Blog by Balkanist

Balkanization -- coming to a town near you...

[balkanist]

6pm is public opening. At the ART GALLERY OF BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA Street Zelenih beretki 8, Sarajevo, 71000, BiH

[juliafilmphotography]

Belgrade, summer 2014.

[balkanist]

Balkans Beyond Borders: Call for Submissions 2015- “Living in… City-mmetry”

This year BBB gets inspired by the city, the urban life and the geometrical representations identified in it. With title: Living in… City-mmetry, Balkans Beyond Borders opens the call for submissions for the 6th edition of Balkans Beyond Borders Short Film Festival, the festival that travels from city to city in the Balkans and triggers inspiration through its different thematic every year. The 6th Edition of Balkans Beyond Borders Short Film Festival will take place in Thessaloniki in October 2015.

Living in… “City-mmetry”: Geometrical representations and urbanism

“Every day, we draw our personal route among the city’s blocks designing our own reality.

Every city has its shapes: blocks and buildings, streets and parks but also empty spaces that reflect symmetries, asymmetries, geometries, order and disorder

Every city has its flows: we meet and get separated, connect and disconnect transforming the balance of our relationships

Every city is a mirror: changes, synergies, anonymity, abandonment, all reflected in the city’s facades

Every city is a point of reference: a common space for multiple identities that develop and get defined by historical, urban, political and societal memories Our Cities are here beyond borders, history and social changes. They constitute our environment, they are our stories”

- Let the city and the geometrical representations you identify inspire you and share with us your story of “City-mmetry”.

After five successive years, BBB gives the opportunity one more time to the next generation of film makers to create, share and present their films, meet and collaborate.We invite young artists up to the age of 35 from the Balkan region and beyond to get inspired by this year’s topic and send their short film until the 1st of July. We accept all type of film genres with duration up to 30 minutes. The main objective of BBB is to motivate young people to make use of their creativity in order to reflect on issues of concern in their region.

More information on how to apply is available on Balkans Beyond borders website: www.balkansbeyondborders.eu, our Facebook page (Balkans Beyond Borders) and Twitter (BalkansBB).

Contact us to the [email protected]

[balkanist]

EVENT: 

Humboldt University in cooperation with SERBINALE

Tuesday, April 21st 6:00 - 9:00 pm

From postsocialism in socialism to the limits of post-political freedom in postsocialism

On the occasion of publication of two books, Filip Balunović’s Notebooks from freedom (Serbian), and Gal Kirn’s Partisan ruptures and contradictions of market socialism in Yugoslavia (Slovenian) we will discuss a few burning topics of the past and present (post)Yugoslav context.

Speakers: Boris Buden (respondant), Natalija Miletić (moderator) and Djordje Tomić (respondant) will discuss with the authors Gal Kirn and Filip Balunović.

__

Despite two books covering two historically different periods, and topics, the discussion will attempt to address a few central contradictions of both periods that relate to the project Yugoslavia. The discussion will point out on where and why the things went wrong with the socialist transition in the past, and what has been going wrong with the post-socialist transition presently.

One of the central stakes of the authors is to deconstruct the underlying ideological contours of those “transitions”, which could be ascribed also to the rise and persistence of the discourse of liberalism in its plural guises (decentralization, market, individual freedom, entrepreneurialism).

One of Kirn’s book’s concluding points was to re-asses the ambivalence of self-management and its internal contradictory movement towards capitalism. According to Balunović, on the other hand, the post-Yugoslav situation saw liberalism, apart from nationalism, a core ideological base for transitional elites.

__

Filip Balunović, a political scientist from Belgrade (Serbia).

Gal Kirn, a political philosopher from Ljubljana (Slovenia), currently research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Berlin.

Natalija Miletić, a political scientist and free-lance journalist from Serbia.

Boris Buden, a cultural theorist and visiting professor from the University of Weimar.

Djordje Tomić, finished his PhD in history on the transition in Vojvodina at HU. __

Humboldt Universität - August-Boeckh-Haus Dorotheenstraße 65, 10117 Berlin 5th floor, room 557

[just-wanna-travel]

Prilep, Macedonia

[christianvermont-blog]

Odessa, Ukraine 2015

[anneboyer]

[rematerializationchamber]

A Valentine’s day poem.

[just-wanna-travel]

Prilep, Macedonia

[balkanist]

"Why can't I get over my sadness? Because I'm far from home, because we are destroyers, because we move like a whirlwind, like a stream of lava, hated by everyone, life shatterers. I am a huge, never-ending service for the dead." -- Isaac Babel, Diary, 1920.

[balkanist]

One of Bosnia and Herzegovina's most popular musicians, Dino Merlin, has condemned yesterday's terrorist attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo

From Klix.ba:

Dino Merlin: Neither me nor my faith has anything in common with the killers"I strongly condemn today's crime against the journalists in Paris. As a Muslim, I feel shame and a deep contempt for the perpetrators who, in committing an act of evil, betray all the values upon which my faith is based. Neither me nor my faith have anything in common with the killers. I sincerely sympathize with the families of the victims," wrote Dino Merlin on his Facebook page. We recall that in today's terrorist attack in Paris, 12 people died and 11 were injured. All of Europe and the world mourn the editors and cartoonists of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, and protests are organized in major European cities. Klix.ba, in a gesture of solidarity, calls on all its fellow journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as fellow citizens to come to the French Embassy at 12:00 today in order to light candles to commemorate the victims of the murder.

Translated from the original B/C/S by Jordan Haze.

[jellobiafrasays]

by car through yugoslavia (1962)

[archimaps]

Hotel in Tunisia

[balkanist]

"Hôtel du Lac was considered to be a symbol of the arrival of modernity in Tunisia"

[balkanist]

Bosnian short fiction from acclaimed writer Dario Džamonja, author of Letters from the Madhouse

"From afar, judging by our gesticulations and the vehemence with which we’re defending our opinions, you’d think we were discussing the economy, the upcoming elections, pension funds, mortgages, the Hague Tribunal or some other inevitable aspect of our daily lives. Hell no!" - translated by Aleksandar Brezar for Asymptote (read more)

[christianvermont-blog]

Odessa, Ukraine 2014

[balkanist]

[iccwitnesses]

Witness #73

a recipe to forget: win an election host celebratory parties

a recipe to remember: touch a scar look in a mirror

[balkanist]

Reporting to the Police (Excerpt)

"Service to the state is lofty. The state is above all. The Inspector General, C.B.S. D.S.M., serves loftiness.

"In this space, he is king. You are in his house."

"We are here to make a statement. First, the bare details of it will be recorded in the Occurrence Book. And then, a detailed statement will be taken. The procedure is not explained to us. We wait in a haze that disorients and discomposes. Unsure of when to sit, when to stand, when to go, when to stay, how to stay, how to go.

"One’s tears, fears, disgust, anger, brokenness, undoneness cannot be accommodated within the genre of the report. The facts of how one has been made less than, less possible, less present—these facts are not allowed to clutter the recorded facts.

I might be wrong."

KEGURO MACHARIA (read the piece in its entirety here)