Pre-opening event for artists and friends: 25 September 2014, 20h, Gallery KM8, |Urban Incubator, Savamala
Opening: 26 September 2014, 19h THE CULTURAL CENTRE OF BELGRADE
Detailed program and all the information about B_Tour Festival in Belgrade and Berlin can be found in B_Tour Belgrade catalogue and on the websites www.b-tour.org and www.8010.rs
B_Tour is a Berlin based organization which revolves around guided-tours-as-an-artistic-strategy. This framework can provide both a fertile ground to bring audiences and artists together and generate a discussion about urban environments within the artistic world and outside of it. Chosen tours provoke city dwellers to become active participants in the creation of the spaces they inhabit. B_Tour is a platform for organizations, artists and citizens to network, collaborate, cooperate and exchange ideas about the cities we live in. This platform allows underrepresented narratives to surface and infiltrate the hegemonic discourse that shape cities.
“B_Tours” explore the politics of the public space, psychogeography, touring as an artistic strategy, gentrification, citizen’s social responsibility and more.
The characteristics of B_Tours
B because it is not A; because it’s the alternative to the narrative of conventional tours.
B because it is a personal Biography of the community.
B because it is breaking the boundaries between public and private space.
B_Tour generates an interaction between a guide, an audience and a space. On a route through the public space, a guide leads an audience through a narrative and is therefore a narrator interpreting the urban space. A B_Tour is conscious of the existence of multiple narratives and truths and presents the audience with one of these. It doesn’t provide THE true perception of a space.
A B_Tour is a political piece of art since it is perceived by its creators as a call to rethink and criticize the environments we occupy. Furthermore, B_Tours incubate social involvement and are therefore political.
A B_Tour is not a spectacle nor looking for conventional touristic “alternative city tours”. It tends to a subtle approach towards its environment. This subtleness and attentiveness is the result of the guide’s personal connection (artistic research, educational background, locality, interests etc.) with the space.
B_Tour | Belgrade
The main activity of 80|10 organization from Belgrade is based on international cooperation projects in the field of performing and visual arts, music and design. 80|10 is primarily engaged in cultural projects with the aim to show and support creativity, innovation, local specificity, international relevance and courage through art projects.
These characteristics were some of the main foundations for this year’s co-partnership with B_Tour Festival from Berlin in order to jointly create a satellite edition of B_Tours in Belgrade (followed after B_Tour Festival in Berlin) which promote and at the same time question the specificities of Belgrade (and Serbia) as well as local art scene. Together with international artists, it is an opportunity to bring closer international art initiatives with local audiences through a unique artistic visions of the urban environment.
B_Tour Belgrade edition is dealing with socio-political, cultural, historic and economic aspects which constitute the city. The festival’s program promises: Seeing the city with new eyes.
With the lack of governmental or any other support due to the global crisis common to many European cities, young people in Serbia working in the field of culture and creative industries are developing new, innovative projects trying to revive the socio-cultural scene by resourcefulness and creative strategies as the only way to be proactive in society.
How we are influenced by the city we live in and which city identity one adapts is what the B_Tour program is trying to investigate. Choosing Belgrade, B_Tour had a starting initiative of bringing support to the creative development and a wider participation of residents in the city by recognizing some of the important subjects for the functioning of the city and placing a concern on dialogue, collaboration, critical participation, and free choices. B_Tour Belgrade is trying to understand how the public responds to socially engaged art and relates to projects they participate in, where in some cases the audience is also a co-producer of the event/tour.
Focus is on the constant need for social transformation that seems even more urgent, finding out that socially engaged practices can be seen as a powerful and crucial form of political resistance. That is why the Festival, in a way, is taking responsibility and takes over a critical form of intervention as a reflection on problematic everyday situations. These initiatives should reach ordinary people finding themselves in specific situations to change something in their living conditions, even for a day.
Why Belgrade?
Having a situation where the options for cultural engagements in urban environments are narrowed, one of the choices is to use accessible space - public space more creatively and to find new ways to imagine the future of the city. We are trying to improve the city trough art and education by changing its dynamics toward new connectivity, with citizen participation at the root of urban change.
Belgrade edition of B_Tour aims to serve as a showcase for these initiatives and perhaps a way to generate more connections between artists and the audience through an idea to create alternative forms of participation and present new ways of seeing the city. Furthermore, through previous experiences, people who live in Belgrade have openness to the active use of public space and hence the idea of the festival coincides with Belgrade spirit and biography.
B_Tour owes a special thank you to Bitef Festival for given support and space in this year’s side program.
We also owe gratitude to the Cultural Centre of Belgrade (KCB), Cultural Center REX, UK Parobrod, Nova Iskra design incubator and Scene design studies (Department of Architecture and Urbanism) at the Faculty of Technical Sciences at Novi Sad University. We are grateful for the significant help from the Goethe-Institute Belgrade together with the Urban Incubator Association and District 6 Association and especially thanks to all the artists for their contribution to the program. These partnerships are creating strong local connections by making a sustainable network and an interesting program which will be of equal importance for partners, artists and the audience.