interview

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KP: As Director of the Centre for Cultural Decontamination (hereafter, CZKD) – one of the few cultural platforms in Serbia that continuously deal with the development of civil society, promotion of interdisciplinary cultural production, the politics of memory, as well as the critique of the existing political-economic reality of Serbia – how do you perceive the role of such a platform within the actual Serbian cultural politics? Has this role changed compared to the time when CZKD was founded and, if yes, in what way?

BP: Your question consists of several “fields of meaning” or “lines of activities”. Yet if they were to be taken apart and divided by “sector” or “project” – in other words, if we were to deal with them separately, which is the prevailing practice – then we would actually be avoiding giving a substantial and responsible answer to them. In CZKD, we deal with the entirety of the activities and complex systemic thinking. This model is increasingly lacking or is completely gone; thus we are surrounded with the “implementation” of a number of projects without clear concepts or platforms, which is weakening institutions as well as public spaces and the idea of the common good.

The nations inhabiting this “territory” and this “region” (all euphemisms for a term that is currently unwanted* [*Pavićević is referring to Yugoslavia, i.e., to the space that used to be Yugoslavia. Because the word “Yugoslavia” is burdened with such heavy connotations, we use all these euphemisms, such as “territory”, “region”, “South-East Europe” or “Western Balkans” — all this is to avoid the usage of even “ex-Yu”. Writer’s Note]) had a twentieth-century project, which was Yugoslavia. With the breakdown of that project – which was understandably a cultural project as well – those civilians who have remained have been striving to articulate themselves between the newly founded states and the political parties that have usurped and expropriated territories including the public space and political activities and have hence jeopardised everything they nominally stood for (e.g., while we are doing this interview, news reports are coming in about the merger of the Serbian Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Telecommunications. This merger is happening simply because they are both “owned” by the same political party).

CZKD was born as a squat amid anti-war politics: a critical opinion “on what is happening” followed by a critical reflection on “what has happened”. It was in full operation throughout all the years of the so-called “crisis” – which was, in fact, wartime. It was naming reality; it was pointing out processes as they were unfolding; it was reactive towards the processes of destruction and dismantling. We were fighting for production, for constitutive goals in the field of contemporary art, public dialogue and the production of questioning.

Clearly, no problem can be either resolved or defined if it doesn’t comprise an attitude towards the past, or if it doesn’t include the fates and biographies of people. But here, the past is recycled by means of the utilitarian interests of governing structures. Dealing with these issues is not merely the question of will but one of necessity: each problem that we are facing is opening questions of locked closets full of corpses, so to speak, as well as the question of protecting of one’s own interests against the accumulated effects of a single war, which at the same time comprised the transition of property. In that sense, confronting the past is a central economic issue: we cannot escape the monopoly of usurpers if we don’t deal with the context and complexes within the reasons for such a deep and thorough collapse. And we live in the heart of this collapse. Identifying the present is hardly possible without grasping the past. In turn, being absent from the present is the most obscure act of local political elites, which produces this abundance of lethal kitsch around us; the infrastructural, systemic kitsch, which is the avenue once again to future violence, violence against “others”, against nature, environment and the future as such.

CZKD strove throughout the years to think and act in clusters, without making the dangerous separation of aesthetics from politics, cultural and artistic acts from politics; to be responsible without replying: “We are just doing our job.” or “I was merely following orders.” Hence, it is clear that its position has been on the margins as margins always eventually become central roads – we witness that every time we realise that something that had been impossible has become a trend overnight right before our eyes. But if this trend doesn’t contain an attitude towards the past, it could open yet another wound for all the victims, displaced or dead, thus becoming the source of yet another transition that leads to a state of permanent insecurity for the majority of the population. This is how aesthetics is connected to justice and ethics with politics: to betray these connections means to lay the foundation for future violence or helplessness, decay, lack of ambition and apathy. Living between fear and blackmail produces constant instability.

And when you ask about the changed role of CZKD… Recent news reports these figures: 30,000 cancer patients; 600,000 deprived of social security and pension funds in the recent months; the number of soup kitchens is on the rise; the ratio between employed and retired people is 1:1; 74 small entrepreneurs have committed suicide in the past year.

What is then the mission of an organisation, an institution that decided in the turmoil of war years to deal with decontamination by way of culture, which itself took part in contamination (together with politics, the military apparatus, money-makers, etc.)? I would say the mission is to tackle the discontinuity that is permeating our history and is the crucial reason for the absence of what is called identity. The continuity that can be established in these parts is the continuity through cultural heritage but outside the frame of “patriotism”, which has caused enough devastation; continuity in that sense means to stand on one’s own feet in order to respond to daily challenges imposed by an increasingly complex world. I believe that grasping this experience and articulating reflection could contribute to a larger understanding of what is our future path, within the European context as well.

KP: Given that you are in permanent contact and collaboration with various organisations and individuals from the ex-Yugoslavia, could you make a concise comparative analysis of the state of affairs of the cultural and social spirit and consciousness in the region?

BP: That which was once a natural or immanent state of affairs in our education and growing up in ex-Yugoslavia has now been delegated to various projects, while the entire region has become a sort of tourist postcard. Clearly, the amount of madness in the newly founded states could be somewhat lessened through bonding and connecting, i.e., through the collaboration of individuals and “cells” in a new kind of solidarity.

We come again to the issue of margin: what used to be the peace-making culture in wartime – and it was on the margin, resisting being carried away by all those rallies and populism – was actually the possibility of continuity, not only cultural but human. Anyone who was moving about Yugoslavia during wartime was able to understand and experience more, and was thus more prepared for mourning and departing than those who were sitting in the devastated and devastating institutions in our capitals. It is only now that I can see to a full extent the advantages of mutual understanding among those who were mobile because they were creative and because they loved somebody. The rest is silence. If only, for once, we wouldn’t jabber that much. If only we would cease talking about “values”.

KP: To what extent and in what ways have foreign cultural foundations shaped and influenced the establishing of an independent cultural scene and the activities of civil society in Serbia? Could you share with us your experience and view on this issue – both positive and critical? What would be your recommendations to foreign financiers when it comes to their sensitivity for artistic and cultural projects in our region?

BP: Little would be done without foreign foundations; the same as a large number of people would remain uncured and hungry were it not for the Red Cross and other humanitarian organisations. Their influence was mainly present in the sense that they provided permanent contact with the world as their presence created the opportunity for connecting, getting insight into various matters, but also encouraging the feeling of equality with the world community out of which Serbia was expelled upon the fall of Yugoslavia. Some of us were privileged enough to travel, testify and reflect upon what was happening back then. At the same time, foreign foundations provided and even developed certain levels of education: technological and organisational resources were created; civil and cultural organisations were adequately capacitated; a pool for bringing out and implementing programmes and ideas was created. Unlike public state institutions, which were falling apart and decaying, compromised by their participation in war politics and subsequently being incapable and unwilling to transform themselves following the change in 2000 precisely because they didn’t confront their own past, the institutions and organisations of civil society, with the help of foundations, have become the basis for continuity. Somebody made a joke which is actually very accurate, and that is that the biggest non-governmental organisation in Serbia is the Serbian government.

Another thing: many experts in institutions – from courts to hospitals – have lost their credibility by being politically corrupted, while numerous professors, lawyers and other experts who were fired during Milošević’s regime have gone on to independent organisations or have created new institutions. Today, the ground force of many associations, formations and individuals is the “education” they obtained in those parallel institutions.

Hence, when things are born amid impossible circumstances, flaws may be turned into virtues “with a little help from your friends.” Then this mobility becomes an advantage in comparison with institutions, which are actually functioning outside reality.

This reality is in fact the central issue of today’s activities of foundations on the level of collaboration and productivity when it comes to the European Union.

One of the impeding issues in the communication between “here” and “there”, I would say, is the insistence on certain “official” language, or rather, translating ideas and intentions into a language alienated from sense. In my view, the issue of sensitivity towards others is the issue of sensitivity towards one’s own milieu. If we capture ourselves in language, then we capture our essence: language reveals clichés. Nowadays, things that have never happened before are happening everywhere in the world. We need new ideas and new ways of thinking on new phenomena. We cannot therefore talk about “implementations” when it is about our common task, both that of self-understanding as well as that of understanding the common situation. We have to adopt new principles of equality and emancipation, which would make us more responsible than “evaluations” would.

Still, it is not an easy task to learn from one another: we can draw hardly any parallels between post-war Germany and post-war Serbia when it comes to the de-Nazification process, but the inspiration is there. It is possible in the same way to detect some similarities with those countries that underwent the transition following the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the processes in those countries are not analogous to processes in this region, as here we had war. Nothing is like something else, but it is precisely because of this that everything can become something else, more harmonious and better. Erich Fromm talked about “equality bought out at the cost of Uniformity.” This should also be taken into consideration.

Finally, democracy is truly democracy only if it incessantly questions itself rather than reproduce itself. It is democracy if it grows more complex rather than becoming petrified, if it is the space of freedom and creativity along with the rule of laws and norms.

KP: Do you think that the impact of activities that you initiate is visible enough for a larger public in Serbia? If it is not, how this could be changed?

BP: First of all, what exactly is the notion of public? Is there an idea of the common good so that a public could be formed in the first place? CZKD creates public space in the sense of ideas, think tanks and cultural production. Sometimes I have the impression that because this question is so often perpetuated and recycled, the impact is indeed not “wide enough”. But then I take a look at the events we bring about or I hear people’s statements about them and I realise this is not true. The impact is actually surprisingly wide: I run into taxi drivers or greenmarket vendors who know what we are doing, sometimes they know it much better than the elites who represent them.

Those elites are alienated from the “wider audience”; they are party and media elites who are increasingly absent from reality. Indeed, at times it seems that there is a kind of tombstone between living people, street life, experts, young folks and all forms of expression of reality on the one side and those who are called the “elites” on the other side. “One needs will in order to see something,” said Hermann Broch in his book On Germany.

KP: You are one of the initiators of the project “Studies of Yugoslavia”. Would you be so kind as to concisely present the programme and determine its aims and goals?

BP: The project “Studies of Yugoslavia”, prepared over a long period of time – one might even say a lifetime – is actually a proposal or plan for new solidarities. Its inspiration is A Journey to Russia, Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža’s collection of travelogues, essays and studies from 1925, which still raises acute questions of critical thinking in a historical and contemporary sense. We strive to “raise” critical thinking in the states of the region, which could in turn be the basis for developing institutions outside the frame of adulating nations in their identification with the state. We are working on emancipatory politics of public space today, after the war, after all the belated Romanticist movements and after the overall renaming and expropriation of public space. The project is realised by CZKD and several other NGOs from the region: Multimedia from Priština, Kosovo; Grad from Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina; and Shadow Casters from Zagreb, Croatia.

This is a platform that might connect people in the sense of their common destinies as well as in the generational sense; we deal with “site-specifics” that have become “time-specifics”, with time in space and space in time. In these parts, all historical toponyms are prone to be the basis for “narratives” and there are practically no toponyms whose “narratives” are not disturbed for various reasons. The project is about insight, raising awareness, about knowledge and realising causes and consequences. It is ultimately about all of us, our lives and what we do.

KP: You have also produced projects like “Who is Reichl-Kir to You?” and “Containers of Freedom”. What are their parameters and do they have any common denominators?

BP: The common denominator is certainly memory as a possibility for the future. Both projects are a quest for role models to connect with. Here, I have to quote Hermann Broch again: “Show me German opponents to gas chambers and those who opposed massive extermination of Jews and Germany will be saved.”

Another common denominator is collaboration among people and artistic organisations that share common views. From a historical point of view, it is the living in those projects who are choosing those who are gone with the presumption that the latter would choose them if they were still among us. Thus the names of the anti-war hero Reichl-Kir and the great Yugoslav writer Miroslav Krleža.

KP: How important is networking (with NGOs and individuals both within the region and in the wider context) for CZKD and how do the consequences manifest?

BP: CZKD is in fact a public space for the majority of NGOs in Serbia. As we make this interview, one of the most prominent NGOs, “Women in Black”, is having a programme in our spaces dedicated to International Women’s Day in which numerous other NGOs are taking part. What is truly important when it comes to networking are not papers and e-mail messages, but collaboration through acts, working “live”.

KP: In the situation of general social and institutional crisis, not just in Serbia and the region but in the greater part of the so-called “developed world”, how do you see the role of a social and cultural agent such as CZKD – on the condition it can survive under the pressure of cuts in subsidies? Does the situation of crisis bring with it the possibility of a more radical concept of change?

BP: It is imperative for CZKD to survive – if not in this particular form of organisation, then in another one. But let’s make this clear: the word “crisis” is a euphemism: the war we went through was called a “crisis”, as well as the four-year siege of Sarajevo. What we are living now, after the “breakout of peace”, is not a crisis but an unreflected, inarticulate and postponed collapse proportionate to the devastation that preceded it. So we are in the middle of a battle, not a crisis. We in CZKD are civilians, workers and “soldiers” almost 24 hours a day, in shifts and sometimes without them; we are all that, both physically and metaphysically.

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