In den Schluchten des Balkan / In the gorges of the Balkans. A Report

01.09.2003 - 23.11.2003

Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel / Deutschland

Contemporary art from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosova, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey.
Residing at the interface between the Orient and Occident, Christianity and Islam, the Balkans have remained an uncharted territory, a blind spot on the map, throughout their centuries-old, turbulent history, which has witnessed the rise and fall of monarchies, dictatorships, Communist social systems and democracies. As such, they have become the ideal canvas on which to project western European preconceived notions of the region – notions, which can even be found in Karl May’s Balkans novel of the same name.... As multi-ethnic societies, the countries of South Eastern Europe have in recent years served also as the paradigm for prognoses on the processes of globalisation and in this way fuelled the notion of the “Clash of the Civilizations”. The “Balkans” has long since become a metaphor. The Balkans, in the words of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, are always the others. [...] (press information Fridericianum)
Symposium organised by Bojana Pejic and Marius Babias, in cooperation with ifa / Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart. October 24 – 26, 2003