Exhibition [2012]
Public library Bor

The project The Continuous Art Class: Bor. Re-enactment of the Unknown is based on mapping and reflecting on key issues of culture and cultural policy, as well as the position of local contemporary artistic practice in the context of Bor. The research was initially inspired by the publication “Socio-psychological study of Bor: how the citizens see themselves and their city” published in 1978, which includes original interviews with residents of Bor about issues of housing, provision, social relations, the place of culture and art in their everyday life, free time, traffic, image of the city, etc. The “Continuous art class” includes a series of video interviews with protagonists of the cultural and artistic scene of Bor, which was presented at an exhibition, and a workshop with high school students from Bor, held with the aim of realizing a kind of re-performance of interviews from 1978, adapted to the modern moment.

The exhibition “The Continuous Art Class: Bor. Re-enactment of the Unknown” presents the contemporary artistic production of Bor, which arises in the gap between “creativity” and post-industrial reality. It  poses the question how art produces and uses certain symbolic values ​​based and “drawn” from the social, economic and historical context, and how it relates to the given reality. In the new (capitalistic) circumstances, such an artistic practice – which detects, ironizes and criticizes the societal conditions, while at the same time allowing space for imagination and politics – becomes an undesirable sign that warns of mistakes and does not fit into the projected images of creativity. Its authors, as “producers”, are pushed to the margins, which opens up questions about the position of artists and the conditions in which they work.