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” lays the foundation for SCUB’s activities, cultivating six Participatory Art-Based Research (PABR) projects.

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.

The roads change from hole-ridden and muddy to sleek autobahns, and even disappear at random junctures. Eventually, the story loses the plot (to lose one’s ability to understand or cope with what is happening) and burnout enters the stage. The narrator decides to become the subject (a person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with). The narrator has been the subject all along.In place of denouement (the final part of a narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved), the subjects light a cigarette and play music.

Locality
The roads linking the Balkans and the West

Keywords

dramaturgy, labour, encounter, balkaning, communitization

Mode of travelling
By truck

Researchers
Klelija ZIvkovic, Klementina Ristovska, Hana Milenkovska

Partner
SocioPatch

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.

We try to juxtapose these traditions to our contemporary visualization of borders which is highly rooted in the territorial gen plan – economized land, taxation, and territorial control. Travelling to the mountainous region of northern Albania, the extreme conditions of the landscape – hard to economize and hard to map – have produced a symbology, a graphic language, myths and codes that we think can contribute to bring to light an alternate approach to belonging, ownership and the reading of our land.

Locality
Mountainous regions of Kelmend

Keywords
seasons, rocks, humor, long walks, survival

Mode of travelling

Tracing environmentally damaging behaviors and locations

Researchers
Bora Baboçi, Stella Karafili

Partner
Tulla Cultural Center

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.

It is a visual fragment of common struggle in hostile terrain and an imaginary open assembly upon those mountains.

Locality
Mountainous passages

Keywords
coexistence, mountain pass

Mode of travelling

Crossing borders

Researcher
Rika Krithara

Partner
Biennale of Western Balkans

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.

The water is crystal clear. A couple of plastic bottles pass me downstream, I shift my gaze to the empty can next to me. I have a stomach cramp and think about how someone can have such a behaviour. That one can is not a problem, nor are those bottles that have passed, the problem is the fact that citizens who live there and local tourists leave their garbage but even throw it into the river and dump it with intent! The problem is ingratitude, lack of shame, respect and conscience? I wonder if there is a way to influence the change of these bad widespread environmentally unfriendly habits?

Locality
Landfills and rivers

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

Mode of travelling

Tracing environmentally damaging behaviors

Researcher
Djurdjica Bjelosevic

Partner
UNSA Geto

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.

Their eyes trained to distinguish the – what appear to be just two black dots now – as this or that pigeon. other comments on the rise and the consistency of the pigeons. One shouts or whistles, the other has a stick on the hand to hit anything noisy, Maks weaves a bag on a stick to scare the pigeons away So that they fly high. For a moment I wish to be a Pllumaxhi myself to be able to travel with my Dynek and Kuta beyond the walls of separation, in between us and them, them and us. Prejudices. The pigeon dances in the sky and twirls as it is free to roam… Sky has no limits for them while here on the ground I am just another one like Pllumaxhis to be considered criminal.

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

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.

From the outside, it is often perceived as exotic and wild, a must see when on urban safari in this peculiar part of Europe. At the same time, the local mainstream narrative points the finger to the individuals and portrays it as a transgression of those traditionally perceived as “newcomers”, refugees or gastarbeiters. Through different research practices, the research focuses on demystifying this spatial phenomenon and the myths that feeds it. A mandatory step in building a better space and a society.

Locality
Urban

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

Mode of travelling

Urban exploration

Researcher
Ljubica Slavković

Partner
Tačka komunikacije