What does it mean to transfer ideas in the social context? How do we trigger interaction and bridge desires of a local community? How do we question classical archiving and propose a performative character of documenting?

While Miodrag Kuc led a workshop entitled Artistic practices in the contested social realm, starting introducing some artistic urban interventions he led on the behalf of ZKU in the Balkan area, he introduced us to the action “Atomic Hangout”, to be performed in a contested urban space in the typical housing block of Banja Luka. The specific case of Gradja, a community run playground, that was started off as a protest in response to the will of creating a parking lot on the behalf of the municipality and local private developers. The protest was enacted by a group of kids who (physically) defended it from becoming a place for cars, which could eventually lead to further (building) speculations. What was protected was the roof of a previously collective atomic shelter, a common infrastructure to be found in Ex Yugoslavian countries, that often was built in connection to new housing settlements in ‘70/’80. Today Gradja hosts a lively self-organized community of neighbors engaged in the programming and use of this contested space. Gradja can be asserted as a good example for grass roots DIY- planning, as Miodrag suggests “in a peripheral context to Western democracy, where a weak political system meets investors-urbanism and corruption, civic engagement and spatial claims appear rather as deviant behavior”.

The workshop aimed to bridge the needs and desires of the local neighborhood with the SCUB traveling community, in order to reach productive exchange and benefit from the diversity of perspectives. Finally, concrete micro-location, with its own history of contestation, becomes a field of experimentation and encounter, with the goal to practice a culture of disagreement, spatial appropriation, and grassroots urban politics.

The workshop resulted in the “Atomic Hangout” event with the participation of the local community, where the neighborhood was actively engaged and collectively reclaimed its public space through a series of activities that were a testing ground for a collective artistic format for social intervention. Action served as a triggering point for the summer program Gradja community is trying to develop, underlining continuation of actions as an alternative to static plans of the Municipality.

By creating a sort of ‘mobile park’, neighbors and SCUB participants had a chance to test, negotiate and spatially rethink what wishful park could be. As a first step of inclusive planning, 10 trees have been left at the location, creating a maintenance plan (watering, pruning, fertilizing) for locals and basic infrastructure for spatial negotiations (leisure areas, sport areas, ‘creative’ polygons, etc.). One of the outputs was a live zine made with the contribution of all the kids of the park, designed by artist Jelly Luise, with the support of artists Lori Lako and Jelena Gajnovic, and the photo scanning curator Enrico Tomassini. The zine was donated to the neighbors, who saw into it a spark for a crowdfunding process.