VISUAL ART
Jovan Cekic, Program Curator of Visual Art

What marks artistic production nowadays is certainly a lack of a dominant model that would cover all registers of production. This pluralism opens possibilities for different connections, both within the local and the global network. If once there had been different scenes with their own strategies of presentation, then nowadays one might speak of networks and strategies of their connection. For this reason, each production nowadays includes networking as its constitutive moment. But, this easy networking also brings along the domination of uniform thought, promiscuity of signs and values and the unstoppable flow of money.

BELEF 2004 offers possibilities for the connection of artists of different generations and sensibilities. It is an attempt to bring different views of our changing life into one proximity. At the same time, it is an attempt to avoid traps of uniformity and provincial inferiority as much as possible.

This year, emphasis is laid on production, primarily of vide works and art prints by domestic artists. The attendance of some of the most important names in this field, like Matthew Barney and Bill Viola, points to the highest accomplishments in this production, at the same time making room for pondering our place in the global map of artistic events. The opening of this place is only possible through artistic production and the constant rethinking on the arrow of time - from where we started and where we wish to go.