DICTIONARY OF WAR - Novi Sad edition: January 25 and 26, 2008
After a one year break the DICTIONARY OF WAR continues with a fifth edition on January 25th and 26th, 2008 in Novi Sad, Serbia. Again 25 new concepts on the topic of war will be presented in alphabetical order by artists, theorists, filmmakers, scientists, researchers. Loosely based on the slogan: "At least, when we create concepts, we are doing something" DICTIONARY OF WAR is a collaborative platform for creating concepts.
The Novi Sad edition of DICTIONARY OF WAR will feature contributions by: Verica Barac, chairwoman of the Anti-Corruption Committee in Serbia; artist Hans Bernhard from Austria; Novi Sad based artist Slavko Bogdanovic; Thomas Campbell, union activist and writer from US and St. Petersburg; Jovan Divjak, former general in Yugoslav army who defended Sarajevo; Bojan Djordjev, theater director from Belgrade; political scientist Volker Eick from Berlin; Galit Eilat, curator and theorist from Israel; artist from Kosovo, Albert Heta; IRWIN group from Ljubljana; Vesna Kesic, feminist and journalist from Zagreb; Erden Kosova, critic and theorist from Istanbul; artist from Zagreb Andreja Kuluncic; Geert Lovink, media theorist from Amsterdam; London based artist an filmmaker Jean Mathee; sound artist from Berlin Sebastian Meissner; Metahaven, design group rom Amsterdam and Bruxelles; visual art theorist from Skopje Suzana Milevska; Nebojsa Milikic, artist and activist from Belgrade; theater theorist and performing artist Gini Mueller; Martha Rosler, artist from New York; Florian Schneider, filmmaker and activist from Munich; Paris based theater playwriter Biljana Srbljanovic; Teofil Pancic, journalist and writer from Belgrade; Zelimir Zilnik, filmmaker from Novi Sad.
This winter, DICTIONARY OF WAR event will take place in Serbia where notion of war has a special meaning as a symbol of unresolved past, which in many ways determines the future of the territory of former Yugoslavia and its neighborhood – it is constituting form of a new order. To question different approaches to the subject of a war in this special edition of DICTIONARY OF WAR in Novi Sad has significant roll in analyzing present “power relations” in this specific region and wider. “Is genocidal war necessary for the organization of human society?” still reverberates through this region.
The DICTIONARY OF WAR is about polemics in various respects: It seeks confrontation with a reality that is characterised by the concealment of power relations the more that one talks about war and peace. But it is also about finding out to what extent war may function as an “analyzer of power relations” that constitutes current changes. Changes that have been producing ever new wordings: The new war, post-modern war, global war, immanent war - all sorts of labels that indicate that the juridical model of sovereignty would seem to have had its day: war as an armed confrontation between sovereign nation states is a thing of the past. While this still refers to conflict between different interest groups that are defined by the degree of their intensity and extension, unlike in the past war serves to regulate rather than destroy or renew existing power relations.
100 concepts on the issue of a war, have had already been invented, arranged and presented at the first four public, two-day events in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz and Berlin. The entire video recordings (live mixed from four cameras and additional sources) of the first four editions of the DICTIONARY OF WAR are available for free download from the website: http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/v2v
Besides that, in the lobby of the location of Novi Sad event, there will be TV sets installed offering to the audience the opportunity to browse through this unique topic-based multimedia archive that encompasses more than 50 hours of video material. Even by now the video files of the DICTIONARY OF WAR are shared by thousands of users worldwide who download the material for educational or research purposes and remix it in various new contexts. The next 25 concepts that are going to be presented at the Novi Sad edition will be ready for download near on real time - published under a creative commons share-alike license.
The Novi Sad edition of the DICTIONARY OF WAR starts on Friday, January 25, at 5 pm in Studio M, Radio Novi Sad, Ignjata Pavlasa 3. It will be continued on January 26, at 2 pm. The concepts will be introduced in alphabetical order by their concept persons in half-hour long presentations or performances. Entrance to the event is free of charge.
More informations at: http://dictionaryofwar.org or info[at]dictionaryofwar.org and office[at]kuda.org
DICTIONARY OF WAR is project by Multitude e.V. Berlin and Unfriendly Takeover Frankfurt am Main, and it is locally organized by New Media Center_kuda.org Novi Sad (www.kuda.org) in collaboration with “Zavod za kulturu Vojvodine” and Radio Novi Sad.
The project in Serbia is supported by Ministry of Culture and Education of Province Vojvodina, Fond for Open Society, Goethe Institute Belgrad, Austrian Cultural Forum Belgrade and The Royal Netherlands Embassy in Belgrade.