FIGURE IT OUT: THE ART OF LIVING
THROUGH SYSTEM FAILURES, 2023-2024
Figure it Out: The Art of Living Through System Failures explores practices and phenomena in which systems and institutions fail specific communities and populations. Trapped within constraining situations, these people are starting to develop strategies of lying, cheating and stealing to counter their limitations and powerlessness vis-à-vis these systems.
From the position of the dispossessed and excluded, actions and practices that would be condemned in the mainstream, assume a different ethical and political connotation. In popular culture, these practices are frequently celebrated as a cunning and crafty reworking, often poetic or humorous. They have also expanded into the digital sphere as well, where they are getting recombined in interesting ways facing new kinds of algorithmic power structures. Figure it Out will explore the use of these practices as forms of resistance and tools for bypassing rules, as attempts to obtain access to key rights that remain foreclosed for certain groups. The aim is not to indiscriminately celebrate personal gain through illicit behavior, but to acknowledge the ingenuity that comes in finding a way out of an impossible situation. Possible examples come from a broad variety of practices – such as the avoidance of internet censorship by transformation of entire websites into image formats or the camouflage techniques of migrants adopting a ‘western’ look to fool surveillance algorithms.
The project will explore similar practices that enable disenfranchised groups to overcome barriers established by administrative and algorithmic regimes. The focus is on the strategies of rural women, eco-commoners, LGBTIQ+, migrants, etc. in conflict with corporate or state rules.
Figure it Out involves partners from Croatia, France, Greece, Malta and Serbia who will work with and engage different communities sharing their stories through art productions, exhibitions, a radio festival, bonfire events and web-zines.
WOMEN’S AFFAIRS
The Women’s Affairs artistic research is based on a series of encounters and conversations with women across Serbia, within which the group shared stories about survival techniques and navigating the gaps of a state benefit system which constantly fails to assist and support life. With our interlocutors we discuss, among many other things, lifelong work without a single day of official employment, the diverse gray zones of labor, we talk about real and fictional earnings, invisible union struggles of women, mutual solidarity, the dysfunctional administrative web of social benefits, fake and real divorces, perseverance, small life gestures of resistance and big struggles we undertake. The stories and experiences recorded testify to the incredible imagination and heroic endeavors of women in a hostile environment and various skills we acquire through life and coping. Hospitality, honesty, wonderful homemade specialties, vital energy and strength are major ingredients of these informal gatherings full of playfulness and joy. The created material of stories, sounds and photographs is shared through an art installation, new live encounters, and pocket-book of stories to be shared.
Kiosk team: Ana Adamović, Branislava Stefanović, Jelena Mijić and Milica Pekić
Research collaborators: Tara Rukeci Milivojević, Sanja Stamenković, Maja Vučković, Dragana Kojičić, Milica Ivanović, Dženeta Agović, Zuzana Karlečik
With special thanks to our gatherings’ participants: Nada, Muradija, Jovanka, Agnesa, Duda, Sandra, Sanja, Ajsela, Una, Marina, Ceca, Atifa, Maja, Ruška, Juca, Bahta, Vesna, Hajruša, Zorica, Verica, Ana, Maja, Dušanka, Fatima, Srđana, Sandra, Bisera and Snežana
Translation from Serbian: Vladislav Mijić
Proofreading: Paul Leonard Murray
Collaboration, support and design: škart
Sound design and post-production: Veljko Milinković
FLAG STORIES (use and pass on) – ŠKART
Survival tools: each different, each personal, each useful.
Through years of field work, Škart have been collecting the experiences of interlocutors and friends in diverse environments – centers for the elderly, orphanages, asylum centers, protest environments, as well as in communities and public spaces.
Endless stories (everyone’s own experience is the most important) are shortened to micro (im)practical situations and presented in the form of a comic strip, enlarged and printed as flags. Story-flags, dancing with the mischievous and messy wind, remind us that every little invisible tool-of-rebellion and riot-step is important.
Or, as Slobodan S. (a teacher at the Children’s Home from Bela Crkva) says: “if you care and dare – you can change reality; if not – you can just look to the sky.”
Interlocutors and friends are Tijana S, Želimir Ž, Jadranka M, Radmila Ž, Dušan T, Pava M, Slobodan S, Nikola I, Iskra G, Ivan Č, Lejla H, Miroslav T, Reza A, Rada G, E.R, E.M, Dž.M, N.N, N.S, K.P, Đ.B, F.V, V.N, …
Public Events
Bonfire event in Mošorin, Serbia:
Live storytelling session and collective reading
17th September 2023
Organised by: research team of the Figure It Out project (Valeria Graziano, Mara Ferrari, Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars), KIOSK team (Ana Adamović, Jelena Mijić, Branislava Stefanović and Milica Pekić) and Centre for Earth Architecture Mošorin (Dragana Kojičić)
Figure It Out is an investigation of forms of ingenuity that people with little or no power devise when systems fail them. They tap into the electricity network, they build a shack without a permit, they divorce to claim benefits. Public usually condemns such behavior as an illegal act. We want to understand it positively as acts that allow people with little or no power to reclaim the conditions under which they have to live. People with no power become protagonists in the story of failed systems.
This bonfire, a first of many across Europe, enabled us to share anecdotes of ingenuity in hardship we have already documented, to document new things from the experience of our participants, and to discuss about getting by.
Collective reading and discussion which followed were a celebration of this practices as a veritable form of live art, a craft and skill of living well, of living better despite adversity that characterises the subaltern condition across the world, art of living and finding agency beyond mere survival, of finding hidden surreptitious joys in quotidian acts, and use one’s intelligence in a world that more often demands obedience.
Bonfire event in Bela crkva, Serbia: Live storytelling session and play
Bela Crkva, 8th September 2024
Home for Children and Youth “Vera Radivojević”
Organised by: Škart collective (Dragan Protić and Đorđe Balmazović) in collaboration with Home for Children and Youth “Vera Radivojević” Bela Crkva and members of Figure It Out research team (Tomislav Medak and Marcell Mars)
The Bonfire event in Bela Crkva was organised together with Home for Children and Youth with whom Škart collective has collaborated for over a decade. It was structured as a series of conversations and play sessions between residents of the Home, members of FIO research team, artists and guests. The stories of everyday coping and life strategies within and outside Home were shared in a playful manner. The Figure It Out poem was placed around town in shop windows and facades for passers-by to read. Walking by the lake, evening story telling session and lots of collective plays for children and adults were all part of the experience. Unexpected and unplanned experience was a part of adjusting dynamic of a big 40-people group. Figuring it out, collectively.
Women’s Affairs, premiere public reading and conversation
Bela Crkva, 9th September 2024, 7pm
National library
First public presentation and collective reading of Women’s Affairs collection of short stories was organised by Kiosk (Ana Adamović, Jelena Mijić, Branislava Stefanović and Milica Pekić) together with National library in Bela Crkva and Škart collective (Dragan Protić i Đorđe Balmazović).
The Women’s Affairs small book of stories is the result of a series of encounters and conversations with women in towns, cities and villages across Serbia, within which experiences were shared about survival techniques and navigating the gaps of a state benefit system which constantly fails to assist and support life. The stories and experiences we recorded testify to the incredible imagination and heroic endeavors of women in hostile environments and the various skills acquired through living and coping. First public reading was an opportunity to share stories with audience in Bela Crkva and further discuss experiences of everyday life survival techniques and strategies.
Figure It Out: The Art of Living Through System Failures, Exhibition
19th September – 05th October 2024, Valletta, Malta
Malta Society of Arts
Organisation of the exhibition: Unfinished foundation, Malta
Artists: Kiosk | !Mediengruppe Bitnik | RYBN.ORG | ŠKART | Keit Bonnici | Azahara Cerezo | Rakel Vella
More info on exhibition here: https://drugo-more.hr/en/mine-yours-ours-2024/
Women’s Affairs, collective reading and conversation,
within the exhibition Life in the Tower Blocks
Sunday, 13th October 2024
Tower Block 45, New Belgrade
Exhibition is organised by Spring Work Committe
Public reading and live encounter within which we shared stories collected during the research and further discussed coping experiences, the skills we use to survive, the challenges we face in meeting the system.
More info on exhibition on https://www.facebook.com/
Figure it Out: exhibition in the frame of the festival Mine, Yours, Ours, 2024
7th – 28th November 2024, Rijeka, Croatia
Filodrammatica Gallery, Rijeka
Organization: Drugo more, Rijeka
Artists: Kiosk | !Mediengruppe Bitnik | RYBN.ORG | ŠKART | Tania El Khoury | Figure it Out Research Group
More info on exhibition here: https://drugo-more.hr/moje-tvoje-nase-2024/
Women’s Affairs and Talking Flags
conversation about short life stories and flags
Thursday, 12th December 2024
City Public Library “Žarko Zrenjanin”
Trg Slobode 2, Zrenjanin
Organized by: “Žarko Zrenjanin” City Public Library, Kiosk and Škart
How do you manage in life? What are the useful skills to have? Women of different generations throughout Serbia, as well as tenants of the Gerontological center, children and teachers from the Home for the Children Without Parental Care, war-survivors, violence-fighters, peace-rebels, aging-questioners, migration-attempters and fired workers shared their coping experiences, survival techniques and heroic endeavors with us.
The collection of short stories entitled ”Women’s Affairs” is the result of our meetings and conversations with these women, and Talking Flags represents endless stories shortened to micro (im)practical situations, presented as comics, then enlarged and printed as flags.
In the comfortable space of the library, surrounded by Škart flags, we gathered and read stories, commented, and shared experiences about small and big struggles and daily coping. Special sweets were prepared as surprises for us by our friends from the organization Aktiv žena Đurđevak from Melenci.
Women’s Affairs, collective reading and conversation
February 11th, 2025, 6 pm
Public Library in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Women’s Affairs and Flag Stories, collective reading and conversation about the flags with employees of the “Frutti di Pace” factory
February 12th, 2025
Frutti di Pace, Bratunac, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Coordinator:
Drugo more (Rijeka, Croatia) | www.drugo-more.hr, info@drugo-more.hr
Partners:
Kiosk (Belgrade, Serbia) | www.kioskngo.net
Labomedia (Orléans, France) | www.labomedia.org
Unfinished Foundation (Malta) | www.unfinishedartspace.org
Vektor (Athens, Greece) | www.vektorathens.org
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them
Project is supported by: Foundation for Arts Initiatives, Reconstruction Women’s Fund, Ministry of Culture Republic of Serbia, City of Belgrade
