SYMPOSIUM: The future of our collective past

24 August 2020

SYMPOSIUM
THE FUTURE OF OUR COLLECTIVE PAST
CLUB HDLU, AUGUST 29, 4 PM

* As part of the exhibition by Behzad Khosravi Noori – Professor Balthazar and a Monument to the Invisible Citizen, which you can see in the Bačva Gallery until September 6, 2020.

Speakers: Boris Buden, Nikica Gilić, Sanja Horvatinčić and Tvrtko Jakovina

The symposium forms part of the exhibition Professor Balthazar and a Monument to The Invisible Citizen by artist Behzad Khosravi Noori. Invited speakers took part in the research process and provided an important insight into local history. Most of their voices are present in the film A Monument to an Invisible Citizen but will also expand their individual research in the symposium.

What are the imaginable alternative futures for our collective past? What might the future reception of our perceptions of the collective past become? What methods of investigation or even interrogation can be used to destabilize the given narrative of the past?

The symposium The Future of our Collective Past addresses aligned forms of historiography within contemporary history in relation to the Non-aligned Movement, memory politics, and histories of the global South. It studies the means of cultural production within the dichotomy of the cold-war situation and beyond and through different historical perspectives, investigates the materiality of contemporary history and the multiplicity of interactions, connections, entanglements and micro-histories embedded in our near past.

Through the re-enactment of material history the symposium casts light on the necessity of artistic practice in relation to how art and artistic research praxis can excavate the image of contemporary history in the present and suggest a possible future for it. The image of our collective past demands reinvention in order to confirm the possibility of thinking about social transformation, emancipation and solidarity.

Schedule:

16:00-16:15 / Introduction (Behzad Khosravi Noori, Ana Kovačić and Lea Vene)

16:15-17:00 / Boris Buden: All what a culture can … is not enough (via Zoom)

17:00-17:45 / Tvrtko Jakovina: NAM (Non-aligned Movement): Yugoslav Heyday in the World’s Largest Political Association

17:45-18:00 / Break

18:00-18:45 / Sanja Horvatinčić: Monumental strategies of the invisible

18:45-19:30 / Nikica Gilić: Zagreb School and its authors in context

19:30-20:30 / Final remarks/comments/Q&A

SPEAKERS´ BIO AND ABSTRACTS