Serbian Pavilion at the 53rd Biennale di Venezia

By Natasa Tepavcevic
Venice, June 22, ( Serbia Today) - The 53rd International Art Exhibition, titled Making Worlds directed by Daniel Birnbaum and organized by La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta, is open to the public from June 7th to November 22nd 2009.
The Director of the 53rd Exhibition, Daniel Birnbaum, has been Rector of the Staedelschule Frankfurt/Main and its Kunsthalle Portikus since 2001.
Serbian pavilion at the 53rd Biennale di Venezia is envisioned as a space of dialogue between two art projects, thus far unrelated yet now jointly presented. Although they are artists of different generations, attitudes and philosophies, Zoran Todorović (Belgrade, 1965) and Katarina Zdjelar (Belgrade, 1979), share a common point in arguing that “an artist is a free mediator within the space of social interaction, and that artistic subjectivity emerges only if situated in the frictions of a world constructed from social matter.”
Zoran Todorović “WARMTH”
Todorović initiated systematic stockpiling of up to 2 tons of human hair. The conditions in which this process is carried out in a closed system are thoroughly documented. The blankets are made from human hair and documentation of collecting hair will be shown on exhibition. In order to understand Todorovic’s practice one have to follow the theoretical reference from bio-politic to necro-politic.
Katarina Zdjelar “BUT IF YOU TAKE MY VOICE, WHAT WILL BE LEFT TO ME?”
Katarina Zdjelar explores forms of regulated systems of communication and learning and affects of shaping the 'speaking body'. Her audiovisual works focus on speech, noise of speech and its performative powers. She works with language and voice as a tool for approaching various subjects, with a particular interest in states of transition, translation, migratory or nomadic being.
Commissioner and Curator of Serbian Pavilion is Branislav Dimitrijević. He is art historian, theoretician and curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. His research includes the theory of the visual as well as the concept of art. In addition, he has demonstrated his interest, in numerous publications, in the relation between culture and ideology in the former Yugoslavia.
These biographical details of curator of Serbian Pavilion are important to mention in order to understand position of curator in contemporary art world. Contemporary curating is a form of cultural production, immaterial labor based in critique, a practice that increasingly exhibits an ability, and furthermore a desire. Political authority is laid down among an organizer, a curator and consumers. Therefore, we have to keep in mind that culture identity of each pavilion is functionally- social status established as an effect of hierarchical compositions, political proposals, where dominating identity verifying integration represents the politics of globalisation. Non-ideological position of artist, curator or art itself is impossibility.