We are pleased to announce HEKLER's participation in theYouth Biennial in Belgrade, which will be held at several locations from July 29to September 5, 2021. This year's theme of the Youth Biennale is Common Language, so on this occasion we invite you to join us in three collective workshops ANTI-FEAR / PROTIV STRAHA, as well as in the exhibition that will result from this joint work.

ANTI-FEAR is one of the branches of the HEKLER Assembly which started last summer during the pandemic in Brooklyn. It was created as a participatory collective project, which considers and nurtures the potentials of fear as a transformative commons for creating a space of collective imagination. Feelings of vulnerability surrounding fear serve as a bulwark for each session, which then develops over two to three hours through collective experiments, hybrids of artistic, theoretical, and therapeutic modalities. Together we will practice and apply artistic organizational tools of care through poetry, listening, movement, drawing, reading, writing, performance, breathing exercises and meditation, which aim to untie repressive knots, making us feel empowered, imaginative, inspired for action. From session to session we build a sense of togetherness, solidarity and courage, examine the relationship between the individual and the collective and from a feminist perspective we problematize the value of body and work in capitalism.

The workshops will result in a collective multimedia archive of our polyphony, as well as an archive of the collaborative and collective methods used. It will include the video work and publication in the form of a workbook, as well as the animated film Sisterhood (Jelena Prljević), which we will exhibit in the library of the Footnote Centre, an artist run space in Belgrade. Artists who are in Serbia will host gathering and talks in the space.

The workshops will be held online via Zoom. The number of participants in individual workshops is limited to 30 for more intimate collective work. We hope many of you will be interested in participating in the entire program. Workshops are held in Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian with translation in English.

Workshop time:

Wednesday 4 August 17-20 h (CET)
Saturday 7 August 17-20h h (CET)
Tuesday 10 August 17-20 h (CET)

Duration of the exhibition at the Footnote Centre:
July 29th - September 5th, 2021
Strahinjića Bana 12 11000 Belgrade

Following collective work has been made possible with generosity, trust and fearlessness of Assembly participants, friends & conspirers: Ana Kondić, Andres Villarreal, Bojana Ranković, Bojana Videkanić, Ioannis Andronikis, Isidora Žarković, Jovana Đajić, Jelena Prljević, Katarina Živković, Miloš Bojović, Milica Grbić, Marina Ilić, Marija Marković, Margot Savin Vidović, Mary Willette & Emmett Willette, Nađa Pavlica, Nataša Prljević, Nechama Winston, Rachel Klipa, Sholeh Asgary, Sonja Blum, Sandra Davidović, Sonja Jo, Sepideh Tajali, Tane Laketić, Tamara Spalajković, and Yanique Norman.

Photo: Miloš Bojović

ABOUT THE YOUTH BIENNIAL

This year's Youth Biennial, an international exhibition of contemporary youth art, is presented to the Belgrade public for the first time, and is organized under the auspices of ULUS in the period from July 29 to September 5, 2021 at several locations in Belgrade (ULUS premises, Dom culture Student City, Kalemegdan Fortress, through public spaces).

Common Language, this year's theme of the event is the result of synergy of different concepts of everyone involved in this project (three separate curatorial approaches were created based on insight into the organizational structure and mission of the Youth Biennial compiled by young actors in the field of art during the preparatory period) after which they are united in a single form (Public Preparations II).

The exhibition communicates through the common signifier "we", and does not speak in the name of someone, but establishes a body that speaks a common language. Such language is a constellation of symbols, hashtags, neologisms, emojis, but it is not only that. It is also the communication system of the emerging revolutionary collective. It is a meeting place of a new generation that communicates in a different way, somewhat encrypted for the previous ones, through new rules, new challenges, new tendencies.

Curators Senka Latinović, Teodora Jeremić and Jovana Trifuljesko establish an overlap and find a system in which different but equal curatorial concepts are formed, reflecting the Youth Biennale as a place that meets the common needs of all involved in its creation, which includes not only production and performance of artistic works, but also the construction of discourse and the distribution of knowledge. Curatorial workshops and educational programs were organized within the entire event in cooperation with ULUS members and other cultural and artistic actors of the local contemporary scene.

In organizational terms, the Biennial is conceived as a platform for horizontal cooperation and exchange of new and established actors in the field of art, open to new participants and partnerships, providing for the possibility of continuous or occasional engagement.

Organizers

Sonja Blum is a neurologist and artist working across multiple media including video, installation, writing and performance, exploring space and touching points between intuition, memory, and social sciences. Sonja is from Sarajevo, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. IG: @sonjaform

Jovana Đajić is a worker in culture and education. She is a member of the Hekler collective. She lives and works in Belgrade and Užice, Serbia.

Milica Grbić (1994, Belgrade) is an architect with focus on the interior design and construction. Together with her colleagues Miloš Stojković and Petro Tošić, she participated in the competition for the conceptual solution for the expansion of the National Library depot. With the same team, she won the the competition prize for the conceptual design of the new central square of the city of Priboj. IG: @milicagrbic_

Nadežda Kirćanski (1992, Zrenjanin) is a visual artist whose practice engages a wide range of media including drawing, objects and site-sensitive spatial installations. One of the key focuses in her work is the collision of socio-political realities and the language of youth, which reveals repressed emotional, physical and intellectual work. IG: @kircansky

Jelena Prljević is an artist from Serbia whose practice explores the field of drawing, animation and installation. Her work suggests an understanding of fear and the healing process necessary to overcome both internal and external unrest. She is a co-founder of the HEKLER platform and collective. She lives in her village Ljubanje, Serbia. IG: @jprljevic

Nataša Prljević is an artist and cultural worker. Prljević studies and develops collaborative and collective artistic practices that intersect with feminist organizing, radical pedagogy, and transformative justice. Initiator of the HEKLER platform and collective. IG: @prljevic

Bojana Videkanić is an artist, curator and art historian born in Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has lived in Canada since 1995, where she came as a government-sponsored refugee. Through performance, video, text, and installation, it addresses displacement processes and identity issues in broader political, social, and cultural contexts, including various neoliberal capitalist projects and new forms of colonization. IG: @bojanavidekanic

HEKLER is a collaborative platform that unites artistic, pedagogical, and organizing methods in order to strengthen feminist spaces, radical imagination and international solidarity. We are a transnational collective of artists, cultural workers, and people who believe in the necessity of an alternative to supremacy, colonialism and capitalism. IG: @heklerke