Nationless / Actualization [Exhibition and conference]

Artists and theoreticians from Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Kosovo and Serbia will meet in Skopje at the Youth Cultural Centre on Saturday and Sunday (5-6 December) for an exhibition and conference named Nationless / Actualization, organized by the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje to confront and exchange of the regional theory, activism and artistic practices.

This is the last in a series of events of the project Nationless. The event will engage theoreticians and artists in visual and narrative explorations of the possibilities of the interplay of artistic and theoretical production in the Balkans towards opening of new fields of contestation, reconfiguration and actualization of liberation/autonomy beyond the nationalist production of subjectivity.

On Saturday, 5 December at 20:30 pm in the gallery of the Youth Cultural Centre there is an opening of the exhibition Actual art, a rupture within the antagonism with participation of Dragan Protic, Branko Teshevic, Darinka Pop Mitic, Kurs Organization, Olson Lamaj, Driton Selmani, Visar Arifaj, Iordanis Stylidis, Angeliki Avgitidou, Nada Prlja, Filip Jovanovski, Velimir Zernovski and Gjorgje Jovanovik.

On Sunday 6 December at 17h in the gallery of the Youth Cultural Centre there will be a discussion entitled Sabotaging the nationalist recurrence, towards a theory of possibilities with participation of Ivana Momcilovic, Artan Sadiku, Agon Hamza and Vincent van Gerven Oi.

After the first event Autonomy / Releasing held in April in Skopje at the Youth Cultural Center, Nation /emanations held in June in Belgrade at the Museum of the History of Yugoslavia, Reflective nostalgia and its everyday aesthetic held at the Museum of Contemporary art in Thessaloniki, Actualization is the fourth and final event of the project Nationless, joint work of the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje, Dam Dash- Belgrade and the University of Thessaloniki – Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies.

The project NATIONLESS aims to open a space for artistic intervention, thinking and re-thinking the particular issue of nationalism and its social reproductive power with a specific focus on the broken communication and a virtually complete lack of collaboration between regional artists and intellectuals. However, it does not seek to overcome the mere problem of lack of communication but rather, through an artistic undertaking, to challenge competing nationalisms in the different countries through artistic-political and theoretical explorations of the idea of “nation”. The political status of “nationality” is the main pillar of all other political and social categories and processes in these three countries. It determines the cultural capital of nationhood and national origin which further influences the economic processes and possibilities of social mobilization and solidarity. Therefore, this project seeks to problematize national(ist) identity politics that are ‘inclusive’ for some, and always ‘exclusive’ for the others and paralyzing of all politics that debunk the sanctity of the ethnic principle of social mobilization. The project represents a counterweight to the current political tendencies by engaging grassroots actors to tackle the social consequences of the mainstreamed nationalism.

The project presents an innovative and cross-disciplinary approach to devising tools developed throughout the production process and which represent a contribution to the general contemporary praxis in art and theory in the Balkan region. These tools are open to further reapplication, modification and adaptation, thus enabling a new transformative praxis to take place on the basis of this project.