Am I to die?
What horror!
Am I to die?
What horror!
And maybe I’m one that won’t.
Horror.
These verses by Ana Đurić Konstrakta, from her masterpiece Nobl, transport us back to the roots of the spirit of these lands. An obstinate departure from discontinued realities was an essential ingredient for the survival of the collective and individual spirit for centuries. On the flip side, our incurable hobby is continuous limbo, which is practised ever more successfully by each generation. It turns out that, in that way, in the traditional manner of patricidal killers, we are capable of crushing all of our ancestors into disconnected molecules, just so there’s no chance that we’d have to climb, from generation to generation, onto the shoulders of the next greats and see further, wider and clearer.
No, we would rather remain in the cellar of civilisation with the notion that we’re the first, and thus also the best.
Konstrakta is a different case, a precedent that’s finally caught everyone’s eye and stayed there, burrowing its way further into the brain and heart. Her artistic undertaking, representing a continuous and uncompromising creative endeavour, has over the years aligned with and drawn from global and local culture references, and thus – through perseverance and non-capitulation – has become an entity unto itself, self-aware and monolithic.
What was essential for it in today’s time was to forever cement itself where it rightfully belongs, whether that’s in the framework of the Eurovision Song Contest, the seemingly superficial headdress of European pop culture, but a platform that allows those with such a desire to leap and dive as deep as they want. Konstrakta, whether she wanted to or not, leapt into the unknown in the name of all of us and achieved something that we’ve struggled with for decades: she returned spirit, culture, creativity and inspiration to their natural place, in daily life.
All an ingenious spirit needs is a platform. A socially organised structure through which it spreads exponentially and unstoppably. This implies pillars of support to carry this structure, and they are represented by people, individuals from the past, present and future who, with their contribution and mutual inspiration, make that structure permanent, resilient and unbreakable
All an ingenious spirit needs is a platform. A socially organised structure through which it spreads exponentially and unstoppably. This implies pillars of support to carry this structure, and they are represented by people, individuals from the past, present and future who, with their contribution and mutual inspiration, make that structure permanent, resilient and unbreakable. Ana Đurić is backed by a strong team. Zemlja Gruva is a group composed of the best in the business. Maja Uzelac and Ana Rodić are a dream team with which, as it turns out, everything is easy, even making such a masterpiece Triptych, as an audio-visual spectacle that will be studied in the history of art.
With the Dah Theatre exhibition ‘You Must Be A Zenithist!’ at Belgrade’s Neon Gallery, she reminded us all of the source of that indestructible creative substance to which all of us here are bound. It was a hundred years ago that Ljubomir Micić created a structure that spread that spirit and ensured that it reached all the way to us today. By blending Dadaism, Surrealism and Constructivism, European and local artists, writers, painters and thinkers gathered around Micic’s Zenit magazine and created that obstinate cultural construct that found itself in the middle of our coordinates, precisely between West and East.
The strength of every cultural framework lies in the accepting of its predecessors, nurturing greats and their achievements. It is only in that way that we earn the right to inherit that legacy and thus create better successors. Konstrakta – as Ana Đurić, but also as an overall art project – stands firmly in equilibrium on the shoulders of previous projects and their actors. The Idoli album The Defence and the Last Days [Odbrana i poslednji dani] is one of them. Hand-in-hand with her are also the spirit of The Marathon Family and Monty Python. There are also parts of Belgrade at night, Bota and Tucko. She has Branko Vučićević, Makavejev, Šijan.
It’s easy when one becomes aware of the list, they choose their own shoulders.