It’s raining outside, but I don’t believe that it is is not just a title. Nor can we simply understand it as a theme, for a theme must define the interpretive policy of one or more people who function as authors, and who represent a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses.¹ By understanding the title in this way, we can set limits on the implications of a complex process, and merely state that an exhibition originates in forming a group of works of art around a given theme. Instead, however, it is offered here as a kind of slogan or even a statement expressing our (intimate) belief in the emancipating powers of our own activity, against all the odds of brutal reality. Believing in something simply means that we regard a certain cognitive content as true. For instance, to believe that the sky is blue means to think that the statement The sky is blue is true.

Knowledge, therefore, implies belief.

The statement It’s raining outside, but I don’t believe that it is is a contradictory one. However, knowing that something is true means believing in this something, or that this something is true. Therefore, the slogan we offer actually invokes the epistemological responsibility of our own belief, rather than invoking yet another rhetorical phrase. It expresses a belief in the paradox of our own position.

The title of the exhibition actually represents a linguistic formulation of a paradox that Wittgenstein claimed to be the greatest philosophical achievement of its creator, G.E. Moore. In one of his lectures, Moore pointed out the absurdity of saying something like It’s raining outside, but I don’t believe that it is. This paradox, better known as Moore’s Paradox, starts from the premises that it can be true at the same time that P and that I do not believe that P (or that no-P), and that I cannot without absurdity believe or assume both at the same time. In taking over this formula, we have to ask ourselves why we do certain things that we do. How is it after constantly declaring the crisis of a surfeit of international, biennale, annual and similar exhibitions, that we are doing it once again? Particularly in light of the fact that we have decided to do it in a place which lacks the basic infrastructure for holding such a demanding, complex, exhausting and, finally, expensive event. This is precisely why we must not view this exhibition as yet another attempt by the periphery to overcome those weaknesses that make it the periphery in the first place. For, if this were so, then we would be doomed to fail. We would be confronted with arguments against movement like those which Zeno formulated long ago in his paradoxes. According to these, no movement is possible, because whatever moves must first go half the way before reaching its goal. So this is not our attempt to put yet another town in the category of those with certain cultural and tourist attractions, and thus join a multitude of such events in developing strategies for putting ourselves on the map between Istanbul and Venice. In some way, everyone in a position like ours desires this, and it is only natural that we, too, aspire to it. However, this exhibition certainly does not wish to offer itself as yet another obedient sector of the capitalistic entertainment industry. Rather, it proposes that we seek to recognize a critical spirit which analyses the past, present and future role of art exhibitions, and thus our own role in them.

This is why the sense of responsibility in defining the curator’s position and intentions seems far greater, as this is the first of many exhibitions to come, which will hopefully initiate a long co-existence with this city and the people who live and work there. First of all, it is necessary to focus on the local situation, whose layers must be understood in order to be able to ask questions relevant to this community. This is a complex society which is currently undergoing a considerable transformation, and so it is possible that some important themes concerning the past, present, or future might get lost in the rush to bring this society to a new system. Trying to explain the issues in this society would be highly pretentious. Despite giving up on any such attempt, however, we must not neglect our responsibility to interpret and represent what Banja Luka is today, in relation to what it used to be and what it could be. Today it is a city with a certain potential for development. In this regard, everything points to a consensus about creating the illusion of living in a post-ideological society, which represents some sort of fertile ground for the unavoidable presence, and even priority, of capitalist market logic. On the other hand, perhaps due to these very changes, an interesting art scene has started to develop here, as has already been recognized by the profession.² In this sense, the relationship to the past and its consequences needs be set in the framework of sustainability, which creates a latent situation that can only be defined using Chantal Mouffe’s concept of agonism. This she describes as a different mode of manifestation of antagonism because it involves a relation not between enemies but between ‘adversaries’, adversaries being defined in a paradoxical way as ‘friendly enemies’, that is, persons who are friends because they share a common symbolic space but also enemies because they want to organise this common symbolic space in a different way.³ Instead of stating,

Thus, it is clear in what direction this city is rapidly developing, but the change has not happened yet. It is still possible to open a field of critical action and point out the important aspects of past, present and future whose nuances may be foreseen on that way. Thus, with this exhibition, we find the city in a situation of being neither here nor there. More precisely, it is here and there, thus producing a dialectical potential which, in Marx’s interpretation of the dynamic potential of dialectical materialism, is based on a unity of mutually disharmonious and excluding, but at the same time equally important and irreplaceable parts or aspects.

So what can this dialectical situation of a place tell us? Or, even better, what curatorial strategy can we apply in order to translate this dialectical connotation of space, and then present it in the form of curatorial conception and, later, an exhibition? How might we recognize, in this process of translation, certain social, perhaps even utopian inventions?

This is why the present exhibition could not be a typical thematic one. Such exhibitions, as a rule, try to impose some kind of great universal story. The most important thing for them is that the curator’s position be that of a supreme authority, while the criterion of selection always comes down, essentially, to a criterion of personal affinity and a value judgment: the curator will, in the final analysis, choose the works that he or she likes. This is why we have tried to utilize a particular type of economy in making our selection, one that would make use of the potential of already invested artistic inventions, which have intensively and directly negotiated with this space and related to it, and which have engaged topics that are important and valid to it. Nonetheless, regardless of the fact that this exhibition includes works made and performed for and in relation to Banja Luka⁴, it does not primarily constitute an exhibition of these works, or a documentation of them. It seeks, in fact, to reexamine forms of possible collectivity by constructing events whose outcomes may vary. Just as modest artistic proposals could be better formulated in terms of this what might be rather than what is⁵, we would like to borrow this principle for this exhibition.

This exhibition represents neither an attempt at, nor a consequence of, summarizing art in the region today, nor does it seek to present certain tendencies in contemporary art here. Quite the contrary. What it is trying to do could be defined as a process, or a series of processes, whereby certain works or artistic phenomena enter into dialogue with the place where we are exhibiting them.

However, here we should already start avoiding the trap of defining the exhibition by what it is not and should not be, and instead try to define it by what it is and what we think it should represent.

The First International Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art in Banja Luka, with its works of art, events, situations and meetings, positions this place and its context within a complex network of references. Therefore, the right question, which we are asking in this way, should be where the exhibition is taking place, instead of the expected why. (Why should be already explained by our dogmatic belief in the truth of the title statement.) However, a place where art is presented or happens in some other way is never completely neutral. Indeed, it cannot, even must not be neutral. It inevitably reflects the context of a society, ideology, state, economy and politics. By indicating the locations we have chosen for the exhibition, together with all the layers of meaning inscribed in them over time, we will, concurrently, indicate how we wanted this exhibition to be defined through its venues. The exhibition will be scattered all around the city and absorbed into the urban tissue. It will be presented in relatively invisible, everyday buildings and premises, which are viewed not only as the background but primarily as the basis for presenting selected works of art. Each of these venues has been positioned as a meeting point of artists, the city, visitors, passers-by, architecture, and spectators; of traces of modernity, progress, history and heritage.

The Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art is the only exhibition venue which normally serves to display art. It does not normally host small studio or solo exhibitions, as is common in such salons; rather, its exhibitions depend in a certain way on the “supply” from local artists. It is conceived as a kind of showroom, a space belonging to Banja Luka artists, and it is precisely the dynamics of a retail outlet that makes it a highly visible point in the urban milieu. That is why these premises have been chosen to exhibit artist Bojan Fajfrić’s work 5 December 1978, which was created in Banja Luka and relates to its inhabitants. This work examines one of the city’s most significant features, the Boska Department Store, which occupies a central place on the main city square, but which has also managed to freeze a certain moment in history and continue to represent the lifestyle of the recent past. The subject of this artist’s research, however, is not the building itself, nor its layers of meaning, but its people – the employees of Boska, their relationship to this place, to its past and the spirit of collectivism that still move through Banja Luka.

Apart from the MSA Salon, we will make use of the city streets, a photographer’s shop, old offices and a sports arena, all of which have survived the recent socialist past, as well as some former military barracks which are in the process of being transformed into a university campus. A seemingly abandoned building within the university, better known as Tereza, is waiting to be rebuilt and put to use on the campus. The School of Architecture is ready to move in, just as other schools have moved into other buildings of the former military barracks. In this transitional period, we decided to use this building for the exhibition and show how different social and ideological phantasms can be inscribed. According to Žižek, phantasm is the answer to the question What do you really want?. At the same time, it gives coordinates to our wishes, so to speak, establishing the frame that enables us to want something⁶. However, various social frameworks contain various ideologies, and the answers about what we want can be so varied that the objects of our wishes occupy a whole range of possibilities, from one extreme to the other. Juxtaposition thus offers itself as the keyword to describe the exhibition in Tereza. At the very entrance, visitors will be greeted by a fabricated projection room, a sort of gallery within a gallery, where videos and short films by Primož Novak and Nika Oblak, Jasmila Žbanić, Šejla Kamerić and Ibro Hasanović will be shown. This reminiscence of a cinema setting gives these works, which deal with film language and interpret its limits, a frame within which their juxtaposition can form part of a meaningful curatorial concept. Next, on the first floor, works by Katarina Zdjelar and Johanna Billing, Everything is Gonna Be and Magical World, will be shown in symmetrical rooms, one across from the other. These works are very similar in terms of artistic procedures, and yet quite different in how they recognize and interpret social and ideological structures. Both feature choirs singing appealing pop-song melodies; yet in the context of what kind of choirs they are, and where they come from, what they sing has an almost contrary effect. This is not only because the artists come from different environments and social backgrounds, nor because their field of research is that faraway part of the European continent⁷, whose study tells them about their own identity more through what it is not, than through what it is. Instead, the artists’ contrary positions are reflected in their conclusions about the potential for change: one’s conclusion about its impossibility comes from the fact that some kind of change has already happened (and so it is quite difficult to believe in any revolutionary need), while for the other this impossibility comes despite a unanimous, instrumentalized wish to achieve a certain change. Hidden behind those opposing projections are the spaces where works by Ištvan Išt Huzjan and Damir Očko are exhibited. Within such an arrangement, they can be interpreted as some kind of subconscious aspirations, and placed within the category of the possible comprehension of subconscious activity, which seems to be more active and essentially more independent than consciousness. On the top floor, in the attic of the Tereza building, there is a single work occupying two rooms facing each other. This is Interview by artist Stefanos Tsivopoulos, which consists of an interview with a Bosnian war veteran made by a team of BBC correspondents and its remake by a group of Belgrade actors. Visitors will thus be able to choose whether to watch the real or the fake version first, thus creating a precondition for thinking about the truth and how it appears in the media. What sometimes surprises us is our ability to recognize this: although most of us firmly believe we are capable of seeing through the attractive veil in searching for universal truth, in practice this is not necessarily the case. This is exactly why the work of Anita Di Bianco could be distributed to visitors and displayed withi n the exhibition, right between the two extremes of Tsivopoulos’s work. Di Bianco’s Corrections and Clarifications is printed in the form of a newspaper supplement, containing not news but previously published corrections and retractions. Thus it can be interpreted as some indicator of the possibility of joining together the juxtaposed contraries of the Tereza exhibition. This is the function which the works of Ivan Petrović, Ahmet Ogut and Isidora Fićović also have, here specifically in relation to architectural aspects of this building.

There is something poetic in the fact that citizens of Banja Luka call the tallest (thirteen-storey) office building in the center of town, built several decades ago, the Skyscraper – a citizen of New York or Shanghai would certainly be a little surprised by this. Other buildings just as tall and more important (such as the church or the government building) have emerged since then, but there is still only one Skyscraper. Among other things, it houses a modest-sized office where the artists’ organization Protok⁸ is located. Two floors of the Skyscraper and its entrance will be used in this exhibition. What first comes to mind when thinking about exhibitions in high office buildings is the possibility of elevation, and so here, too, a subtle hint of gradation has been permitted. The entrance to the building is at the start of a pedestrian zone and Banja Luka’s busiest street, where most of what we call city life takes place. It is here – right next to a cash machine and frequent cries of: Change money! – that a robot will beg for the needs of the materially impoverished. This do it yourself robot is the work of artist Saša Sedlaček, and passers-by will also be offered an instruction manual for building it. Right next to Protok’s office on the 11th floor, two other identical offices are being used for the exhibition. Here videos by Adela Jušić and Matei Bejenaru, dealing with the individual’s relationship to the community, and the community’s to the individual, will be projected. Given such a dichotomy (individual/community), what do these two notions have in common? What space do they share, and is there any possibility for cooperation between them, or can we perhaps only conclude this is impossible? Whether the singular or the plural aspects of identity are in question, a short visit to this floor during the aforementioned elevation can remind us to what extent the creation of a certain identity is based in the place where it comes from. The 13th and highest floor of the skyscraper probably offers the best views of Banja Luka. Its interior is typical of somewhat more luxurious offices from the time of the socialist Yugoslavia. This slightly decadent patina on a once opulent modernism, still present in its details, stresses the unique aspect of the works shown here by Hito Steyerl, Lala Raščić, Jakup Ferri, Amel Ibrahimović and Gordana Anđelić - Galić. What these works have in common – an administrative functionality – is the main characteristic of these premises. Administrative logic assumes different forms of existence and functioning. These works express an awareness of it and its inevitability, whether in using, criticizing or even ridiculing administrative language, or applying its methods of distribution, or testing its limits vis-à-vis such categories as truth and justice. Typical of this kind of logic is its always somehow being situated at the top; or, to be more precise, it comes from the top, whatever that may mean in particular cases.

The Obilićevo Sports Arena, formerly called the Mejdan Arena, was built exactly thirty years ago, at just about the time when the Borac handball club of Banja Luka was the European champion.
⁹Nonetheless, the works exhibited in this venue are grouped around the idea of a monument. At the very entrance, in a kind of vestibule, two documentary videos by Andeja Kulunčić are exhibited: A Reconstruction of an Unimportant Day in Our History and A Reconstruction of an Important Day in Our History. Each represents a day in the history of the Tikveš palace, through both memories and a reconstruction of this residential villa’s majordomo. Having scrupulously researched the details, the artist subtly insists on a reconstruction of two extremes that position our recent history via a presentation of protocol, which is, essentially, the political means par excellence. By placing these two videos at the entry to the exhibition in Mejdan Hall, we open the possibility of presenting different proposals for interpreting the idea of a monument: those by Igor Grubić, Bikvanderpol, Matei Bejenaru, Bojan Fajfrić, and a group of enthusiasts from Belgrade.

We concluded a specific kind of business/artistic agreement with Foto Risto, a photographer’s shop in the city centre. Artist Phil Collins’ work Free Fotolab consists of a public campaign offering city-dwellers around the world free development of 35mm film and the printing of color photos, in exchange for a universal right to use whichever of these photos the artist chooses. The place for collecting and processing the films will be Foto Risto. The work, which is about the unpredictable use of family photographs, intimacy, and the mingling of the public and private spheres, will run for the entire length of the exhibition.Its happening in cities around the world creates a constantly increasing photo archive which allows Collins to construct a portrait of the city at a particular moment in history.

Another important place is the Terzić Gallery. This gallery-cum-apartment has been closed for the last couple of years, and by putting it to use again we will demonstrate the significance of this place. The gallery was founded when Draginja and Vojo Terzić opened the doors of their art collection to their fellow citizens. This is an important collection of works by great Yugoslav artists¹⁰ which this married couple had gathered together over several decades. Thus they devoted their entire life to their greatest passion – art. During the 1970s the Banja Luka city administration recognized the importance of this initiative and provided the couple with a venue, i.e. an apartment in which they could live and exhibit their valuable and highly unusual collection. Truly, it might seem that such a convergence of social circumstances and artistic initiatives could only be realized in the particular social and political moment of former Yugoslavia. The fact that such an art collection was possible speaks to the specificity of the Yugoslav political and ideological project. Socialist self-management had distanced itself from the rest of the communist world at that time – through its affinity for modernism in art, among other things. The President of the Municipal Assembly of Banja Luka, during the ceremony opening this art collection to the public, said the following: I would say that this collection has its own, specific value. It is a commemoration of the enthusiasm, love and efforts of two people from Banja Luka, born in Sarajevo, one a modest housewife, the other a skilled worker – a driver, now retired. They resolved to enrich their family harmony and happiness by a new form of expression – the passionate collecting (purchasing) of valuable works by the best-known Yugoslav artist.¹¹ The way Draginja and Vojo Terzić lived their lives, their socializing with artists, and their discussions about art, were practically the only capital this modest family ever had. With it, they succeeded in creating a collection that was representative in many respects. Our exhibition will seek to capture the atmosphere of their life and work, the result of their understanding of art, and their passionate art collecting. In this apartment where they lived and exhibited, works by the following artists will be presented: Ana Hušman, Arman Kulašić, Annika Ström, Ahmet Öğüt, Dajan Špirić, Bojan Jovanović and Igor Ševčuk. The exhibition is conceived around the idea of family, stereotypes, values, rules of behavior, intimacy, citizenry, and the reflection of these themes in art. Through a dialogue among works by these artists, we wished to raise the question of their political potential and the limits or possibilities of emancipation.

The very way in which we understand and interpret this exhibition, seeking to employ all the implications of precisely this place and its heritage, should serve as a sort of a indicator, and speak to how this exhibition wishes, or even needs, to relate to its city – Banja Luka. The venues should thus be reinterpreted, contextualized, adopted for the purpose of building new social, artistic and institutional relations. Everything indicates that it is perhaps the exhibition itself which could offer a new and different shaping of the social framework. In any event, the exhibition is here to offer an interpretation of this framework, but also a creative redefinition of it. The First International Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art SPAPORT and its accompanying events should be understood as a kind of platform, a starting point, for this complex type of dialogue.

 

1. Michel Foucault, What is an Author?
   in: Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977.
2. Medjuprostor, an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Banja Luka, curated by Dunja Blažević i Sarita Vujković.
3. Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, London: Verso, 2000, p. 13.
4. Artist Matei Bejenaru part of August spent in Banja luka, producing his work 2008.
especialy for this purpose. Bojan Fajfrić spent almost a year researching in Banja Luka’s landmark Boska and its workers, Darinka Pop Mitić bestowed to the city her mural On Solidarity, while Emir Šehanović's street intervention is untitled as yet.

5. http://neme.org/main/183/Collectivity
6. Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Verso, 1987, p.153.
7. One artist is from Serbia, and she produced a video in collaboration with the choir from
Norway, while another comes from Sweden and she collaborated with the choir of an elementary school in Zagreb.

8. Artists organization Protok was granted an office from Banja Luka municipality without charge.
9. Robert Musil, Monuments, Selected Writings, London and New York, 1998, p 320
   (originaly published in Germany, 1936)
10. In this collection, there are works by: Sava Šumanović, Milan Konjović, Milo Milunović, Jovan Bijelić, Kosta Hakman, Petar Dobrović, Stojan Aralica, Mersad Berber, Ismet Mujezinović,
    Oton Postružnik and many others, mostly their contemporaries and friends.
11. Catalogue: Umjetnička zbirka Draginje i Voje Terzić, Umjetnička galerija Banja Luka,
    Banja Luka, 1978.
Živko Radišić was later (1998 - 2002) second president of the Bosnia and Herzegovina presidency.