reading: Maria Todorova: History of the Term Balkanization, from Imagining the Balkans, chapter I

Goldsworty: Balkanization, from Balkan as Metaphor, MIT Press

reading: Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss: Meanings of Balkanization

Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss_On Positive Aspects of Balkanization: Distinction

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Graduate School of Design
Seminar: Fall 2008

Title: Balkanization: from Metaphor of War to Shaping of Cities
Topic: Agents of Urban Distinction
With: Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss

A nation's account of it's own history as a socio-political tool for identity engineering. Comparative case studies of the revisions of history text books in countries derived from the Yugoslavian ex-federation and the European Union.

http://www.irational.org/vahida/history/

TransAction 2: Carl + Jovanovic Weiss + Ferko
Oct 3rd, 2007 by transaction
described by Peter Ferko
http://transaction.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/transaction-2-ferko-carl-jovanovic-weiss/

Curator Katherine Carl and Architect Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss proposed a TransAction concerning their project, Lost Highway Expedition. Srdjan is Serbian, Carl is American, they lived most recently in Basel, Switzerland. The Lost Highway Expedition took place last summer on a route between the capitals of the countries formerly combined as Yugoslavia.

The TransAction interchange was a collaboration in a multi-tiered circumstance that is probably best to outline:

Lost Highway Expedition Photo Book description

Lost Highway Expedition Photo Book is a selection of captioned photographs contributed by participants in the Lost Highway Expedition, which took place in August 2006 through the Western Balkans including the countries of the former Yugoslavia and Albania. The photo book contains approximately 240 pages filled with full color images and captions and a brief introduction. The photo book has 27 sections, one for each day of the expedition; each day is represented with 8 pages.

The collection began in 1998 and continues to grow to this day. In some way this archive, this anthropological study traces the liminal nature of the intercom itself. From commercial offices, private apartments to social housing blocks, the intercom is a gatekeeper, marking the threshold, the space between outer and inner-worlds.

As a photograph, the intercom becomes a stand-in, a surrogate for the building and it’s occupants. Some, such as the more corporate looking device offer few clues to what lies behind. In this sense the intercom is simultaneously a screen and a screening device. For not only does the intercom lend itself to examination by the photograph, it too is a machine designed for interrogation. How many occasions have we found ourselves on a doorstep rehearsing the lines in our head before apprehensively pressing the buzzer? The intercom practices a kind of aural surveillance, the voice scrutinized, examined for details, keywords, or traces of recognition. Provoking a feeling that one stutter or hesitation may result in failure of admission.

Sarajevo, VrbanjaFor a number of years STEALTH has been investigating how the issue of non-regulation/non-control affects the way cities develop and are being used.

Following our project in the city of Belgrade (‘Wild City’, on the multitude of anonymous and non-authorised interventions contributing to this during the 1990s highly non-planned, but ‘collectively authored’ city), in 2006 we started investigating urban changes in 9 major cities in the Western Balkan region (Ljubljana, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Skopje, Prishtina, Tirana, Podgorica, Sarajevo) along the Lost Highway Expedition.

Alenka Gregoric, the artistic director of Škuc Gallery, and responsible for one of the Lost Highway Expedition key nodes is setting up Lost Highway Exhibition this August in Ljubljana. All the expedition participants, as well as wider interested circle of artists, architects, and other practitioners are INVITED TO SEND IN PROPOSALS TO THIS OPEN CALL! The deadline is June 8, 2007. Here under read further for more info and backround.

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EXHIBITION FRAMEWORK:

Manholes presentation

output Skopje
Photos and frottages from manholes'lids, which were made during the trip of the LHE through the Western Balkan in August 2006.

They represent the craft of casting, the symbols of the town (heraldic), place or region of production or the type of network with codification.

The lids of the underground network show a forgotten business and story of cooperation in the formal republics of Yugoslavia., either they show the pure art of manholes'lids design.

Call for Photographs from the Expedition for the Photo book

Let's make a photo book of the Lost Highway Expedition. The book will be the second in the series of LHE publications following the LHE Reader and it will be released in October 2007. The photo book will contain approximately 240 pages filled with full color images and captions and a brief introduction. The photo book will be organized as a calendar; day-by-day from the trip, and so will have 26 sections, each represented with 8 pages.

After the Lost Highway Expedition (LHE) in August 2006, the next phase of the project called ‘Building Lost Highway’ is to start in March 2007. It is envisioned as a process that would last about half a year, with an idea to interlink and build upon expedition generated projects, art works, networks, architecture and politics based on the found knowledge.

A series of three work sessions is to spark this process towards a ‘source book’ from which a variety of interpretations and representations can be drawn for different occasions (a book, a symposium, an exhibition...) by those interested in the issues incited by LHE - not necessarily only by the participants of the process. The source book will be Internet based, collectively authored and later made into a printed draft.

Finally, after weeks of preparation, we launched the website of our book project “Travelling Homeland”. And even more, the first book from Pristina has arrived, thanks to the engagement of Flaka Haliti.

http://www.travelling-homeland.net

Within the scope of the LHE in the summer of 2006, we handed out a blank book in each of the eight cities we were visiting on our trip through the territories of the Western Balkans.
We gave this “blank” books to people we considered trustworthy and asked them to contribute their personal view on the term of homeland – that could be text, paintings, photos or collages. Homeland, as we understand it, is a persons’ map of experiences and relationships: the book shall collect these personal stories of each city.
Besides we asked each of our first contact persons to hand this book over again to another person they like or feel trustful with.

The recent history of the Balkans in 3 collages of the road of brotherhood and unity, by Artgineering

The recent history of the Balkans in 3 collages of the road of brotherhood and unity, by Artgineering

The recent history of the Balkans in 3 collages of the road of brotherhood and unity, by Artgineering

Meg, Azra, Anna Neimark, Ulises, Carla Herrera... Photo by Ana Dzokic