Belgrade Raw

When we were approached by Miroslav Karic, a curator from Belgrade’s Remont gallery, to be included in his selection of artists representing Serbia at the Donumenta Festival in Regensburg, we were intrigued and thankful for the opportunity. The huge space that is the hall of Donau Einkaufs Zentrum mall presented a challenge, since we had to find a way to fill the 250 square meters enclosed by the movable walls that constituted our exhibition space. We decided to use a large number of prints (presenting a main Belgrade Raw edit and also 5 more or less independent projects by each of us) and also to dedicate a part of the space to a slideshow room, where we presented constantly updated work from the Belgrade Raw flickr group pool.

We’d like to thank Regina Hellwig-Schmid and the whole Donumenta team for funding our production costs and helping set the exhibition just the way we hoped we would.

The exhibition itself was, in my opinion, a success, we had a lavish opening, with free cocktails all night and a varied buffet. It has to do something with the venue being a shopping mall. But when I thought about it, there is no downside, really, at least when you have in mind the type of work we were showing. We had a big, well lit space, with a huge amount of people passing by everyday, many of them stopping and taking a look, even before we finished setting up. Another interesting thing which I haven’t thought about much beforehand is that this wasn’t your usual “gallery audience”. They are regular people, and putting aside the fact that I haven’t been too happy to spend 3-4 days in the mall setting the whole thing up, I think it was a great opportunity for us to reach this sort of an audience and I was really happy for it. But, enough with the rant, here are some photos from the setup, opening, as well as of the actual exhibition and also expect to see a feature made of photos that Andrej and me made on our day-trip to Munich.

Veronika and Andrej setting up the wall with his project from Wien.

Andrej calculating for the setup of Darko’s project of Roma under the Gazela bridge.

An interestign ray on light on a photo from Luka’s series Suburbs.

The main Belgrade Raw room, featuring a gigantic print of Andrej’s photo of an angry dog in a car.

A wall in the main Belgrade Raw room.

A curious observer in the Belgrade Raw room (before the setup was finished).

The projection room with the flickr pool.

The opening speech by the mall’s director

Crowd at the opening

Andrej’s series from a Tombola at a Serbian Community Center in Wien.

Nemanja’s India series.

Darko’s Roma series under the Gazela bridge

Milovan’s series “Beiden meets Belgrade”

Luka’s series “Suburbs”

A bunch of small prints that served as an invitation/peek to the projection room.

Report and plans

Luka Knežević-Strika — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:32:54 +0000

Hey, it’s been a while. But, there’s lots of news and a double edition of the blog (bellow)

We’re now officially registered as a Non-profit ogranisation. We have a stamp and all. Hooray! Hopefully, this will give us more of a chance to realize some of the offline projects we’ve been thinking about for a while.
We took part in a Fotoforum talk at Students’ city in Belgrade, where we had a nice talk with Ivan Petrović, who did an excellent job preparing the whole talk, the slideshow. It was a very novel and good experience for us and the audience seemed to enjoy it, too – there’s even a blog post (check it out, it’s in Serbian, but there are also photos) by Dejan Danailov, a photographer/blogger based in Belgrade. You’ll see a couple of our snaps from that night below, too
We are finally taking part in our first proper exhibition! (hopefully). We have been invited by a curator from “Remont” gallery, Miroslav Karić to participate in Donumenta, which is an art-show held every year in the German city of Regensburg, where art of countries of the Danube region is presented. This year, it is focused on Serbia. We are all set to participate, but are still not sure if we will have the funding to produce our exhibition (we have been offered a huge 200 square meter space inside a mall there). If you now someone or a company that would like to help with this, please e-mail us at contact@belgraderaw.com

Here are a few photos from Fotoforum:

Nemanja, Darko and Andrej at Fotoforum, also a glimpse of an audience

Nemanja as a lead vocal, Darko and Andrej assisting

Nemanja, Miroslav Karic and Ivan Petrovic after the Fotoforum talk

We hope you enjoy the double photo-blog post bellow, and expect (a lot) more from us soon!

Photo-blog #25

Nemanja Knežević — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:20:19 +0000

Photo: Andrej Filev

Photo: Darko Stanimirović

Photo: Milovan Milenković

Photo: Luka Knežević-Strika

Photo: Nemanja Knežević

Photo: Milovan Milenković

Photo: Luka Knežević-Strika

Photo: Nemanja Knežević

Disappearing Belgrade, by Michael Bowring

Darko Stanimirović — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 21:52:30 +0000

If you wanted to know about things and places that disappeared from Belgrade during these transitioning years, (or will disappear sometime soon) you’d probably turn to us locals. But after more than seven years he’s here, Michael Bowring is no stranger to Belgrade. In his Disappearing Belgrade series, he shows some of those things that used to be a part of Belgrade’s (sub)culture. Here is an excerpt:

DŽKC club (photo: Michael Bowring)

Stray dogs (photo: Michael Bowring)

Don’t forget to check out other photographs he’s put up on his blog too, and read his comments—they are far from being a foreigner’s stereotypes, and still on healthy distance from a local’s patriotic-fueled ones.