Simona Ognjanović in conversation with Milica Ivić (Matrijaršija)
“When we have a museum exhibition, we can get a bulldozer!”
“Matrijaršija identifies itself as an autonomous cultural center. However, it does not view itself as a homogeneous, unified collective. Instead, it comprises smaller and larger components, none of which have a formal status within the whole. As a cultural center, Matrijaršija houses an active atelier for screen and riso printing, hosts the Novo Doba non-aligned comics festival, plans and organizes the Street Gallery, runs the Fijuk fairs, and lives an everyday, active life of constant exchange with artists and collectives from all over. One could say that Matrijaršija is simply a place; however, in its current form, it encompasses a much broader network of production, action, poetics, cosmogony, contextual positioning, and beliefs. It provides a fluid yet firm and complex platform of artistic, existential, and theoretical practices.
Matrijaršija was established in 2014, when two formal associations—Turbo Strip and Artiljerija—and several informal groups came together, through continuous collaboration with the Association Art Brut Serbia, close friends, and many associates. Matrijaršija’s mysterious (lack of) structure included the informal art collectives Mubareć, Dedice, and Bitlsti. This unusual arrangement prepared the ground for non-institutionalized, outsider, non-aligned, or marginal art—art created by individuals who did not identify as artists and who were both discursively and factually beyond the boundaries of the alternatives the art world could offer, even beyond what was considered possible. For us, Matrijaršija is an impossible place—what happened before its existence, had already been happening for years. While Matrijaršija is a natural continuation of these activities, they could have easily taken place anywhere else.”[1]
Simona Ognjanović: Reading this statement and considering your artistic practices, it becomes clear that Matrijaršija developed, and is still developing, through various forms of associative and friendly relationships. Art is always collaborative, even when this is not explicitly stated. In your case, this is especially crucial; people who are not artists or those who don’t identify as such hold a unique place in your collective. In this context, we highlight two “groups” that you closely cooperate with, Bitlsti and Pleme F20. These groups, too, are connected through associative and friendly relationships with members of Matrijaršija. Although you don’t mention this, we must stress that the first are medically termed “developmentally disabled,” while the second carry the “F20 label,” a classification for schizophrenia.
To start, please describe how you began working with Bitlsti and how your relationship evolved over the last 10 years.
Milica Ivić: Starting this story from the end—that is, today—we can say that Bitlsti and members of the self-organized Pleme F20 collective meet at Matrijaršija. In June 2024, they held a joint exhibition, or rather two exhibitions, Passage in the Salon and Other Meeting Points of Art and Life[2], at the Oto Bihalji Merin Salon and Street Gallery in Belgrade. However, their encounter and collaboration, as well as their existence within our Matrijaršija lives, was never planned or singled out as a special activity. It was simply part of the ongoing continuity of life and work that has been taking place over the past 10 years at all the locations where Matrijaršija has existed. For this interview, I will, for the first time, highlight the presence of Bitlsti as a special segment of the Matrijaršija practice and try to express some of the experience—our accepted form of communication and exchange. Although I would prefer for them to be the ones giving this interview instead of me, I find it a challenge to express how significant it is, both for Matrijaršija and for me, that all these encounters you mentioned have actually taken place.
One of the frequent questions asked about Matrijaršija is how one becomes part of the collective, who can join, and how. This question is valid because it’s not entirely clear even to us, let alone to someone observing us from the outside or encountering us for the first time. After often being asked this, I came up with a formula that isn’t exactly incorrect, but attempts to be accurate: You become a member if you can grasp a series of unstated and informal ways of functioning, accept them, and if these ways allow you to work in spheres that Matrijaršija can support (such as screen and riso printing, festival organization, participation in Fijuk fairs, residencies, guest appearances, etc.). I would also add that you need to love the music we love. Over the years, it has become clear that if someone found the entire spectrum of turbo-folk music production unbearable, they would have difficulty functioning in an environment where we spend so much time listening to that music, throwing parties, organizing our kafana, and having the best time with it. It became clear that music was an initiation test for entering the collective, and that this shared love was necessary.
But now, for the first time, I see that Bitlsti is also an initiation test. All new, old, associated, temporary members, guests, and friends of Matrijaršija have been able to understand, support, and enjoy Bitlsti in this unwritten, unspoken way. This is not something to be taken for granted, and nothing can prepare you for it. The time we spend with Bitlsti is intense and dynamic; our existing chaos is amplified by more chaos, noise, drums, music, and often multiple characters and voices. Our lack of structure becomes even more unstructured, and that’s the specific atmosphere you need to love as it is, enjoy, and be able to orient yourself in. So, Bitlsti is now one of the factors that decide whether you can participate in Matrijaršija as a collective. I’ve just realized this, and it allows me to start this story.
Simona: You often say that over the 10 years of friendship and work, Bitlsti have become part of what Matrijaršija is. This is especially important since cooperation in the arts involving work with members of various “threatened, invisible, marginalized, and vulnerable groups” is often seen as creating space for “their voice to be heard” while rarely addressing the transformative effect on those who initiated cooperation. Considering all the above, could your work with Bitlsti still be called cooperation, given this implies a within-outside relationship? Is it possible to express what “happened” and how do you see their constitutive role in the context of articulating Matrijaršija’s practice as a collective that is always developing? Or, if Matrijaršija is an “impossible place,” what became possible through cooperation with Bitlsti?
Milica: Bitlsti consists of Miloš Petrović, Bata Spasov, and Dušan Vučinić. They are best friends from the daycare for people with developmental disabilities, Naša kuća[3]. They are our friends, and perhaps our best part. There’s no better way to put it than to say that Bitlsti are Matrijaršija. It would be wrong to say we work with them, or they work with us. The connection between the two is much more complex. The organizational and infrastructural origin of Matrijaršija is Bitlsti. More than 10 years ago, when Johanna Marcade-Mot and Mileta Mijatović started looking for a space where they could engage in screen printing in a way that wasn’t just guerilla-style (intense work in workshops scattered across various locations in Europe), this search was connected to the guys from Naša kuća. The first screen printing exposure unit that Matrijaršija had was donated by Naša kuća. If I remember correctly, the idea was to teach the boys to do screen printing to support their social entrepreneurship. As a result of intertwined circumstances, in early 2014, Mileta and Johanna began renovating the third part of the house in Zemun—which we were then given to use, and where we stayed until the end of 2019—which was meant to be used for the screen-printing workshop. However, it wasn’t until July 2014 that we began clearing out the entire house and planning activities for the future cultural center, Matrijaršija. It’s true that Bitlsti were key to organizing the minimal structure of time. We arranged for them to come every Wednesday and Friday from 3 to 7 p.m., and this became the minimal guaranteed unit of time we spent working at the house in Zemun. Without that, time would have disintegrated and spread limitlessly.
Once we started a collective drawing session, it would last for two to three days and nights, with no clear beginning or end. A party could start unexpectedly early in the afternoon and last until the next day. We had a house—well, three houses—a yard, and a garden behind a tall gate that protected us from the street. We rarely went to other places, and time would slip away in large chunks. We didn’t need to check the clock. The only structure was the arrival and departure of Bitlsti. Even today, at the end of 2024, Bitlsti still come every Wednesday and Friday from 3 to 7 p.m., even though we relocated from Zemun to Karaburma, and then from Karaburma to our current space in the former Kluz factory. It’s been a total of 10 years, with all the changes that have happened in the meantime—personally, globally, locally, politically, and collectively—through the fires, the pandemic, and the new and old members of the collective. A lot has changed, but Bitlsti are still there. And when they are there, we are as well. Not a small thing, wouldn’t you say?
True, Bitlsti were never particularly devoted screen-printing workers, but in October 2015, they started a band because the house in Zemun had a soundproof room, which we called Klub, where there were always instruments, and where we had parties, concerts, and performances. When they called themselves Bitlsti and started playing regularly (without anyone asking them to), it was clear that they would be with us, choosing from the many events that they wanted to participate in.
Simona: It is important to highlight that joint work with Bitlsti never evolved into an artistic or some other “project,” framed by the system of signifiers often used in dealing with persons facing similar difficulties. In other words, it never became a project intentionally encouraging “democracity, participation, inclusivity…” that employs the usual work forms in such contexts, like art workshops or art therapies. You never even went through training to work with these “vulnerable groups.”
How would you define or describe your “system” of work, which has no precise structure, doesn’t rely on familiar forms, or has clear goals? What are you trying to avoid, or achieve?
Milica: From the very beginning, our luxury was that we had no expectations, they had no expectations, and their parents had no expectations. Part of the Matrijaršija collective coming from the Mubareć[4] group had known Bitlsti (I still refer to them like this for the time before they called themselves that) for a long time. They had hung out with us for years on Saturday nights between 2006 and 2013 when we would gather to work. The boys already knew what our atmosphere was like—full of Denke mix, the smell of Syntelan, piles of waste, 3D collages, audio and video production, “meaningless” communication, and a desire to organize the cosmos through its categorization (hence the discursive practices). They found nothing unusual in this, unlike the neighbors and the police, who frequently paid us visits.
I think Mileta and Johanna deserve the most credit for recognizing the need, when we found the house in Zemun, to arrange with the parents for them to come regularly. This regularity became a goal in itself. They are most responsible for their persistence in maintaining this non-expectation, for lacking any training or guide on how to engage with Bitlsti. Everyone knew that we weren’t doing art therapy because nobody had that inclination, nor did we think they needed therapy, especially not art therapy. We were lucky that Bitlsti didn’t need to be pushed or forced, nor did something need to be “pulled” out of them. They came themselves, fiery like sparklers, with their own atmospheres, personalities, and practices. They asked for soda and sweets, and everything else happened unexpectedly, impossibly, and without purpose. For us, they are simply excitement, and every arrival was a celebration—for them and for us—depending on the “narratives” they brought with them, who they found at the house, the garden, Klub, the workshop, and how that interaction developed.
This wouldn’t have been possible if their parents, who had brilliantly organized the daycare at Naša kuća, hadn’t had the incredible trust to send them to our strange house in Zemun. They never asked questions, set limitations, censored, or controlled how our interaction with Bitlsti was made public in publications, prints, or social media. They never asked what we were doing or producing, whether the boys had drawn or painted something, or what was the purpose of it all. All that mattered was that the boys returned home happy and that they never missed the chance to come to Zemun, regularly, every time, for years. Back then, and even now, their parents organized transportation from Naša kuća to Matrijaršija, and through this logistical intervention, they enabled their presence in our lives.
And yes, 10 years later, there is no project-oriented work with Bitlsti; it was never framed, used, or valued that way. Occasionally, we remember how this inclusive story could have attracted project funding. But actually, I think we’re all really proud that we never went down that road. One of the things we do plan to request funding for is to record an album for Bitlsti and release it on vinyl because proper funding is needed for that—studio time, music collaborators, production, etc. That would be the only motivation for placing Bitlsti within a project context. In the meantime, we achieve the “impossible,” which is creating relationships, cooperation, and art in purposeless, non-financed, non-reported frameworks. We create great joy that we share with everyone connected with Matrijaršija. There are plenty of fans and people who regularly work and exchange with Bitlsti, from all sides. There’s also Vasja Lebarič from Ljubljana, who made a fanzine with Bitlsti and played with them in Belgrade and Ljubljana. Strajk Lucicki, Goran Stojčetović, Partizanska štampa from Skopje, Paloma Luz Diaz (who spontaneously started a Spanish singing duo with Bata), Vladimir Lenhart, and Katie Woznicki are just a few. Besides, we hope that we are accomplishing an impossible form of cooperation—one that nobody needs, serves no purpose, but produces brilliant things.
Simona: Given that working with Bitlsti includes products not only of their artistic activity but also those arising in direct collaboration with other members of Matrijaršija, could you tell us how you identified the right art form (music, poetry, painting…) and what does their development look like? How do members of Matrijaršija engage in their production? How do you resolve the authorship issue in the context of joint works? Lastly, who decides on the right ways of presenting and interacting with the audience and general public?
Milica: If I remember correctly, it all started with them—Bata, Miloš, and Dušan—just as they were, with their own stories and peculiarities. Bata always arrived as some other celebrity, male or female, and then all the stories would revolve around the life and career of that person (most often Toše Proeski[5]). Miloš would often argue with criminals, thieves, and gamblers about debts, and he was active in the computer equipment market. Dušan is unique with his stereotypies, love for machines, and fascination with repetition. This specific atmosphere they created initially did not take a fixed form. And then, suddenly, their music career began. This wasn’t a slow development; they were already fully formed as stars. They had an attitude, a performance style, a musical identity, band arguments, and a distinct relationship with their audience. From their very first concert at the Novo Doba festival in 2015, held in the Matrijaršija club, they literally swept the audience off their feet. From the beginning, Bata took on the role of the band leader and was “John Lenor” at their first concert. Bata has a big star attitude, and not only did he sing and play guitar, but he also decided what each concert would be. Bata determined whether the concert would revolve around Bora Čorba, a Eurovision winner, a metal band, the Amadeus band, or something else. No one knew until the concert started what they would be listening to. Dušan played drums, Miloš played keyboards, but they would often switch instruments during the performance, and each member would take on the role of leader at different times. It was a very fluid structure. With Bitlsti, it became clear to everyone how boring ordinary bands were, with their predictable and fixed identities, always playing the same type of music. Nobody questioned this, but Bitlsti challenged music history with their decisive approach. For us, it was truly revolutionary, and for me, it still is—there is rarely something as interesting, both musically and performance-wise, as Bitlsti.
Everything else, like the music, depended on them. At one point, Mileta and Johanna started writing down the poetry that Bata would recite, and the end result was the brilliant poetry collection Thief at the Crossroads, published by Pesničenje, which we’ve planned to reprint for years. I’ll have to ask Johanna how the first noting came about. I just remember Bata saying something like, “Should we do a poem?” or “What about a poem?” and then someone would write it down and read it to him at the end to make sure everything was okay. Miloš writes his poems by himself, always on one piece of paper. He usually writes several in a row and always stands while writing. Sometimes he leaves the poem unfinished, turns to other tasks or themes, and then returns to finish it. It became the norm that when he finished a poem, he would write “END” and then bring it to us so we could read it together. Dušan also likes to recite poems and produces incredibly interesting content about expectations of the future! I’m not sure it’s clear enough, but all the activities were initiated by them—we were just always present, doing what we would otherwise be doing: printing, drawing, talking to guests, and so on. It was probably with the arrival of painter Aleksandar Denić to the Matrijaršija collective that a painting practice was established, with the idea of exhibiting at the Street Gallery, where it became common to paint specific large formats, typically 140 x 170 cm. Denić also introduced the rule of using cheap materials, so we began making giant paintings on the back of ordinary oilcloth (which has the texture of canvas, as patented by Denić). We started buying 20-meter rolls of oilcloth, which meant there was always enough canvas for painting, and thanks to Aca [Denić], we also used ordinary concrete paint, which we could practically have in abundance. Miloš independently drew for his first exhibition at Street Gallery[6]—nine giant robots for the nine panels of the gallery. Before the exhibitions, these robots were present in Miloš’s drawings and comics. For him, exhibiting, selling works, participating in Fijuk, and printing posters were always highly stimulating. He often mentions it in his poems. In his poems, both Denić and Miloš sell their works for millions, and at Fijuk, everyone buys their works. Miloš is happy when he makes money from his prints! Sometimes Miloš and Denić paint back-to-back, and Miloš then uses the colors that Denić mixed. Sometimes Sofija mixes his colors. Occasionally, Denić would start the large formats, and Miloš would finish them, or vice versa. But most often, Miloš knows exactly what he wants to paint and paints it himself. We became so used to his large works emerging spontaneously, without warning or special conditions. Miloš always wears a work suit because he doesn’t like to stain himself with paint. He approaches the canvas, paints, takes off his suit, and moves on to something else. I realized how remarkable this habit was when guests, artists themselves, noticed how quickly and effortlessly he created his brilliant works. These guests were often in a similar line of work, and their jaws would drop when they witnessed Miloš’s painting episodes.
I assume that everyone from the collective could reconstruct the genesis of some of the practices done or still being done with Bitlsti. At Matrijaršija in Karaburma, starting in 2020, I began a series of interviews with Bata, where he was the celebrity, and I was the random radio host, fascinated by my guest. This began, as you might guess, spontaneously, when Bata (Željko Šašić) wrote a letter to Aca Lukas in prison.[7] I don’t know why I asked him to record his message, but I made an introduction (what I imagined radio hosts do), then asked questions, showed interest, and ended up creating a truly spectacular interview that any radio station would envy. Bata obviously liked this practice, because we continued it over the following years, with a break during the pandemic. It became a regular routine where Bata would ask, “Milica, want an interview?” Then I would grab the equipment, and when the opportunity arose (when there wasn’t too much noise), we would conduct an interview with the person Bata decided to impersonate that day. That’s how we created a series of interviews, which were later published in the book I Think That’s Me.
I believe that so far, apart from Miloš’s solo exhibition at Street Gallery, we have always published the works and prints by Bitlsti alongside those of other Matrijaršija artists. They were never given a special place; rather, they were presented alongside the works of all of us and all those we collaborated with. The work on the exhibition Passage in the Salon is special, and the answer to how we decide on the exhibition format can most easily be explained through that example. It quickly became clear that we didn’t want to display works by Bitlsti (of which there is a lot in our archive) without their participation. First, we started a series of video interviews with the guys where we discussed whether they wanted to have an exhibition, if they wanted it to be in a museum, what the exhibition should look like, and what their expectations were. That’s how we ended up with a video piece, edited by Bruno Tolić for the exhibition itself, allowing visitors to hear their responses. Through this conversation, we learned that Dušan thought the only acceptable exhibition format was one with audio tapes, placed on a table (not on a wall or shelf), and only audio tapes. For that reason, for the exhibition, we created Dušan’s audio tape, which was presented on the table, but also played in the room. The work that started with the interviews was so stimulating that we decided not to display works from the archive but instead to create the exhibition through a collaborative process with Bitlsti, and with Sofija Pašalić, Johanna Marcade-Mot, Marko Pavlović, Aleksandra Popović, Bruno Tolić, Ana Dimitrijević, Andrej Julher, Miloš Tadijin, Milena Janošević, and Aleksandar Denić. This model of cooperation between marginal, outsider artists and contemporary artists is something we had the opportunity to see at institutions like La S Grand Atelier[8] in Velsalm, Belgium, which we had many exchanges with over the years. Such cooperation requires strong production support, and it leads to very interesting results. However, it also presents challenges, because it is clearly directed toward producing certain specific art products that are more easily communicated, more easily positioned in the market, and more easily recognized as art in the outsider art field.
Simona: Cooperation with the Association of Anonymous Citizens “Pleme F20” began only three years ago and has generated not just new work forms but also new challenges. Unlike Bitlsti, who developed as a group over time through mutual exchange and friendship, Pleme F20 was at the start of the cooperation an informal but still fully developed collective focused on art with a specific dynamic and set of rules. Additionally, their members face specific problems that entail, as they say, not just the strain of social stigma but also extreme undermining of health due to the prescribed heavy medication.
What was the place of “recognition,” that is, how and why did this cooperation come about, and what has it been like?
Milica: In my memory, the beginning of cooperation with Pleme F20 was also smooth, although I can’t precisely say under what conditions it all became possible. I’m sure we first learned about Pleme as a collective from Goran Stojčetović, founder of the Association Art Brut Serbia, who initiated the contact and exchange with them. It was from him that we first learned about what they do and how they do it. He filmed some sketches with them and was the first to gain insight into their work. I would say that communication with Pleme started at their own initiative, as they began sending comics and drawings featuring characters from Matrijaršija, which was always incredibly fun. My admiration and respect for Pleme primarily stemmed from discovering that they were very much like Mubareć had been before. Mubareć was, for me, the most important part of my youth; it evolved into Matrijaršija and truly shaped my life. Pleme, like Mubareć before them, functions as an informal collective with its own base—one apartment where they gather. Every meeting involves hanging out, creating comics, drawing, making objects, collages, animations, and video materials, which can last anywhere from a few hours to several days. Their activities, like Mubareć’s, were not centered around exhibiting art or stepping into the art scene but had other motives that are personally close to my heart. The increasingly intense presence of Pleme F20 changed the way we saw our relationship with Bitlsti at that moment. With Bitlsti, we created a parallel life in Matrijaršija where we could live and work exactly as we wanted, exposing ourselves to “reality” in a controlled manner and on our own terms. Between Bitlsti, on one hand, and the medical and defectological categories that actively disqualify them, on the other, stood their parents and Matrijaršija—two powerful systems of protection. Pleme, however, is much more exposed to the major challenges of what we call real life, particularly the institutional apparatuses that treat them legally and medically. One of Pleme‘s interventions for the exhibition we did together involved acting out a situation using two props: a large syringe with a substance called Artan and a fire that burns on one side and is extinguished on the other. Artan extinguished the fire, symbolizing life, and it was important for them that others saw this. Part of their collective work and organization involves dealing with difficult situations, like when one of their members ends up confined in an institution against their will, with no possibility of release. I don’t want to oversimplify, but compared to these challenges, with Bitlsti, for us at Matrijarišija, it is essentially like being on an eternal rock band tour.
My collaboration with Pleme began in a context where I personally needed not to feel “alienated,” as I did when I was invited to curate two spring exhibitions for ULUS.[9] I knew why I accepted that challenge, but just as I wanted Matrijaršija to be part of the activities at the Art Pavilion Cvijeta Zuzorić, where the exhibition took place, I similarly wanted Pleme F20 there as well. I saw them as part of a way of producing artistic content that is completely detached from institutions, which are deeply foreign to me, even when I’m in a position of power to do whatever I please. I now realize that in such circumstances, I deeply desire the presence of my “tribe.” This is something I truly and wholeheartedly believe in. With the institutional system, I can negotiate and engage through theoretical, practical, and experimental activities that resemble exhibitions, curating, or three-day activities at the Pavilion. But in reality, I only believe in the spontaneous act of spending time together in a flat, basement, house on the periphery, or factory, and the relationships that are produced in those spaces.
Simona: Given the specific nature of their positions, what major challenges did you encounter considering that for your exhibition Passage in the Salon, simply taking and presenting their works as curators/selectors was not possible? Another thing, did their request for anonymity influence how your joint work was presented in the context of an exhibition? What responsibility did this entail, and what did joint decision-making look like?
Milica: For us, the responsibility was enormous because we were in a position to mediate between institutional expectations and our established habits of communication, production, and presentation. Compared to Bitlsti and Pleme, we certainly had more information and, thus, more power. We did our best to share this surplus of power with them. First, we asked whether they wanted to participate and what they wanted to display, and then we worked on fulfilling their requests—how they wanted something to be made, produced, translated, printed, animated, performed, or transferred. On the one hand, we weren’t doing something outside of our usual methods; we weren’t changing our principles. On the other, this was still completely different because we exposed them to the risk of institutional visibility. The initial exhibition title, and the group for communicating with Pleme, was Luda kuća (Madhouse). They liked this, as did we, and we all agreed that we were truly living and working in madhouses (Matrijaršija, Pleme, Naša kuća), where life and art are part of the same continuum—a concept that was natural to us. In the end, we decided to give the exhibition a more formal name: Passage in the Salon and Other Meeting Points of Art and Life, which better explained this relationship. They, of course, agreed. I still regret thinking that it was difficult to present the work of Bitlsti and Pleme simply as a “madhouse.” I’m not sure whether I was right, but there were several decisions we made to “protect” the work of these two groups, whom we truly believed in.
It is possible to map all the complex factors that change these existing practices “only” when they come in touch with an institutional framework. It’s not the same when we exhibit work through the usual collaborative exchanges where it’s understood that we aren’t being paid and have no clearly set goals, as opposed to having a defined framework through an international research project with contractual, budgetary, and other obligations. When we agreed with Pleme to participate in the exhibition, the next thing they did was hold a gathering, as they always did, and start making masks. They immediately bought four or five small plastic bulldozers, which they sewed into balaclavas (they made several of these for costumes), creating a Medusa mask. The fact that the exhibition had a production budget allowed them to buy small bulldozers, which may or may not be expensive, depending on how they are financed. These small bulldozers helped me understand what is and isn’t possible when one is working in a self-organized, self-financed, and self-sufficient way. In other words, when we have a museum exhibition, we can get bulldozers!
The anonymity of the Pleme members is primarily related to authorship, which is understood as collective. In the process of collaborating with Bitlsti and Sofija Pašalić on the production of experimental graphics, only the Pleme members who wanted to “perform” those graphics showed up. The others were “just” the audience. The graphic art was displayed in a large format in the windows of the Street Gallery, marking the public debut of Pleme F20. I am deeply grateful to them for taking all those steps forward.
Simona: How do you see the process of institutionalizing these practices and documenting the works of persons who do not identify as artists in the official art systems? From your experience, how do Bitlsti and members of Pleme F20 view this stepping into the public/art space?
Milica: With Matrijaršija, Bitlsti have long been exposed to the public and the art world. As a band, they have performed in prominent music venues like the Močvara Club in Zagreb and cult-status clubs like Menza pri koritu in Ljubljana. Bitlsti enjoy the audience, the attention, the exhibitions, the Fijuks, interviews, and recordings. Pleme F20, on the other hand, presents itself to the public primarily through their Facebook page, Tribef Tribe. This activity has been long-standing and persistent, and to me, it demonstrates their need to have their work seen. At Pleme’s initiative, their brilliant collective comic Love Planet was translated into English. For the exhibition, we printed the English version, while the Oto Bihalji Merin Salon displayed the original comic. It was important to them that visitors to the exhibition, even those who don’t understand Serbian, could read the comic. Although the comic was not developed with the intent of being displayed, the need for it to be seen and understood existed.
In his first interview, Miloš Petrović (a member of Bitlsti), when asked whether art can exist outside of a museum, responded, “Okay, yes, it can, but 50 meters from the museum.” I find the specific distance between art and the museum expressed in meters quite amusing from Miloš’s perspective, even though he has worked for many years far from museums (both in meters, kilometers, and all other units of length). Johanna reminded me that curator Maja Ćirić (who knows Pleme and included their work in the exhibition at the 20th Biennale in Pančevo that she curated) formally addressed Dušan Vučinić at the exhibition opening as an artist whose work she had come to see, which he found very exciting. Another moment that stood out was when Ivana Bašičević Antić (the director of the Museum) and I mentioned Dušan’s name during the opening ceremony, and he said to Johanna: “But they are talking about me!” Perhaps I focus too much on this one exhibition and give too much weight to the institutional acknowledgment of art practices, while simultaneously claiming that they don’t need such affirmation. However, the fact remains that this exhibition resulted in Pleme F20 and Bitlsti having their works included in the collection of the Museum of Naive and Marginal Art in Jagodina. They were recently purchased, and the works have been handed over to the Museum. The artists themselves, their parents (in the case of Bitlsti), and other members of Naša kuća who helped, mediated, and participated in this process are all incredibly proud. We are also proud that, by taking on the responsible task of curator/selector, we contributed to this acquisition.
Simona: Something that strikes out as particularly valuable in your practice is that, through such collaboration, at the material and everyday levels, you reject the imperative of productivity and clearly defined, purposeful action with a preset outcome. Not just preset, but any outcome beyond creating a form of community, important primarily for those involved in the process. In that sense, you continually challenge the relationship, as you say yourself, between art and life, exploring the potential sites where it is impossible to distinguish between these spheres, as evoked by members of the historical avant-garde.
How has your experience working with Bitlsti and members of Pleme F20 influenced your approach to these questions?
Milica: In a way that has been familiar to me since working with the Mubareć collective, and later through the work of AKC Matrijaršija, neither of these two collectives based their work solely on the visual aspect, nor did they produce only visual quality. Their poetics are much more complex, long-lasting, and unpredictable. For me, the special quality of what Bitlsti and Pleme F20 do and how they live lies in the hybrid nature of their practices, which always seem to contain an element of the performative. What’s more, I find their freedom in exploration particularly important—freedom that isn’t always fully articulated. Whether it’s creating new words, engaging in everyday poetry, or indulging in stereotypies and repetitions, they use various tools that leave a surplus of affective content. It’s possible to sing a famous song with the wrong words, use foreign languages without at all understanding them, and to sing, think, and speak without a perfectly complete, rationally impeccable articulation.
What pleases me most is thinking of one of the many conversations with Bata about Toše Proeski. Bata calmly says that Toše is an angel in the sky as if it’s self-evident. I, trying to sound smart, ask if Toše sings in the heavens like an angel (because he sang like one when he was alive, so logically, he should still sing the same). Bata looks at me with contempt for thinking something so foolish and says, “No, he doesn’t, Milice, he’s been hit by a truck!” He even gets a bit annoyed that I don’t understand. I mention this as an example of Bata’s non-productive, immaterial gesture, where he first performs several sharp logical turns and creatively intervenes in our roles in the conversation. I seemingly have the advantage, thinking I know what is true and what is false, but Bata flips the roles. This is an important example of non-productivity in our practice, which we translated into transcripts and printed only 30 copies of (which we no longer have, so the book practically doesn’t exist anymore). I’m not sure how I could justify this long-lasting, non-productive behavior, both mine and Bata’s, except as an attempt to erase the boundary between art and life, and as a constant practice of deconstructing existing codes of thought, behavior, and speech—something for which Bitlsti are excellent coaches.
The relationship between art and life, which we made explicit with the exhibition Passage in the Salon, allowed us to define the artistic engagement of these two collectives. The approach we took was to criticize the autonomy of art as a separate social field. However, we didn’t consider the possibilities of erasing the boundaries between art and life from the perspective of avant-garde practices, nor that of activism. I am constantly intrigued by the question of what if, by some strange twist of circumstances, amateur art had actually become dominant. What if formal artistic perfection and any sort of virtuosity became banal and marginal? What if the accidental code underlying the institutional art world was based on different premises—on the culture of workers, marginal creators, or solely on everyday practices that are not detached from life? I feel that such a turn could easily happen, and that it’s a true miracle we aren’t living in such an understanding of art.
[1] The text, partially changed, is taken from the collective’s website: https://www.matrijarsija.com/
[2] https://www.ulicnagalerija.rs/izlozba/pasaz-u-salonu-i-druga-mesta-susreta-umetnosti-i-zivota-pleme-f20-bitlsti-i-matrijarsija/
http://www.seecult.org/vest/pasaz-u-salonu
[3] Naša Kuća (Our House) – association that supports persons with developmental disabilities: https://nashakuca.blogspot.com/
[4] Mubareć is an informal art collective from Belgrade. Together with the group gathered around the Novo Doba festival, it formed AKC Matrijaršija. Mubareć’s influence includes an informal approach with no pretension to institutional status, an enthusiasm for the local entertainment industry (estrada) and queer, as well as joint action that is not necessarily tied to tangible products that subscribe to artistic valorization.
[5] Toše Proeski was a Macedonian singer and songwriter who became a major Balkan star at a very young age. He died in a car accident in 2007 and posthumously became an honorary citizen of the Republic of Macedonia. A memorial house dedicated to him in his birthplace, Kruševo, still attracts a large number of fans.
[6] Street Gallery (Ulična galerija) is a unique project that transforms an abandoned public space into a hub for artistic and cultural production. It is located in Čavke’s Passage in the center of Belgrade and consists of former windows from the Dom Sindikata cinema. The Gallery has held regular annual exhibitions for 12 years. https://www.ulicnagalerija.rs/
[7] Željko Šašić and Aca Lukas are two major turbo folk music stars, popular since the 1990s. Their relationship is complex, mostly due to private reasons: Željko’s ex-wife Sonja married Aca Lukas. Although Aca Lukas was never incarcerated, he is known for his antics in public and his use of narcotics.
[8] La S Grand Atelier – Centre d’Art Brut et Contemporain: https://lasgrandatelier.be/
[9] Association of Fine Artists of Serbia, https://ulus.rs/blog/prolecna-izlozba-2021-nevidljivi-portret/
