Uroš Čvoro and Mladen Miljanović:
“When things go back to normal
– The work of art in the age of militarized waiting”  
30. 4. 2020 
X-OP / Risk Change – Webinar Series / On-line conversation

On Thursday, 30 April 2020, at 2 p. m., we hosted a webinar “When things go back to normal: the work of art in the age of militarized waiting”, led by Uroš Čvoro, Senior Lecturer in Art Theory at the UNSW Australia in Sydney in conversation with artist Mladen Miljanović (Academy of Arts University of Banja Luka, BA) and curator Živa Kleindienst. The event was be live-streamed through the JITSI online platform.

“One of the often-reported effects of the current pandemic is the heightened experience of time. From having too much time on our hands, through being suspended in a quarantine stasis, to being overwhelmed by the hypermediated cycle of news and social media, we are finding ourselves caught between different speeds and temporalities. This conversation takes time as infrastructure as its departure point, talking about themes of Tense Present as well as themes of the politics of time in the region of former Yugoslavia from Uroš Čvoro’s recent book Transitional Aesthetics.”

As a reference point for the discussion we used the following material: the Tense Present exhibition catalog, the introduction to Transitional Aesthetics by dr. Uroš Čvoro and two texts by Boris Buden and Susan Buck-Morss.

Čvoro, Uroš. Transitional Aesthetics, Introduction:
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=tRJUDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=uros+cvoro&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjA8PSOs_joAhVszDgGHbE6CnEQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=uros%20cvoro&f=false

Tense Present website:
http://sedanjost.kiblaportal.org/en

Tense Present exhibition catalog:
https://issuu.com/kiblapress/docs/napeta_sedanjost_-_tense_present

Boris Buden: https:
//www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/children-of-postcommunism

Susan Buck-Morss:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41765180?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Uroš Čvoro is a Senior Lecturer in Art Theory at UNSW Australia. His research interests include contemporary art and politics, cultural representations of nationalism, post-socialist and post-conflict art. His recent books are Post-Conflict Monuments in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Unfinished Histories (Routledge, 2020), Transitional Aesthetics: Art at the Edge of Europe (Bloomsbury, 2018), and Turbo-Folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia (Ashgate, 2014).  

Mladen Miljanović (b. 1981, Bosnia and Herzegovina) was born in Zenica. He completed secondary school in Doboj. After secondary school he attended the Reserve Officer School where he earned the rank of sergeant. As sergeant he was responsible for the training of 30 privates. After the completion of his military service, he enrolled at the Academy of Arts (Department of Painting, BA-MA) in Banja Luka. He lives and works in Banja Luka where he is a professor of Intermedia art at the Academy of Arts (UNIBL). He participated in many group exhibitions. Selected solo exhibitions and projects include: Utopian Realism, Peacock Center for Contemporary Arts, Aberdeen, Scotland (UK) 2019; Strike, Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Novi Sad (Serbia), 2017; In Low Flight, ACB Gallery, Budapest (Hungary), 2017; The Garden of Delights, 55th La Biennale di Venezia, Bosnian Pavilion at Palazzo Malipiero, Venice (Italy), 2013; Good Night / State of Body, MC gallery, New York (USA), 2012; Museum Service, MUMOK, Vienna (Austria), 2010; Occupational Therapy, Museum of Contemporary Art RS, Banja Luka, (BiH) 2008. He is the winner of the Henkel Art Award Vienna, 2009; the 2007 Zvono Award and the Award of the Museum of Contemporary Arts RS, 2005.

http://www.mladenmiljanovic.com/

This webinar is the fourth in a series of lectures and workshops organized by X-OP Association for Contemporary Art as part of the project Risk Change (2016—2020). In the context of the current global situation, the series has been moved into the digital space and now takes place in the form of web-based seminars, or webinars. By the end of May, you will be able to listen and talk to (international) guests operating in various fields of culture, contemporary visual arts, film, architecture and education, whose practices are concerned with modern-day migrations, digital culture, infrastructure, politics and global relations of power, through a variety of original theoretical and practical approaches. The program will be regularly updated and events will be announced one week in advance.