39th Art Colony of Jalovik, Serbia, 6.-16. August 2016

Silvia Lorenz, kovitlaci (whirlwinds), sculptures, Jalovik 2016

photography (c) Silvia Lorenz, EmaEma (Emilija Radojčić)

Silvia Lorenz, kovitlac (whirlwind), video, 0:25 sec,  Jalovik 2016 (still)

Aluminium – not noble, new, versatile (with these characteristics German Wikipedia introduces the element of aluminium) – got me hooked in Jalovik – it didn’t happen for the first time I have to confess.

Or more precisely: I got hooked on Bora Pantelićs metal hills in Skupljen: climbing in this precious landscape under the heat of the midday sun, I learned to fish for filet pieces of aluminium in no time.

Picking up material  from a site, it is like collecting puzzle pieces for a yet unknown whole. I like to conquer the present time through material, mostly left overs of human production.

Inspired by the dancing cable trees throughout the village, I have worked on strange techno fruits or organisms made of a variety of aluminium shapes. I called the sculptures „kovitlaci“ – they turned out as a mixture of bushes and planets – with a lot of spines: inner chaos versus outer form, nature versus technology, creation and re-creation. Or did just some wrecked satellite fall back down to earth?

At the end of the week, Sunday at high noon, I put the bigger metal bush on the main road, to get it rolling. I forced four pretty cowboys to watch the scenario. Will the kovitlac make it out there, like the tumbling weed in the Western movies?

SL, 2016

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The 39th season of the Art Colony Jalovik

Jalovik is a dying village. It is effected by same disease that made other villages in Serbia disappear. Only Jalovik is dying faster. Because Jalovik has a soul – which you cannot find easily in villages in these times without a soul. At least a small piece of its soul is ripped out every August, when the Art Colony moves into the village.
The first piece of its soul is torn out when the childrens` laughter is missing in the next morning after the final exhibition of the childrens` workshop. This time, fourty kids, boys and girls, used their colors to change the world under the careful eyes of Ana Gemaljević and Đenadija Šujic.
The second part of its soul is torn out by the artists of the 39^th gathering of the art colony – coming here from all four sides of the world. This new energy of the colony was created by Aleksandar Jestrović Jamesdin, Silvia Lorenz, Nina Todorović , Ivan Petrović , Emilia Radojicić , Mario Kolarić, Joaquim Monvoison, Marko Marković , Dejan Poljaković, the curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Una Popović – and the selector Branislav Nikolić. Further contributions to the colony were made by volunteers and sponsors from all over the world. For five days chef Falko from Germany with his two assistants from the Netherlands provided us with food. The Internet connection worked like thunder thanks to Gromnet. This colony wore the color of aluminum – thanks to Bora Pantelic, the owner of the melting company from Skupljen. The colony smelled of wax and honey – thanks to Dragan Stekić. The colony was also wearing the pastel colors of fruits collected in baskets every night and delivered by Vivienne Bodevajn. The evenings under the lime tree were painted with the sounds of Ivan Velisavljević, Nikola Johnny Breković and Relja Bobic …
The final exhibition presented the synergy between Jalovik and all the mutual connections  of the colonists and other the people around the colony. It was an explosion which Una Popovic turned into fireworks with her reflected introduction.
It was a very fruitful year for the colony. When the artists set off to leave the colony in the next morning , the season of autum started. And this is not connected to the calendar, but to the soul of Jalovik which will then be taken to all four sides of the world.  The final exhibition of the colony will later travel to the capital, Belgrade, and other cities in Serbia. Impressions of the colony will also be taken to Vienna and Krusevac, to Berlin and the Netherlands and to the fields of France… But the colours, smells and tastes can be revived only by those who were present at the 39th gathering of the Jalovik Art Colony.
We should not challenge the destiny with the pessimism of this first empty morning in Jalovik. What happened in this summer will not happen again. The paths of hosts, artists and kids and audience will maybe cross again, but the energy of the 39^th colony  wont be repeated. Never again will this much energy pile up in one place. Exactly this is the weeping of Jalovik’s soul. This is also the price of Jalovik’s spirit going on.

Milan Cosić, Host and Executive Producer, Art Colony Jalovik

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The latest edition of the annual Art Colony in Jalovik was a very productive one. We were working hard and the time being among friends was quality time. Maybe the whole time in Jalovik as an idea and as a process – as a gathering of communication, synergy and energy – can be seen as a spontaneuous but very fine produced „work“. The atmosphere created among artists, guests, hosts and people from the village is in itself a work of art, in which everybody is taking part and which everybody is forming unconsciuosly.

The “main work” is the space to present concrete states but also states created and formed in a dialogue with the souurounding and the countryside, and above all, in dialogue with others – one on one (that’s also the name of one of the resulting works).

And this is the key to this colony and its gang. This great experience was recognisable and possible to discover in the final, excellent exhibition, in which the 9 artists presented their works which were produced in a very short period of time, 7 days.

The forced transition into nature, beyond technical and other requirements, proofed to be a welcome escape from the rules of society. It enabled the artists` gang to enjoy and create in the complete, absolute function (or fiction) of an arbitrary or self-organized state and environment. Transformation and communication flew through the matter/material, we worked with what we had in that moment and what was available: a so-called primitive connection with the substance of life – which is the true way of all art …

Una Popović, Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade

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