Spirit of place – A FIRST CENTURY OF THE DISTRICT
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Due to the great tragedy that befell our city, all exhibitions in the District organized by the “Novi Sad – European Capital of Culture” Foundation will be closed. We sympathize with our fellow citizens and their families at this difficult time.
The ‘Spirit of Place – A First Century of the District’ exhibition is a multimedia and permanent exhibition, authored by Monika Bilbija Ponjavić, PhD, and Nemanja Milenković, which dramatizes and thematizes the space of the District through time. It was opened as part of the sixth Kaleidoscope of Culture and Applied Art Week, and visitors will be able to visit this permanent exhibition every day (except Monday and Tuesday) from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
A former industrial complex, today’s centre of contemporary art, the District has travelled an unusual path over the last hundred years, which has largely defined the area. The path is both the inspiration and the backbone of the exhibition, which tries to tell the audience a little-known story through artistic and scenic means, and using stage design methods.
Divided into six phases, from the establishment of the factory, through World War II and NATO bombing, to the European Capital of Culture, the exhibition, through its organization, as well as through the construction of the space, tries, at times quite literally, to depict turbulence, progress, changes, tragic fates, chaos, hope and the cacophony of a time. Like a reflection in a mirror. Through six thematically, experientially, artistically and content-differently treated, as well as physically separated rooms, dedicated to specific periods, the audience, through interaction with the rooms, will have the opportunity to a greater or lesser extent, to learn something new, to remember the old and forgotten, to participates directly, to play and explore, with their senses and body.
The specificity of the exhibition is reflected in the fact that, although it deals with specific time, place and events, ‘Spirit of Place’ is not an archival exhibition of artefacts and facts, but an exhibition of telling stories and creating new experiences. Its second specificity is the way of building and re-examining the work of art, the work-room. Each of the six rooms was conceived as an installation, and therefore, each of them was built that way. Built in a parallel process in which space, time and the event, which takes place in space and time, and the text, on which it relies, are built in parallel and are indivisible from each other.
In his book ‘Spirit of Place’ (Genius Loci), to which the exhibition directly refers, Christian Norberg-Schulz says that the identity of a person derives from the identity of place. He emphasizes that the place, as a geographical entity and determinant, is what gives a person his identity. In this sense, and guided by the ideas of Norberg-Schultz, as one of the unbreakable ties, the exhibition ‘Spirit of Place – A Century of the District’ represents an independent contextual work of art made up of wholes that are identity-related to the place, which, among other things, seeks to reconsider the question of identification and identity formation in a heterogeneous community and give a comment on various social phenomena that marked the last century of humanity.
Partner of the Kaleidoscope of culture is Erste Bank.