THE 2025 YOUTH BIENNIAL OPEN CALL
The Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS) and the Union of Fine Artists’ Associations of Yugoslavia (SULUJ) invite young artists up to the age of 35*, as well as artistic collectives and various social groups, to participate in the Youth Biennial, which will be held in multiple locations across Belgrade during 2025.
THEMES
In a time marked by numerous armed conflicts and an increasing fear of war escalation, there arises a need to address the crisis, to offer concrete alternatives, or perhaps new imaginings of the real and the possible. Therefore, the 2025 Youth Biennial focuses on potential modalities of art and politics that can respond to crises in the contemporary world.
Can a crisis be overcome by silence, by reconciling disparate displaced positions, or perhaps by direct confrontation? Are solutions to be found in the ambivalent implications that create the new on the foundations of the existing, but beyond familiar categories and rigid structures? Is there, in today’s world, any space for affirmative and emancipatory struggle, for oases of new possibilities?
To initiate this discussion, the Organizing Team of the Youth Biennial, consisting of a group of young protagonists in the field of art working in collaboration with representatives of ULUS, invites all interested parties to propose works for one of the three dialogical curatorial segments that will be developed in cooperation with the Organizing Team.
OASES
“Permanent crisis and wars lead to the need for the formation of oases. Therefore, the first segment of the Biennale is dedicated to new imaginings of future and better worlds. According to French philosopher Jacques Rancière, oases represent islands that are separated from each other, with their differences holding the potential for unification, and they exist in deserts, or spaces filled with consensus. The fullness proposed by Rancière, alongside the simultaneous emptiness of the world outside the oases, indicates that they personify a departure from dominant discourses. Oases are vital, temporary free territories[1] within which mechanisms for progressive actions are formed. At the same time, they act outwardly, encompassing parts of deserts, transforming them. Oases, as active, transient spaces, represent a sort of micro-reconfigurations that have no intention of ever becoming part of the dominant discourse (desert).” (Concept: Tane Laketić[2])
OCCUPATIONS
“The concept of the second segment of the Youth Biennial is based on the ambivalent implications of the term Occupation, accompanied by a series of key words: excess, exodus, schism. The developmental procedure begins with examining the conditions of equality between theory and practice. It is evident that contemporary poetic matrices are the sites of a linguistic pandemonium of historical, intuitive, or ‘blind’ patterns, which are the result of highly complicated relations often reduced to the economics of existence and socio-political ‘injustices’. There arises a need for a certain type of application of critical models focused on the most visible forms of spectacle, a kind of ‘inquisition’ into the system of the contemporary art world. Occupation is a two-way street where our engagements, but also impositions, duties, or necessities that are not a matter of choice, reside. The street is interspersed with strips of exodus and excess, paths out (the way out), and ramifications of the quantity of something that is more than necessary, permissible, or desirable. Schism here is the irresolvability of such an inhabited life. This segment calls for the conceptualization of situations that would in some sense correspond to the metaphor of ‘choreographing’ productivity as a form of slippage from typological curatorial summation and simulation of artistic tendencies, creating conditions for a temporary institute of immaterial art and provoking forces of contingency from a position of zero understanding.” (Concept: Darko Vukić)
JUST CHILL
“How can we identify the most pressing problem in a world that seems on the verge of burning up at any moment? When there are so many problems that it’s almost impossible to single out one dominant issue to tackle with all our ethical, spiritual, and creative strength, the solution is often sought in silence, (un)intentional avoidance, and denial of its existence. This concept aims to observe and reveal the ways in which problems are – not discussed. This segment of the Youth Biennial, in line with the polyphony of a horizontal structure, does not ponder over one big Question but seeks to acknowledge the plurality of experiences, opening up space for the audience as much as for its participants – a space where they can express what troubles them and the ways they’ve grown accustomed to keeping silent about it – a space where they can speak out, if they dare, because the phrase ‘just chill,’ besides persistent denial, can also carry a hopeful connotation: something solvable, something we can, and are willing to, agree upon.” (Concept: Ana Filipović)
OPEN CALL GUIDELINES
If you have an artwork that corresponds to one or more of the proposed themes, or an idea for producing a new one, please fill out the application form.💙
After the selection process, which will take up to one month, we will contact you with more information about the selection results.
For all inquiries regarding the open call, you can reach us via email at bm.konkurs@gmail.com.
The deadline for submissions is October 15th, 2024.
Organizing Team of the Youth Biennial
*In the case of collectives and various social groups, it is acceptable for members to include individuals over the age of 35.
[1] The collective E-I-Migrative Art has been exploring the theme of “temporary free territories,” their historical contextualisation, and contemporary recontextualisation since the beginning of the wars in Yugoslavia. For more information, see here.
[2] A special thanks to the members of the platform for aesthetic education of all PhD In One Night, for their support, discussions, and resources.
