Invisible Sights

a must share!

well, i know that my recent posts haven’t been like they used to, and sure there are “no excuses” (one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands). I am glad to have established some contacts through this blog and each of them i value highly. More highly than one would think, since here where i live i encounter isolation at each step i make, all for political opinion i share with only a small number of people, and not all the time.

a piece of belgrade

At one of the political meetings that I attend, we had a discussion about mobilizing what we call “civil society” to react upon one in a series of stupid laws that was about to pass in the Parliament (without any public discussion or any publicity – Government just kind of smuggles illiterate laws contradictory to Constitution into the Parliament – and it’s a done deal). We were gathered in Center for cultural decontamination, as usually we are for the big meetings. After hours of developing strategies how to mobilize “civil society”, one friend of mine and a journalist stood up and said: “What civil society are we talking about? Weather you like it or not, it is us here, always same faces, same people, about 100 of us, just enough to fill in this place, when it happens so that we all do come. We are that civil society, that public among citizens that will mobilize itsef. The rest just don’t give a dam what happens. We are talking about civil initiative and action to make public pressure on institutions – who apart from us here has ever done it in Serbia? Well, that’s what I mean. So let’s organize our selves, instead of talking about some imaginary group of individuals. Organized in NGOs or not, it is us here, the “civil society” of Serbia”.

100 people from a city of 1.5 million

He was right, 100 people in the whole country. Even them i see more rarely since i stepped out from the Women in black group. And surely for many more reasons i value blog contacts.

I don’t know weather my 100 local political allies will react on the small piece of news that i read yesterday in newspapers. But is is something i must share: there is an issue about sportsmen in Serbia. It goes: should they be submitted to a patriotic test, before it is decided, on the State level, weather they deserve a national pension or not. So, the loyal Serbs, i guess, do, and less loyal or less patriotic, do not deserve it. Not to mention the sportsmen and sportswomen who might be of different nationalities, but Serbian citizens!
Not everybody’s efforts can ensure a future. The sweat and agonizing training, goals, points, matches and tournaments won, years dedicated to sport while wearing national dress and internationally representing Serbia doesn’t count, unless one is a Serbian nationalist.

i have no photoes of sportsmen on me at the moment, but i got this tube!

I was in a shock. Just a tiny text in Blic daily. About potential destinies of once upon a time role models of many children and young people, idols of adults identifying them selves with the success of the sportsmen.

Can you imagine? All a sportsman does is nothing, if he doesn’t go to Church, deny genocide, worship Serbia and its heavenly nation, rejects the fact of Kosova independance! I was not in a shock, i was mad, furious! I am not Serbian, i refuse to be one by nationality, because of things like this one! I am a citizen of this shit hole of a state, but i officially claimed, at the official registration of population, that i have no nationality. Because only in Serbia, nationality doesn’t mean citizenship at the first place, which allows you to have different nationality, free choice in confession, practice of your culture… If you are a Serb, you have to be orthodox automatically, too! And I am not!

I want sportsmen of different political opinions and different nationalities, who live and work as Serbian citizens, to hold same rights! I want all people who live and work or not work here, but have citizenship, to have same rights. I don’t want privileges for Serbs by nationality over other Serbian citizens! I don’t want them for my self. I am bad enough as I am, I don’t need that layer of dirt on me, dirt of being privileged Serbian for national feelings, safely isolated from reality, semiconsciously taking others for lower humans…

I will have to inquire a little more on this. If there’s more to it, like public reacion, or State decision, I will share. In the meantime, i will hope that it remains just another dead end idea, and after all impossible fantasm of the Serb nationalists/who are so easily heard and have access to media with just any stupid thoght they find logical, practical and alternative/self sustainable use of social resources!

measure

I am actually worried about this piece of article, because the initiative comes from a brain that has already not accepted isolation of Serbia, but actually eraised the whole wide world, reducing it to the soil under “shljiva”/plum. My mistake is that I haven’t payed attention to who launched this idea… i will look for the initiator. Sport is a field for free blossoming of national feelings, but this particular idea is not a song of the masses on stadium, it is somebody’s latest single.

There is strong wind in Belgrade. It rained for a couple of days too. To me, sounds of rain and wind are promissing, like the outside will be all clean and washed and ready for a new start.

Then I walk out and meet again same streets and buildings and people, and I know: all layers of Belgrade life have stayed. Even though it smells fresh with rain, my idea of a new start is as lasting as my own reflection in the puddle of watter in front of my gate… even if i stood above the puddle, it would dry out in two hours again. And I don’t stand, i rush by.  No reflection, no new start thoughts. Same old battlefield. And I always rush.

I am writing from home. It got late. Wind tempts me to go out. How can I see my city with different eyes? I do things like that, run out when everybody rushes in/when it’s hailing, for example. And I asked my self why, and I just told you: I really want to see my city differently…

I love my city. I made a film about it, “Memoria”. I know my city and live in it taking the best it’s got, also trying to bring out the best I can. But that is also a layer that stays after every wind or rain. My perspective stays, like all other posible points of view… but I only really know my own. Ain’t that a curse?

In 2 days i will have my radio show Stigma. I chose a topic “Mom knows what’s best/for her daughter to think”. It is a classic feminst topic, i do laugh at my self. I know I will do some reding in my late radio show:) I remain open to suggestions.

my friend and actress in her mom's atelier, last night, while it was raining

It’s still blowing.

This is Serbia – expensive country, where we are lucky not to die of starvation. Sure it is possible to look beyond, and i make my efforts to do so. So i can say, i live a life of the priviledged: that for me means that even poor, i consume art, create it in any media i find access to, work with orphans to, among other things, teach them how to look beyond poverty.

Because poverty prevents us from any creation, any intervention on our poor society. Or it does so in almost all ways. That way, poverty becomes the tool to keep things the way they are. Not the only tool, but the one i want to talk about right now.

When people from developed countries imagine a person from and in a poor country (i wouldn’t say developing, that term is so cynical!), it is usualy an image of a person dressed in tasteless clothes ran over by decades, doing some kind of ordinary job that is somehow dirty: it is either a phisical job, or some other that takes place in an office that might fall appart any second, etc. examples/stereopypes are more then just one, depending on which poor country the person from the rich one thinks of. depending on the continent, too. Surely nobody would think of an artist in process of creating an astonishing piece of art. Artists from poor countries, as an image, belong to the past, in heads of the rich from thr rich countries. for those rich, times of art in poverty has long gone. oh how wrong!

I decided to wright this short post, because not only that i am creating art in a poor country and teaching orphan children how to do the same, but i also tryed to address many institutions from the rich country to give a modest logistic contirbution to my childrens’ creations and my efforts to get them done: I asked to use a computer to postproduce their work!

Now, I raised a credit to buy a HDV camera, and i trust children to use it. Other professional equipment too. Because project we work on rejected idea to rent or by a cheepest mini DV camera for them. But credit covered only things i was allowed to purchase, and computer was not one of them.

I am stuck now with tones of childrens’ materials, and they are still filming. Officially, project ends today. I work on volunterely, withou my minimum wage. No problem. But I wish to know if there exists any institution or organization that would borow or donate a computer for childrens# films and other forms. I was rejected at about 10 places, taht didn’t even bother pointing me to some other direction. “fuck off, survive if you can, leave art to the rich”, i felt i was told.

So, before I get apermission to show childrens’ work, i have to bring them to the end. I was so sure it would go smoothly… but that is where i got stuck.

We can always play raw material, but invite the institutions who rejected us without thinking of how to help us, where to point us, and lock the door, and make them watch 20 hours or more of all children shot!

Summer has left Belgrade. It is cold. Days are short, as Sun has decided not to look at us for too long, but to dive sooner then excpected  behind tall buildings across Danube&Sava confluence, setting down at around 16h already. From my point of view, from east. We then remain in darkness/what a painfully simbolic image/ in the Capital that juggles with political parties, always pulling out of the blue new and surprizing aliences on all levels of authoritiy. We have over here so many parties, that at least a couple of them one always forgets about. Right then, the forgotten get on the TV news as reliable partners to the democrats. I overheard tonight, it was Nikolic joining Tadic.  But hey, only localy, somewhere far in this big and blessed country of ours, not that it could affect the already blury picture of who stands for which values. Such aliences only prove that united we stand more then ever, as they litterarely put it in the news, in defense of our State´s integrity. At the same time, we have never been closer to the EU, and never have we cooperated so efficiently with the Tribunal in The Hague.

Overall, a total climax of all big political prospects. After tonight´s news, if only i didn´t live here and know better, i would be happy that everything is so perfect. I would wander who ever made a fuss about not capturing war criminals and delivering them, when Serbian government works that issue so smoothely and willingly. As for approaching EU by getting Serb citizens on the white Schengen list in 2009, Serb officials claim it so convinsingly, that one wouldn´t dare doubting the news came as an original apendix to Schengen Agreement, overseen by administrative mistake, for all these years.

As I said in another post, we still keep getting informed that world economic crizes doesn´t even reflect on Serbia. We are fine, according to the economic experts.

Inflation of Dinar has become a routine speakers´ line, somewhere close to the end of news program, and sounds like “have a good evening”, or something spectators would feel awkward without. Really, speakers do a fabulous job: by telling you you have less money in your wallet then you did before the news, they make you feel warm inside.

The rest depends on the chanel you watch: on city chanel Studio B, you get to see a bunch of little children singing in false tone that some people have Paris, some London, or Praha, but nobody has Belgrade. Then they scream that is exactly why they like it! I put some effort to dig it, and after many times I heard it and saw the video, i´ve concluded that adults simply take children for morons. Better yet, they teach the kids not to understand the meaning of lyrics or anything else; because kids will be better off stumbling through life and comunication, and leaving all sense to the elderly/who prepare to live and rule forever, unbothered by the young/.

Truth is, I am absolutely sure this is the case, since I got to see and hear the editor in chief talking about that particular song and video. He had a sneaky, sly smile on his fat face, he gave clear signs that there was something going on that children shouldn´t know, and that was: the song sucks! children look ugly instead of sweet! – as he was going on about how proud studio B was to have that video on Belgrade and song by the promissing generation. the man was brutaly moquing the children. Given the fact that he him self started in journalism on that same station when it only had radio, that he was young when he got to be one of the first Studio B TV journalists /he used to host a show called “From gossip to truth”, very early 90ies/ but got fired with the rest of the Studio B core – some things are coming into light… He was building something – image of free journalism – in that place, and he got expelled, lost everything.  Then, along with the rest of the evicted core, he started looking for support from abroad for small private or local independent media or production groups… the core grew strong and networked a lot. When changes came, or so we thought, in 2000, he switched several important positions in TV business… always as head of something. Recently, he got back to his initial TV Studio B. As a big shot. No ideals anymore, and operating smoothly, as a diplomate. i hear him say things like: “Studio B has always been a free place for free journalism, it never changed during all its years of existance, and today still is a symbol of freedom”. How could i trust him? Even on weather forcast, after all that he has pulled through? By claiming that Studio B was not exposed to changes, he actually claims that he was changing with it, and that to him, any policy of the TV stationis equally adequate! That is how i know he came back to stay. Not literarely on Studio B, but in power over media. Surely, such person has no genuine desire to see or encourage any successor of his. Such man has suffered his way to the top, and stands on it looking down on others, encouraging them to be dull, so that him self appears outstanding. And that is a famous Serbian recepy for success: make sure others are doing bad, and no efort to buld up your good qualities.

On the national, RTS, they show another video after last edition of news: fields of ray and other landscapes, were strong young women and men in national clothing, with red chicks and proud smiles, appear holding hands, and dance folk traditional “kolo”. Serbian flag with a monstruous eagle with 2 heads and white clouds are changing above “kolo” on the blue sky. Fields are rich, also worked out misteriously, with no workers and no effort. The folk resembling tune is supported with a whole philcharmonic orchestra, which i asume implies that God is taking care of everything, so everything is in fact simple, clear, wealth all around… Like aproval to the piece of news that all the world is suffering economic crizes, but not Serbia.

That is what I saw and heard before i went to bed. I swithc from city to national chanels, just out of curiosity, to compare, so i watch both. It seams nobody is giving me any reason to warry, and i can rest still. I hope you can too. Because no TV news would actually bother to inform us on the news. What they really do, they serve us attitudes for starter and optimistic-idiotic conclusions for dinner. No info, just simple plane ideas. No events, but opinions already shaped for us, so that we do not engage into thinking. Should be called TV THOUGHTS, instead.