Invisible Violence at Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade

A multi-disciplinary project co-produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade (MoCAB) and ARTIUM Basque Museum-Centre of Contemporary Art

Curators: Zoran Erić, Blanca de la Torre and Seamus Kealy

Exhibition venues:
MoCAB Salon, Heritage House, Institute Cervantes – Belgrade, Serbia
from May 9th 2014 till June 30th, 2014
Opens Friday May 9th, 7 pm

ARTIUM, Basque Museum-Center of Contemporary Art – Vitoria, Spain
September 12th, 2014 to January 11th, 2015

This collaboration involves two distinct but jointly curated exhibitions, a film program to accompany both exhibitions, a conference in partnership with local academic bodies, and a series of talks, panel discussions and educational workshops.

The Belgrade exhibition includes: Kader Attia (FR), Itziar Barrio (ES), Ursula Biemann (CH), Rossella Biscotti (IT/NL) & Kevin van Braak (NL), Sarah Browne (IE), Declan Clarke (IE), István Csákány (EU), Willie Doherty (UK/IE), Harun Farocki (DE), Daniel García Andújar (ES), Marta Jovanović (RS/IT), Dejan Kaludjerović (RS/AT), Vladimir Miladinović (RS), Locky Morris (UK/IE), Christodoulos Panayiotou (CY), Garrett Phelan (IE), Nikola Radić Lucati (RS), María Ruido (ES), Francesc Ruiz (ES), Fernando Sánchez Castillo (ES/NL), Jonas Staal (NL), Milica Tomić (RS) and Katarina Zdjelar (RS/NL)

The Belgrade conference: 'Invisible Violence'
Partner institutions MoCAB and Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade

Saturday May 10th, 2014
10 am to 4.30 pm
Belgrade Youth Center

The conference gathers theorists and artists to discuss three thematic clusters of the project regarded as key symptoms that express 'invisible violence' within the European context today.

10:00 am: Panel 1 'Invisible Violence: Retraditionalization' (folklore, nationalisms, identity & trauma, erasure of history…)

Speakers: Tiziana Andana (IT), Declan Long (IE), Suzana Milevska (MK), Jan Müller (DE)
Moderator: Stevan Vuković (RS)

12.10 pm: Panel 2 'Invisible Violence: Bureaucratization' (EU apartheid – violence of new legislations; problematics of institutional governance, political interference …)

Speakers: Petar Bojanić (RS), Daniel García Andújar (ES), Massimo Palma (IT)
Moderator: Adriana Zaharijević (RS)

1:45 pm: Lunch break

2:25 pm: Panel 3 'Invisible Violence: Exploitation' (labour, capital networks, new political hegemonies …)

Speakers: Daniel Loick (DE), Itziar Barrio (ES), Nikola Radić Lucati (RS)
Moderator: Ana Vilenica (RS)

4.00 – 4.30 pm: Final discussion


Film Programme
Partner institutions MoCAB and Filmforum of Students Cultural Centre, Belgrade
Grand Hall of the Students Cultural Centre

Timetable of screenings:
Tuesday May 20th – João Salaviza (PT)
Tuesday May 27th – Duncan Campbell (IE)
Monday June 9th – Ferhat Özgür (TR)
Tuesday June 17th – Jesse Jones (IE)
Tuesday June 24th – Pavel Brăila (MD)


The project explores 'invisible violence' as it is discernable within quotidian, domestic, work-related, and everyday life; administrative and bureaucratic violence; visual violence in advertising and media; as well as subtle forms of sectarianism and community animosity arising from recent historical circumstances. These are forms of violence that are arguably globally omnipresent. These comparisons of violence shall be explored by bringing together artists' work that are problematizing territorial, nationalistic, mythological and identity-related topics in a topical fashion, without being bogged down by dualistic, partitioned or oppositional representations.

The theme of violence as a subject for an exhibition is naturally a sensitive and often provocative one, and sometimes generative of Manichean definitions of 'us and them.' Therefore, with this project, it is an aim to resist undue focus on issues of war, genocide and extreme violence, while enabling these to be a tangible, if unseen backdrop to the project. The violence being predominantly explored – that which is depicted or investigated in the invited artists' work - is forms of violence within language, within representation, as a result of shifting socio-economic conditions, and shifting ideas and policies that may be identified as enacting a 'cultural' violence upon geo-political bodies and individuals. This does not mean that these more topical and more pronounced forms of violence (terrorism, war, ethnic cleansing and genocide) are explicitly avoided in this exhibition, but that instead they do not dominate the field of references, which itself aims to cast several beacons on different forms of cultural and contemporary violence simultaneously. Additionally, a variety of obstacles that appeared during the production of this overall project, which ironically may be defined as key examples of invisible violence, will be presented and deciphered alongside the exhibition and its discourses. Originally a three-country project, and now touring between Serbia and Spain without an Irish partner, the processes of this project's development had unexpectedly and inadvertently uncovered forms of invisible violence.

This project aims to depict the universalising aspects of forms of invisible violence as they are currently prevalent all over Europe; forms of violence that are, for example, seen as a central threat to the production of egalitarian ideals of European citizenship.

With the support of:

Ministry of Culture and Information, Republic of Serbia
Arabako Foru Aldundia, Diputación Foral de Álava
Fund for an Open Society, Serbia
Culture Ireland
British Council Northern Ireland
Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
Instituto Cervantes, Belgrade
Österreichischen Kulturforum, Belgrade
Goethe Institut, Belgrade
Institut français, Belgrade
Instituto Camões, Belgrade
EUNIC, Serbia