TIME AND MEMORY
The final programme unit organized by the Program Working Group as part of this year’s Podium, Time and Memory, which will take place from 15 to 20 August, stems from the need to analyze and reconsider, from different perspectives, the experiences we shared in the Liberated SKC in Belgrade over almost six months in 2025. It was precisely through working on the OSKC program that some members of the Program Working Group came into contact, connected, and began collaborating. Our collective work on the Program at U10 Art Space represented a continuation of the principles of horizontal structure, self-organization, and collective decision-making developed in the Liberated SKC, while at the same time raising the question of what happens to such an experience when it is removed from the immediate time and space in which it emerged.
The thematic unit Time and Memory raises questions about space, institutions, places of collective memory production, history, and the “new mythology” that forms around experiences of collective action, social changes and processes, as well as historical events.
This week’s programme also includes a large number of events:
Saturday, 15 August
19:00 – Saška Ristić, screeningsSul Sul, SKCandDag Dag, SKC:
Sul sul, SKC is a digital performance created during the April Encounters at the occupied Students’ Cultural Centre. During the video performance in The Sims 4, a pre-made model of the SKC building is shown, with rooms and characters inspired by real people who make up the everyday life of this space. Through the use of symbols, parody, and narrative-driven gameplay, the performance depicts the artistic, political, and social life of the SKC at the moment of the occupation. Screened without commentary, the work served as a digital archive of a community in resistance and as a way of reflecting on the role and meaning of this space today.
Dag dag, SKC is a digital video work created in The Sims 4, dealing with the period following the end of the occupations. In the first part of the work, the camera moves through a digital reconstruction of the SKC building, showing the space in darkness after the students have left the building. The second part of the work depicts random everyday events at the virtual Faculty of Fine Arts. The work continues Sul sul, SKC and extends its digitally constructed everyday life into the period following the occupations.
Deni Marinović, installationAccording to Available Sources:
The work begins with the question of how history is kept alive, but also how its meaning changes when it becomes the subject of contemporary political use. Drawing on Eric Hobsbawm’s concept of the “invention of tradition,” the work views history not as a stable set of facts, but as a construction that is constantly renewed through images, rituals, and repetition. The paintings depict Nazis whose eyes are covered by black rectangles. This procedure simultaneously censors, anonymizes, and removes the possibility of direct gaze. The historical figures thus become almost generic: the face remains present, while identity and responsibility become blurred. The work emerges from a sense of the increasing trivialization of history in contemporary media space. Historical categories such as victim, aggressor, and perpetrator can be shifted from one context to another, while images and narratives remain familiar. What once appeared as a clearly defined historical fact is reshaped according to the needs of the present.
Sunday, 16 August
19:00 – Ivan Notaroš, screeningSKC Guided Tourand gameWhere Are the Porter’s Lodge Keys?:
SKC Guided Tour: Pepsi takes you on an exclusive freestyle tour of the liberated SKC. Experience the chaos behind the scenes. Filmed in one continuous take.
Where Are the Porter’s Lodge Keys?: The famous eternal question. Try to find the keys to the porter’s lodge in this horror game set inside the empty liberated SKC during the night shift.
Monday, 17 August
19:00 – Deni Marinović and Ana Stojković, performanceSplit – Belgrade: There are exhibitions that take place in one location, and there are those whose traces appear somewhere else. This work emerges between Split and Belgrade, but does not fully belong to either. Its content is displaced, repeated, and changed depending on the place in which it appears. What is an ending in one space may be only a beginning in another. Through a live projection of the work from Split at U10 in Belgrade, a temporary meta-space is established — a space that is neither here nor there, but emerges through their connection. Through it, we explore what connects us: personally, artistically, historically, politically, and in terms of identity.
Tuesday, 18 August
19:00 – Promotion of the Student Cultural Magazine and discussion about the Liberated SKC:
SKČ is a place where the atmosphere and energy of student initiative meet. SKC was a gathering place and a space open to everyone, allowing us to come together and build our own space. Despite the ban on accessing SKC as a physical space, we were left with a space for exploration.
In addition to the magazine promotion, there will be a discussion dedicated to the experiences of the Liberated SKC, the ways in which we organized collectively, the problems we encountered, as well as what remains from this experience as a possibility for future action.
Wednesday, 19 August
19:00 – Jelena Rendulić, discussionIt’s Not You, It’s Me:
How many times have you been confused in a relationship, or have you been the one holding the keys to secret chambers? Join us on a journey of discovering the secrets of relationships through the discussion It’s Not You, It’s Me, and find out what wasn’t your fault.
Thursday, 20 August
19:00 – Closing of the Program:
We invite you to a final gathering and a collective reflection on the Program, its course, and the experiences we have shared and created together over the past weeks!
