Interview with Dunja Blažević (ZVONO Group)

Biography: 

Dunja Blažević, art historian , curator, editor of the visual program of the Gallery of the Student Cultural Center (SKC) in Belgrade from 1970 to 1976 and director of the SKC from 1976-1979 and director of the Center for Contemporary Art / SCCA / pro.ba in Sarajevo since 1996 -2010.

 

Group Zvono (Sarajevo, 1982-1992) Its members were Sead Čizmić, Biljana Gavranović, Kemal Hadzić, Sadko Hadžihasanović, Narcis Kantardžić and Aleksandar Sasa-Bukvić, the initiators of the joint work of the group and the driving force of its organization and promotion. As newly graduated students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, familiar with contemporary art trends, they do not wait to be recognized in the existing system of art. Eager for change, they form a group that will operate outside the institutions and in a way hitherto unknown and unrecognized in our artistic environment. They organize art actions, performances, exhibitions in the most unusual places: bars, streets, shop windows, in nature. This was until then the most radical behavior in modern art in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their group actions (stadium games, parodies and parties) are an expression of generational self-identification, while each of them in his individual work seeks and develops his own plastic form and poetics in a wide range of "New Images" of the eighties. The activity of the Zvono group (especially its extremely activist attitude towards the cultural space in which it operates) represents the most radical 'behavior' on the art scene of Bosnia and Herzegovina at that time.

According to the Zvono art group, the SCCA Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art established the ZVONO Award for Young Fine Artists in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in 2006.

Dunja Blažević, art historian and curator
Summary: 

Interview with Dunja Blažević (ZVONO Group), Belgrade, November 2017.

 

Dunja Blažević, art historian , curator, editor of the visual program of the Gallery of the Student Cultural Center (SKC) in Belgrade from 1970 to 1976 and director of the SKC from 1976-1979 and director of the Center for Contemporary Art / SCCA / pro.ba in Sarajevo since 1996 -2010.

 

Group Zvono (Sarajevo, 1982-1992) Its members were Sead Čizmić, Biljana Gavranović, Kemal Hadzić, Sadko Hadžihasanović, Narcis Kantardžić and Aleksandar Sasa-Bukvić, the initiators of the joint work of the group and the driving force of its organization and promotion. As newly graduated students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, familiar with contemporary art trends, they do not wait to be recognized in the existing system of art. Eager for change, they form a group that will operate outside the institutions and in a way hitherto unknown and unrecognized in our artistic environment. They organize art actions, performances, exhibitions in the most unusual places: bars, streets, shop windows, in nature. This was until then the most radical behavior in modern art in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their group actions (stadium games, parodies and parties) are an expression of generational self-identification, while each of them in his individual work seeks and develops his own plastic form and poetics in a wide range of "New Images" of the eighties. The activity of the Zvono group (especially its extremely activist attitude towards the cultural space in which it operates) represents the most radical 'behavior' on the art scene of Bosnia and Herzegovina at that time.

According to the Zvono art group, the SCCA Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art established the ZVONO Award for Young Fine Artists in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in 2006.

 

Art organization (review of historical practices through the XX century to the present day), research project kuda.org

Art Organisation analyses the phenomenon of artistic (self)organisation and relations within artistic groups and collectives in the post-Yugoslav region during the last fifty years, and the ways it influenced the profile and quality of their artistic production. Research within the project Art Organisation is aimed at group and collective processes of creation and internal dynamics between artists and other participants in them. The focus is on self-organised initiatives outside the framework of official institutions. Through the phenomena of self-organisation, the project questions the role of civil society organisations as potential progressive places in society through dealing with art.

The introduction to the research of group work, joint authorship, working conditions, was conducted during 2017 through interviewing participants and protagonists of the contemporary art scene from Yugoslavia, and continued during 2018/2019. The research team is composed of members of kuda.org with associates from Belgrade, theoreticians and art historians Milica Pekić and Stevan Vuković and Ana Peraica from Split. During 2019, the interviewed were collectives and groups in the field of contemporary art, theoreticians and art historians, and protagonist artists who realized their practice through group art work.

Art Organisation is part of a wider project Vectors of Collective Imagination where kuda.org cooperates with partners: Multimedia Institute mi2 and Kulturtreger-Books, Zagreb (HR); Glänta Gothenburg  (SE); Kontrapunkt, Skopje (MK) and Berliner Gazette, Berlin (DE).