Tales of protest. A necessity.
A 5-channel video installation (each video 5'57'') - Serbian with English
subtitles
2009
November 2008 I spent a one month residency in Belgrade (Galerija KONTEKST in collaboration with <rotor>/Austria) researching into the fight of the workers from the factory Jugoremedija in Zrenjanin. For 2 years the workers fought for their factory and against the privatization of their work place. Throughout their struggle they lived partly in the factory, squatted the city hall for 4 months, protested 3 days and nights in front of the agency for privatization in Belgrade, got beaten up, injured and imprisoned by the police and private security. During this 2 years period the workers didn’t earn and many were left behind by their families. Since 2006 Jugoremedija became the first factory amongst the "transition" countries in Eastern Europe undergoing neoliberal privatization to be recovered and controlled by its workers.
This summer I came back to Serbia to research further into the subject. I soon found that alone in August there were around 40 smaller or bigger protests per day.
Based on this research and interviews with the workers (mainly from the factory Jugoremedija) I developed “Tales of protest. A necessity.“. In this piece 5 fictionalized characters (Milenka, Bogdan, Nina, Zolt, Zoran) tell their tales, juxtaposed with text derived from the interviews, and footage from Sergei Eisenstein’s silent film “Strike“.
In 1925 the film “Strike“ Eisenstein depicts a complex re-creation of the development of a 1912 factory strike in pre-revolutionary Russia. The workers were acted by the Proletkult Theatre. My interest in this film lies on the scenes that portray collectivism in opposition to the individualism of each tale in a similar way as the characters’ voices generate a murmur that one can only follow focusing on each tale.
As I talked to the workers, and having witnessed their protest in front of the Privatization agency and the govermental building in Belgrade triggered to question my own position as an artist and framer of the workers’ struggle: What am I fighting for? Do I let anything be done to myself?
Installation view at Galerie 5020 (A)
Concept, sound recording and editing: Nina Höchtl
Audio recording performed by: Gordana Tasic (Milenka), Nenad Gvozdenovi (Bogdan),
Iva Markovic (Nina), Slavoljub Novakovic (Zolt), Ivan Nikolic (Zoran)
Footage: Stachka (1924) by Sergei M. Eisenstein
Translation to Serbian: Tamara Naunovic
Proof editing of English: Nenad Jovanovic
Thanks to Marko Miletic, Rajko Petrovic, Milan Sreckoviç, Milenko Sreckoviç,
Mirjana Boba Stojadinovic, Szabolcs Tolnai, Ivan Zlatic, www.freedomfight.net/,
Galerija KONTEKST, <rotor> Margarethe Makovec, Anton Lederer
Special thanks to the workers of Jugoremedija in Zrenjanin without them this project wouldn’t have been possible.
Supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum – Belgrade.
The installation was presented at CZKD’s, organized by Kontekst Galerija in Belgrade 2009 and it was part of the exhibitions "RE: EX-POST, Critical Knowledge and the Post-Yugoslavian Condition" curated by Luisa Ziaja, OPEN SPACE in Vienna and „entsprechend PREKÄR“ at Galerie 5020 in Salzburg, 2010. installation was on display at CZKD in Belgrade (September 2009).
