Iva Kontic

Dormitory — the old nickname for New Belgrade, which describes it perfectly (Vukajlija, a Serbian slang dictionary).

Created within the project WALK WITH THE ARTIST (Berlin-Belgrade-Bergamo), Dream Catching in Dormitory is a flashback excursion into the neighbourhood where I grew up in Belgrade during the 1990s—one that will most certainly never become part of any sightseeing tour. The intersection of New Belgrade’s Blocks 1, 3, and 33, with their lack of cultural sights or activities, bears witness to obsolete social plans and official ideologies of living, as well as to their by-products.

From 1989 to 2001, this was my everyday landscape and the perceptual framework through which my emotional and social identity was shaped, until I left to move to another country. The 42-minute silent performance, accompanied by an audio track audible through headphones, shares fragments of my past, using archival material contextualised within the contemporary urban landscape.

From the perspective of someone who has become a tourist in her own homeland, I seek to reconstruct the ruins of my personal memory of Belgrade—distant from Tito, communism, secession, old kings and dukes, and much closer to McDonald’s, turbo-folk, Brutalism, the banging of pots*, and sirens.

Dream Catching in Dormitory was commissioned by Walk With the Artist (Belgrade–Berlin–Bergamo, 2015).

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*During the 1990s, people would bang pots from their windows at 8 p.m. every evening in protest against the news broadcasts on government-controlled television.

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The project was supported by the European Cultural Foundaton Step Beyond Travel Grant