SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2007
Media Insurgencies: Workshop
12:30 p.m. – 3 p.m. Polycentric sessions and screenings, San Francisco
Art Institute, Lecture hall and classrooms
Back to Program
Screenings
Starting in the 1960s, Serbian workers began migrating to Western Europe
for employment. In 1969, the West German government formalized a system
for these "gastarbeiters," or guest workers, and the word
has become part of the Serbian lexicon to refer to anyone working abroad.
Today, the government estimates the Serbian diaspora at 3.5 million,
with remittances reaching $2.4 billion—12% of the GDP—in
2004. Most gastarbeiters intend to return to Serbia, but the homecoming
is never what it is imagined. Tensions between those who remained and
those who left exist for economic, cultural, and interpersonal reasons,
and much larger structural forces shape the broader terrain in which
these financial and personal relationships are negotiated.
"What the Market Bares" is a video
installation investigating some of the relational impacts of labor migration
in Kucevo, Serbia through the material experiences of residents and
gastarbeiters. We set up a free, open-air photo booth in the daily farmers’
market. Along with receiving their portraits, residents were asked to
state one thing they receive from abroad and gastarbeiters to state
one thing they bring back from abroad. These unseen objects provide
insight into how the people are or are not linked in the global economy.
The portraits and statements were compiled into an animation reversed-projected
on the windshield of a bus. Installed in the town station at dusk, the
piece played as dozens of gastarbeiters boarded chartered buses back
to their jobs in places like Austria, Germany, and Sweden. The project
was undertaken as part of a one-month Arts Intervention workshop sponsored
by ArtLink Belgrade.
Workshop Abstract: What the Market Bares—Socially-Engaged
Art in the International Marketplace
The increasing visibility of “socially
engaged” or “interventionist” art to the mainstream
art world has contributed to an increase in international residency
programs specifically interested in these types of work. Though programs
vary dramatically in their structure, scale, and priorities, they present
opportunities that are both useful and highly problematic. Drawing on
experience in an international residency in Serbia in 2007, this presentation
gives special attention to the neocolonial trope of the traveling artist
performing ‘interventions’ in faraway places defined largely
in terms of cultural difference but frequently without an analysis of
capitalism. How can these opportunities as “visiting international
artists” be used strategically by radical culture workers? How
can we reconcile our needs as artists for venues, audiences and art
discourse while at the same time actively challenging imperialist agendas?
Can artists with US passports avoid reinforcing our privilege when working
in less developed parts of the world? In what ways might the projects
produced in these contexts resist the global conditions that brought
them into being? While we do not pretend to have the answers, we hope
to use our experience in Serbia as a springboard for considering these
difficult questions with other artists, activists, media makers and
thinkers at the conference.
Many thanks to our translators: Dragana Jankovic, Ivana Popov, Dragana
Lazarovski
Participant Bios:
Dara Greenwald has participated in collaborative and collective cultural
production and activism for many years. Participation includes the Pink
Bloque, Ladyfest Midwest Chicago, Version>03, Pilot TV Chicago, and
other groupings that resist being named. She worked as the distribution
manager at the Video Data Bank from 1998-2005 and taught in the Film/Video/New
Media Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from
2003-2005. She also writes, curates, and makes art. Her videos have
screened widely, including at Images Festival (Toronto), New York Underground,
Yerba Buena Center (SF), and Ocularis (NY). She is currently pursuing
a PhD in Electronic Arts at RPI in Troy, NY. More detailed CV at www.daragreenwald.com.
Sarah Kanouse is an interdisciplinary artist
examining citizenship, public space, landscape, and historical memory
through arts practice, writing, and occasional curatorial work. In the
last few years, her work has appeared in exhibitions mounted by Artlink
(Belgrade, Serbia); Institute for Quotidian Arts and Letters (Milwaukee);
Columbia College (Chicago); Women's Caucus for Art (Barnard College,
New York); SOFA Gallery (Indiana University), Kupfer Center (University
of Wisconsin Madison), Centro Cultural Rosa Luxemburg (Buenos Aires,
Argentina), among others. Sarah's writings have been published in the
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Acme, The Democratic Comuniqué,
Critical Planning and Art Journal. She teaches digital media and contemporary
arts practices at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. More information
at www.readysubjects.org.