Research projects – Some Call Us Balkans

Terms of
Encounter

Peaks, walks, calls, pause: charting the altitudes

Passing Lines

TrashFormNation

Taming
the Wild

Pllumaxhit

Click on the islands
& hear

Balkan Myths and Misconceptions

Participatory art-based research (PABR), North Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, 2021

Six research projects, contesting sociocultural structures that produce divides between people and other people, their environment, and other species in the Balkans.

Researchers

Skopje, North Macedonia

Research project #1

Terms of Encounter

The narrator hits the road with a vague goal of arriving at myths of the contemporary Balkans by driving along with truck drivers’ experience of their Balkanness as relayed in their own gripping stories.

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Locality
The roads linking the Balkans and the West

Keywords

beauty, labour, encounter, balkaning, communitization

Mode of travelling
By truck

Researchers
Dragan Teodosiev, Hana Milenkovska, Klelija Zivkovic, Klementina Ristovska, Simeon Angelovski

Partner
SocioPatch

Tirana, Albania

Research project #2

Peaks, walks, calls, pause: charting the altitudes

The project tries to trace ancient traditions and systems of knowledge in order to bring forth the memory of a different understanding of the land, toponyms, ownership, and property.

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Locality
Mountainous regions of Kelmend

Keywords
seasons, rocks, humor, long walks, survival

Mode of travelling

Tracing environmentally damaging behaviors and locations

Researchers
Bora Baboçi in collaboration with Stella Karafili

Partner
Tulla Cultural Center

Ioannina, Greece

Research project #3

Passing Lines

Passing Lines discusses the perception of community, coexistence, and borders, inspired by the passing of Albanian groups of refugees through the Greek mountain borders and their chance encounters with Greek mountaineers.

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Locality
Mountainous passages

Keywords

assembly, coexistence, community, mountain pass, moving lines

Mode of travelling

Crossing borders

Researcher
Rika Krithara

Partner
Biennale of Western Balkans

Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Research project #4

TrashFormNation

I am on the bank of the Una River, in the National Park while cutting old c.d.s that I use in my artwork. I've been doing something like this for about 15 years, figuring out how to make waste a medium for artistic expression.

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Locality
Landfills and rivers

Keywords
environment, waste, (un)consciousness, art, transformation

Mode of travelling

Tracing environmentally damaging behaviors

Researcher
Djurdjica Bjelosevic

Partner
UNSA Geto

Pristina, Kosovo

Research project #5

Pllumaxhit

The pigeon’s whirl around each other in the sky, Pllumaxhit (Pigeon fanciers) look all up - spine straight. Some with a hand on their forehead to avoid the sunset’s sun.

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Locality
Villages, Fields: the Sky

Keywords
pigeons, travelling, mobility, pigeon keepers

Mode of travelling

Flying: Going where we are not accustomed to go

Researcher
Shpat Shkodra

Partner
Termokiss

Belgrade, Serbia

Research project #6

Taming the Wild: Leap into the Extra-Legal Building Practice in Belgrade

Taming the Wild addresses the widespread extra-legal building practice, a spatial phenomenon widely spread across Belgrade and the Balkans. It occurs in the grey zone of planning and construction, somewhere between legal and illegal, formal and informal, and everywhere across the region.

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Locality
Urban

Keywords
Extra-legal, urban planning, layers, state-driven, perspectives

Mode of travelling

Urban exploration

Researcher
Ljubica Slavković

Partner
Tačka komunikacije