In this episode, we talk about the networks of solidarity created by independent art institutions and artists during the Yugoslav wars—networks that aimed to preserve and develop artistic connections between people divided by wars.
Our guest is Ana Miljanić, head and co-founder of the Centre for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade. During the wars, the Centre hosted an exhibition of Kosovo artists in the heart of the Serbian capital. After the war, it became a space for archiving and rethinking what that war had done—to people, to memory, to language.
I’ll admit it: somewhere in the back of my mind, I hoped this conversation would give me a toolkit. Practical examples of solidarity we could use and apply today. But no conversation in the Balkans goes according to script.
Instead, Ana offers something harder—How to think and feel in order to never stop thinking and feeling. How to return to interrupted conversations. How to speak across the identities imposed on us.
For those for whom war was a formative experience, many moments in this dialogue will feel familiar. But Ana also helps answer a deeper, often unspoken question: Can we look at the experience of war and see something beyond the stigma? And can that insight help us find new ways to navigate the world beyond it?
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Ana Miljanić is the theater director, co-founder and program director of the Centre for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD) in Belgrade, Serbia. CZKD is a nonprofit cultural institution whose work is based on critical thinking, and cultural and artistic production. Through cultural and social engagement, which has included thousands of people, CZKD articulates initiatives of politization and repolitization of public space, culture and art.
www.czkd.org
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Radio Unheard is supported by the European Union under the House of Europe programme.
The content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
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