05.10.2024.
Revizor: Geographies of Belonging
The seventh issue of the Revizor zine entitled Geographies of Belonging, is a collaborative effort between Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven) and KRAK Center for Contemporary Culture (Bihać), edited by the artist Lana Čmajčanin, art theorist Jelena Petrović, art historian Steven ten Thije and curator Irfan Hošić. The issue emerged as a result of the summer school of the same name, held in Bihać and gathering in Eindhoven in 2022 with the intention to question the geographies of (non)belonging through the politics of art and everyday life.
The zine Geographies of Belonging contains different art-based contributions framed between the Yugoslav experience of socialist communality, and the Dutch experience of capitalist civil society during the Cold War era. The issue is an attempt to establish a dialogical and critical platform that would provide dialectical insights into shared historical events. The destruction of Yugoslavia during the wars of the 1990s and the consequent emergence of seven new countries in transition, and on the periphery of the neoliberal global world, are a reflective support in the prism of the central role that the Netherlands has nurtured in the European Union since its creation. Thus, these two uneven geopolitical positions are taken as a starting point in perceiving and connecting all those nonlinear events during the Cold War, the turbulence that followed in the 1990s, and the events that changed these spaces and their relations from the beginning of the new century onwards.
The concept of belonging which reconfigures the meaning and understanding of the geopolitical notions of who and what belongs where, is therefore seen, through these various contributions, as a spectrum of ontological, epistemological, material, but also emotional dimensions of social life. Aligned with this, this issue has the intention to expose artistic, curatorial, activist, and theoretical practices, as well as art-based research and works, that bring the geography of ordinary life into this still unsettled concept of belonging, affected by many transitional changes and wars.
The collaboration between Bihać and Eindhoven through this project enables an exploration of these two long-distance yet interconnected locations, with the aim of a deeper understanding of the places themselves, their geographies of (non)belonging, as well as the various ways in which we identify and connect through and with them.
Authors in this issue are Igor Bošnjak, Fabienne Chiang, Lana Čmajčanin, Lina Džuverović, Charles Esche, Christian Guerematchi, Irfan Hošić, Andreja Hribernik, Mak Hubjer, Anastasia Kubrak, Almir Kurtović, Ashley Maum, Mladen Miljanović, Alma Mustafić, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Jasna Pašić, Dan Perjovschi, Jelena Petrović, Majda Piralić, Faruk Šehić, Aida Šehović, Steven ten Thije, Vladimir Tomić.
Research curatorial programs in Bihać and Eindhoven were organised as part of the four-year program Our Many Europes, which is designed by the L'internationale Museum Confederation and its partners, and is co-financed through the European Union's Creative Europe program.The seventh issue of the Fanzine Revizor was additionally financed by Robert Bosch Foundation. It was designed by Adnan Suljkanović and edited by Jonathan Blackwood.
Revizor: Geographies of Belonging. Photo: Mehmed Mahmutović, 2024