and interventions are developed and produced in
this frame. We highly value collaboration within the group, the forming of a community, the further communication with the random audiences that we meet on the streets and with the targeted audiences at presentations, exhibitions, and discussions. Mis(s)placed Women? workshops apply the principles of Art as Social Practice and explore a variety of public spaces and the
possibilities for temporary interventions in them, empowering participants via a kind of master-class block seminar—a laboratory outside of official educational institution, so to say—and developing new collective and individual works.

A sixty-eight minute documentary is a new production that follows the collective and individual performances and reflections of the participants in the “Mis(s)placed Women?” workshop over three days in three different neighbourhoods of Istanbul, and showcases the final presentation andvdiscussion at the Beykoz Kundura Cinema (September 2021). Massive police presence and oppression was the main flavour of working in the public spaces of Istanbul, although the
response from the public was tremendous and appreciative, and the participants were delightfully supportive of each other and highly motivated.

Arzu Yayıntaş and myself have chosen some of the most relevant contributions from the rich project archive for the “Mis(s)placed Women?” exhibition, displayed at Depo as a two-floor multimedia installation consisting of photos, videos, and drawings of performances, along with signs, textile works, artefacts, performance scores, stories, and maps collected globally in the thirteen years of the project’s development. Depo’s distinguished political profile and engagement with civil society makes it an ideal venue to host this socially engaged project interested in interweaving artistic and activist practices.

A part of the exhibition space has been arranged as a gathering place that invites the visitor to be an explorer and participant rather than just a viewer, while the six performance scores are
there to be readapted and tried out. As part of the exhibition, an international community gathering of “Mis(s)placed Women?” participants and a public programme consisting of guided tours, discussions, and performances will take place September 20-22, 2022 at Depo and across the city of Istanbul.

TANJA OSTOJIĆ: Mis(s)placed Women? 2009-2022 Katılımcı Bir Sanat Projesi TR

by Tanja Ostojic, Bojana Videkanić, and Persefoni Myrtsou

TANJA OSTOJIĆ: Mis(s)placed Women? 2009-2022 Katılımcı Bir Sanat Projesi, 2022

Editör: Tanja Ostojić. Bu yayın, Tanja Ostojić’in Mis(s)placed Women? (2009-2022) isimli katılı... more Editör: Tanja Ostojić. Bu yayın, Tanja Ostojić’in Mis(s)placed Women? (2009-2022) isimli katılımcı sanat projesinin 15 Eylül–30 Ekim 2022 tarihleri arasında Depo’da yer alan sergisine eşlik etmek üzere İngilizce ve Türkçe yayımlanmıştır. Bu yayın için projedeki eser ve metinler arasından bir seçki yapılmıştır. Depo Istanbul & Anadolu Kültür.
Mis(s)placed Women? 2009’dan beri geliştirmekte olduğum,
solo ve grup performanslar, delege edilmiş performanslar,
performans sanatı atölyeleri ve altı farklı kıtadan, farklı
kökenlere sahip ve büyük çoğunluğu kadın olan 170 kişinin
katkılarını içeren çevrimiçi bir platformdan oluşan çok
katmanlı bir sanat projesi.
Projenin katılımcıları, gündelik yaşam pratiklerini göçmenler,
mülteciler ve geçinmek için seyahat eden göçebe sanatçıların
aşina olduğu yerinden edilme kavramı üzerinden kamusal
alanda yeniden canlandırıp dönüştürüyor. Performanslar; göç,
toplumsal cinsiyet eşitliği, iklim değişikliği, feminizm, queerlik,
mutenalaştırma, kapsayıcılık, erişilebilirlik, güç ilişkileri ve
kırılganlık gibi sanatsal pratiğimin son otuz senesinde öne çıkan
meseleleri, özellikle kadın ve non-binary kişilerin deneyimleri
bağlamında ele alıyor. Mis(s)placed Women? işgücünün
dolaşımını, zorunlu ve seçilmiş göçü birbirinden ayırarak ve
keyfi göç yasalarının etkilerini araştırarak ayrıcalığı irdeliyor.
Proje ayrıca özgürleştirici feminist metodolojiler ve sanatsal
komünite kurma pratiklerini kullanarak çeşitli kamusal
alanları ve bu alanlardaki belirli grupların görünmezliğini
araştırıyor.
Dünyanın farklı yerlerinde, katılımcıların açık çağrı ile
seçildiği çok sayıda atölye yürüttüm. Kişisel ve kolektif eserler
ve müdahaleler bu bağlamda geliştirildi ve üretildi. Grup
içinde işbirliğine, bir komünite oluşturmaya, sokaklarda
karşılaştığımız rastgele izleyicilerle, ve sunum, sergi ve
tartışmaların hedef kitlesiyle iletişim kurmaya fazlasıyla önem
veriyoruz.

Mi(s)placed Women? atölyeleri, Sosyal Pratik Olarak Sanat (Art
as Social Practice) ilkelerini kullanıyor ve hem çeşitli kamusal
alanları ve buralarda yapılabilecek geçici müdahaleleri
araştırıyor, hem de katılımcıları eğitim kurumları dışında bir
laboratuvar gibi sunduğu uzmanlık semineri ile güçlendiriyor...

Tanja Ostojić: Mis(s)placed Women?, 2009-2021, Collaborative art project / Kolaborativni umetnički projekat SRB / ENGL

by Tanja Ostojic, Dagmara Bilon, Bojana Videkanić, Katarina Kostandinović, Ines Borovac, Paula Chambers, and Dejan Vasic

Tanja Ostojić: Mis(s)placed Women?, 2009-2021, Collaborative art project / Kolaborativni umetnički projekat , 2021

Mis(s)placed Women? is a collaborative art project which develops in multiple layers since 2009, ... more Mis(s)placed Women? is a collaborative art project which develops
in multiple layers since 2009, consisting of performances, delegated performances, performance art workshops and an online platform, including contributions by over 170 individuals from six continents. Many of them are artists, mainly identifying themselves as women from diverse backgrounds.Within this project, we embody and enact some of everyday-life’s activities that thematise displacement, known to migrants, refugees, and the itinerant artists traveling the world to earn their living. Those performances deal with migration issues, gender democracy, feminism, gentrification, inclusion, power relations and vulnerability, particularly concerning the female and transgender bodies, an aspect that figured prominently in the past almost three decades of my art practice. With this project, on one side, we are investigating privilege by making a distinction between working mobility, forced or desired migration, and how arbitrary laws may apply, and on the other side,
exploring diverse public spaces and the invisibility of certain groups within them. In the frame of this project, in which I apply feminist emancipatory methodologies of artistic and community practices, I conducted numerous workshops globally where the participants are selected by open call. Individual and group artworks and interventions are developed and produced in this frame. The development of collaboration within the group and forming of a community are very precious processes as well as the further communication with a wide audience that we meet on the streets, and targeted audiences in the venues where presentations, exhibitions and discussions take place.

Definite Term Lecturer (3 Years) in Digital Art / New Media The Department of Fine Arts in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo invites applications for a 3-Year Definite Term Lecturer position in Digital Art / New Media beginning

The Department is looking for a candidate who possesses a fulsome understanding of emergent digit... more The Department is looking for a candidate who possesses a fulsome understanding of emergent digital art and new media technologies, and the conceptual and practical application of these tools within a studio arts context. The ideal candidate will bring an expertise that indicates the advancement of digital art in one or more of the following areas: creative coding, generative art, artificial intelligence, applied gaming technologies, digital sculpture including digital fabrication technologies, AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality), robotics, net art, and/or blockchain technologies. The committee is open to considering emergent digital art practices which are not specifically listed. We encourage candidates to consider how their work may build collaborative research and teaching opportunities across campus and within the digital technologies sector.