Course 2: Solidarity in Time: Non Aligned Movement and Contemporary Art
Course by Jelena Vesić
7 - 12 August, 2023

Course Level BA/MA
2.5 ECTS

Course description
Solidarity in time: Non Aligned Movement and Contemporary Art deals with the images of history and artistic returns to anti-colonial and alter-global politics of the Non-Aligned Movement (initiated by five statesmens – Javaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egipt, Kwame Nkrumak of Ghana, Sukarno of Indonesia and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia – at the first Summit of NAM taking place in Belgrade in 1961).

The course will overview and concentrate on close reading of contemporary projects dealing with the histories of NAM or using the semantics of the very word of Non-Alignment. Projects like Travelling Communique, Non-Aligned Modernisms, Anticolonial Museum, Southern Constellations; the artworks by Katarina Zdjelar, Otolith Group, Milica Tomić, Vesna Pavlović, Naeem Mohaiemen, Archive of political activist Olja Džuverović etc. will be examined and discussed in details among the attendees of the course by focusing to the dynamics of inequality and difference within the nominally progressive historical gestures.

Non-Aligned Movement‘s intervention into power politics of the two Blocks, will be considered from affirmative and critical perspectives. The project of Non-Aligned was nominally and declaratively created on anti-imperial and anti-colonial political premises, opposing the systems of domination and oppression and offering an alternative form of worldism to contemporary capitalist globalisation. But, the project of Non-Aligned in practice was also race-blind and permeable for internal racisms and oppressions happening within the very member states of the Movement.

The concept of solidarity in time approaches politics as a processual and continuous struggle that entangles past, present and future. It engages with the questions of how to think the present historically, how to understand non-linearity of historical time and not-nowness of the present time. 

Biography
Jelena Vesić (PhD) is an independent curator, writer, editor, and lecturer. She is active in the field of publishing, research and exhibition practice that intertwine political theory and contemporary art. Vesić co-edited Prelom – Journal of Images and Politics (2001–2010, Belgrade) and is co-editor of the journal Red Thread (Istanbul), a member of the editorial board of ARTMargins and advisory board of Mezosfera (Budapest). She is also president of association of art critics AICA Serbia.

Vesić curated many exhibitions, among them Lecture Performance (MoCA, Belgrade and the Kölnischer Kunstverein, 2009/10, w. Anja Dorn and Kathrin Jentjens) as well as the collective exhibition project Political Practices of (post-) Yugoslav Art (2009), which critically examined art historical concepts and narratives on Yugoslav art after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Her exhibition In Collectivising (MG, Ljubljana, 2022) deals with the feminist interventions into the art-historical narration on the 20th century avant-garde art collectives.

Vesić’s essay-book, On Neutrality (w. Vladimir Jerić Vlidi and Rachel O'Reilly), is part of Non-Aligned Modernity edition, MoCA, Belgrade, 2016.

She is editor of Alt-Truths and Insta-Realities: The Psychopolitics of Contemporary Right, Red Thread #5, 2020 (w. Vladimir Jerić Vlidi), Stagecraft by Vesna Pavlović, Vanderbilt University Press, 2021, Feminist Takes: Early Works by Želimir Žilnik (w. Antonia Majaca and R. O’Reilly), Sternberg Press, 2021 and Yugoslav Art Space (w. Branislav Dimitrijević and Ješa Denegri), JRP (forthcoming, Spring 2023).

Vesić holds MA in Art History, Faculty of Philosophy – Belgrade; 
She attended Curatorial Training program, De Appel – Amsterdam, post-graduate School for History and Theory of Images – Belgrade, Academie Schloss Solitude – Stuttgart and Jan Van Eyck Academy – Maastricht.
She holds PhD in Theory of Arts and Media, University of Arts – Belgrade, Interdisciplinary studies
Vesić was  post-doctoral researcher and Goethe Institute fellow at Haus der Kunst Munich, working on the topic Postcolonial: 1955-1980 (part of art historical trilogy Postwar, Postcolonial, Postcommunist curated by Okwui Enwezor, 2017) and, in continuation, she worked as a researcher behind the project Postcolonial Constellations at Sharjah Art Foundation (2021/22).

Participation
15 participants will be selected to participate in this course. Eligible participants must read the Terms, fill out the application form, upload the required documents and submit the application form. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

The conditions and registration fees
Enrollment fee 1 - 370 euros for self-paying students, with the offer of accommodation in student residences.
Enrollment fee 2 - 570 euros for institutionally sponsored students, with the offer of accommodation in student residences.

Special conditions apply for alumni of the Summer School as School.
Scholarships are available for students from Kosovo.
Payment must be made after successful application.

Late applications may be accepted until July 22, 2023.