“The
Continuous Art Class project is a megastructure and a living structure, not an organized archive” explained Zoran Pantelić of New Media Center_kuda.org in a conversation with COURAGE.
Pantelić emphasizes the difference in the interpretation of socialism’s role in repressive processes towards artists in former socialist countries such as Hungary, Poland and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). That long 50-year period is often subject to oversimplification, he holds, because interpretation relies on stereotypes about Soviet domination and hence on a victimization discourse. Polish and Hungarian society differed from that of the SFRY. Pantelić understands socialism as being widely emancipatory in Serbia and the SFRY, where poverty prevailed before the Second World War. He explained that general knowledge was enhanced and the phenomenon of worker’s self-management led to new organizational techniques.
Furthermore, Pantelić stresses that there was a diversity of interpretations of practices within the SFRY. It is important to understand a number of ideas before explaining these avantgarde operations. For example, the traditional framework for valuing artistic activities stems from art education. Members of groups related to the institution ‘Youth Tribune’ gathered on the margins, since there were still no art schools in Novi Sad. These young people were the children of workers, who struggled for their position in culture. They showed interest in literature, sociology, philosophy and film, but not so much for the visual arts. Since literature was their primary platform, they gained interested in the Index magazine, which developed into their medium. The written word was their connection with the public, which is how they shaped new relations. In 1971 they rejected exhibiting at the Paris Biennale (for young artists), considering the event to be a market affair. Pantelić noted that nobody guaranteed them a place in history, but it did not trouble them.
Pantelić also explains that the structure of culture in Belgrade was different, that it was mainstream oriented and party connections interfered. Young artists in Ljubljana on the other hand had space to conduct their work, while politicians in Novi Sad had no interest in understanding them.
Protests in 1968 in SFRY differed from those in France. The group within Youth Tribune with around 35 members were able to question the political and cultural situation and to be much more critical, but it ran into great resistance and misunderstanding. Most of them were in their early twenties or younger and presumably feared political pressure, since they did not know what kind of sanctions or punishment could follow. Zoran Pantelić thinks that “Slavko Bogdanović and Miroslav Mandić had the most political knowledge within the group and they had the energy to be the driving force.” After the group disintegrated, many of its members moved abroad or to other cities.
From 1968 to 1971, while Judita Šalgo was program director of Youth Tribune, there was a space for public dialogue and critique of the political system in Novi Sad. Judita Šalgo recognized the group of very young artists engaging in radical poetry, publishing in Index magazine, and invited them to be program directors at Youth Tribune, an institution established by the party. As the main program director, Judita had to provide a spoken and written account of their work every month to the city’s committee of the League of Communists, explained Pantelić.
Within a few months in 1971, the artists Slavko Bogdanović and Miroslav Mandić were given yearlong sentences. The Student Cultural Centre and Index magazine and its editorial board were shut down, while the management of the Neoplanta film production company, Új Symposion magazine and Youth Tribune were deposed. In Pantelić’s belief, the artists were the biggest victims, because their role pointing towards the avantgarde and a new kind of dialogue was not recognized by the political establishment. Zoran Pantelić told COURAGE that “no one in Yugoslavia experienced the kind of repression exercised in Novi Sad, which led to the “Yoghurt” Revolution in 1988, because it killed the category of public dialogue in Vojvodina. In 1974, Vojvodina was granted a great constitution, which recognized its autonomy, but its capacities as a territory were at the lowest point, since there was no intellectual strength which could develop public dialogue.”
The Yoghurt Revolution is the name of mass protests in Novi Sad, organized by the supporters of Slobodan Milošević. Protesters threw rocks and cups of yoghurt on party officials. The protests brought down the government of the Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and put the supporters of Milošević into power. They changed the constitution of Vojvodina and of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, depriving Vojvodina of its autonomy.
The groups constituting the neo-avantgarde scene in Novi Sad did not have infrastructural support from the city and they started a series of group performances titled Public Art Class. Kuda.org adapted the title and changed it to The Continuous Art Class, thus relating it to the organization’s long-term research program and marking the 50th anniversary of Youth Tribune towards which kuda.org took a critical approach. The exhibition showed important artwork and their political context. The Continuous Art Class was initially a single event and exhibition, but some of its components remain active.
The exhibition was organized with a group of actors, and specific pieces of art have been reanimated with the aim of making them relevant to current social contexts. Artists were invited to discussions, and the opening of the exhibition was accompanied by a public discussion on the official politics from respective periods, with the famous film director Želimir Žilnik as moderator. Latinka Perović, who served as a secretary of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia during that respective period, was one of the speakers at the public discussion.
It was important to analyze and to critically examine events in Novi Sad and even more so in Youth Tribune in order to properly structure the exhibition. Youth Tribune was established as a place for critical examination, but it was transformed into the Cultural Center of Novi Sad, which has since adhered to the political mainstream. “The Continuous Art Class is still happening, since there still is a misunderstanding of artists and their ideas” says Pantelić.
