Winning of Freedom

The approaching fifteenth anniversary of the Center for Cultural Decontamination, a noninstitutional cult venue that has become an institution through the many years of creative work, was the reason to talk to its founder Borka Pavićević, a dramaturge, who with a group of likeminded people conceived and articulated the initial idea of an 'open society' project thus pointing to – as opposed to the dogmatically uniform outlook - new pathways to individual and collective values.

By Milorad St. Ilić

The Center for Cultural Decontamination is a gallery, theatrical stage, concert hall and forum for holding panels and discussions. It is a place cultivating since the 1990s an alternative world view and a venue assembling independent intellectuals and avant-garde artists.

The Center for Cultural Decontamination was founded in 1994, and became operational precisely on January 1, 1995. You headed a group of people with inexhaustible energy at the dilapidated home of the old Belgrade Veljković family on Birčaninova St. that embarked on the road of uncompromising struggle toward re-examining, demystifying and re-positioning cultural, social and political values. How did this idea come about?

– The Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD), as an independent and non-profit cultural organization, emerged as a result of an initiative of a group of intellectuals, artists, activists, public figures and scientists who in 1992 and 1993 rallied around the idea of standing up to the belligerent policies of Slobodan Milošević and enhancing resistance from civil society, civilians, the civil resistance movement by coming up with artistic, cultural and socially-engaging programs. At the time, the then Belgrade Circle – the platform of anti-nationalistically oriented intellectuals and artists – an organization of those who were later to become the mainstay of the nation's defense against moral, legal and political accusations, issued a collection titled The Other Serbia, a sourcebook of concepts triumphantly vindicated on October 5, 2000.

From Belgrade Circle came a number of initiatives articulated at this time into institutions of civil assembling to be reckoned with, organizations defending human rights and freedoms that opposed war and violence in the 1990s.

The founding of the Center for Cultural Decontamination relies on the premise that culture and art are such tenets as open up the possibilities for dialogue on politics and political activity in crisis circumstances as well as that culture and human rights - just as peace and non-violence - are indelible. We had a good mind to create a place where people would feel free to express what they think. Thus, a critical institution was formed motivated by a conviction that if culture had been instrumental in producing contamination then a reverse process was in order to act by way of culture against war, closing up, xenophobia and provincialism. We came across the building of the former Musée erected in the 1930s by the Veljković family and architect Djokić that was in a sorry state – the documents of the existence of this building and of the culture it was built in lay on the floor. We picked them up from the floor and thus performed the First Decontamination on January 1, 1995, at high noon. This was incredible event; it was a rallying of the entire anti-war Belgrade, an event that for many subsequent years came to lend meaning to January 1.

The Center for Cultural Decontamination has set several basic principles embodied in the struggle against nationalism, xenophobia, intolerance, hate and fear. Creativity instead of destruction. Do tell us something about the time during which You came to create and develop Your ideas?

– We entered the dilapidated pavilion as if into an eroding historical base; it was like standing at the center of a country that was experiencing the same predicament. Vukovar has already been destroyed, the siege of Sarajevo was still ongoing; the entire country as we knew it was the object of destruction. That was a time of nationalistic euphoria that crushed not only continuities of 'others' but the continuity of the entire country, and definitely its culture. 'Homogenization' and populism were seriously engaged in committing a cultural suicide of sorts, in destroying everything one regularly swore by. At that time began the building of a class that emerged precisely as a result of war, for which war represented usurpation of former socialist ownership, a class that used nationalism, patriotism and war to establish themselves and which launched the type of cultural production the results of which we can witness still today in the form of illegal construction in every sense of this word. Had the regime of Slobodan Milošević wiped out only JAT, in whose Review this text was being published, it would have been sufficient for serious historical accountability, let alone everything else. There are many testimonies of this time, and this is precisely what the Center for Cultural Decontamination and we are addressing – that which we have lived through and what we had been doing. The working title of this project – which is in fact at our main activity – is A Community of Remembrances.

How have the then official institutions – from political to cultural – reacted to the emergence of and the activities within the Center?

– To me the most characteristic was that officials, including media, when they could not pass over something in silence liked to say or write, for instance, 'Liv Ullman was in Belgrade last night', without stating where and using the Veljković Pavilion as a rather more convenient term than the Center for Cultural Decontamination, which, I suppose, sounded too politically defining or threatening or risky, or perhaps inappropriate. The press analyses from that time would paint a very appropriate picture of the spirit of the time, and not only of that time. This was simply a place opportune for generating 'opposing' views and as such invited 'controversy', as this is how things here are described when wishing to avoid saying something worthwhile and taking a stand towards the basic values. Immediately after October 5, in the midst of the still prevailing revolutionary spirit, while the tapes of the free productions were the main source material for the official media, including the Serbian TV (RTS), I was astounded by the sheer quantity of the work that we had done. Our premises and the goings-on therein were frequently broadcast, thereby disclosing 'our role in world revolution' and the aspirations of many to jump on the bandwagon symbolizing winning of freedom. The events were many and varied; some terrifying such as when the police raided us immediately after the NATO intervention began. But, there were also moments capable of compensating in a single stroke that which one will never forget.

It was nearly fifteen years since the Center for Cultural Decontamination was founded. How would You describe the (past) activities of the Center and what were the messages it sent out during the demonstrations, the wars in former Yugoslavia, the sanctions, the bombing and all those difficult and traumatic events taking place we were contemporaries to?

– From its inception to this day, the Center has organized and/or produced over four thousand variegated events, performance events, exhibitions, protests, public discussions, theatrical performance productions as well as a variety of street events. Acting as part of cultural and artistic production, the CZKD aimed at opposing the dominant cultural patterns underlying the established policy of war and nationalism that had served as an ideological framework and intermediary in converting a people into a nation. In this regard, the Center has formed a résumé in the form of an exhibition titled Dossier Serbia performed in Berlin, Vienna and Belgrade; has after the October 5, 2000, events seen through a project titled Modern Art, the Issue of Serbian National Identity, which, among other things, is also a proposal for a new cultural policy. Also, everything that went before as well as that which is ongoing, the Center would from now on be attending to as part of a three-year project title Yugoslav Studies. Yes, we are contemporaries and also witnesses and therein lie all our faults and virtues.

What does Serbia, as a country, and its people need to do to join on an equal footing the community of developed states and nations of Europe?

– To accede to what they are at this time; for the elites to discontinue loathing the people; to alter reality and not the image of Serbia. To turn its multi-ethnicity into a virtue and not a shortcoming, to expand variety not eliminate it, to realize that what it has is its brand and not to devise stupid propaganda – things that only make the people of this country look ridiculous and oftentimes depressing; for Serbia to stop searching for 'excusable delusions' and blaming it on something or someone else; for Serbia - paradoxically – to look within itself, although it thought it has been doing that all along but it hasn't; to identify and stratify its past; to separate myth from reality, history from para-history; to cease reconstructing the past that does it no credit but to realize wherein the better part of its past lay; to refrain from proclaiming killers and Quislings as heroes but to invoke the true fathers and mothers and true and unique relatives and then it will have many and genuine friends. Nothing can be done from without and by resorting to force, one cannot pack something nonexistent but only that which one has produced and which is existent.

The Center for Cultural Decontamination hosts an exhibition space, a theatrical stage, a concert hall and a hall for holding forums and discussions. Issues such as politics, religion, human rights and freedoms have been debated here. Do You think that You have contributed in some way to evolving the awareness primarily among the young people about the ways toward a more humane and improved society?

– All these sections exist within a single space, or one space develops from all these other sections by way of what unfolds in it - which is usually called a program. Yes, ideas about things should precede events, which then occur and bring changes with them. So much has come forth at the Center, and surely many would not have become what they are today if not for the Center. These are formative things, and "seeing something entails will", as set out in the piece based on Hermann Broch's German Life and Letters directed by Ana Miljanić during the fatal year of 1999, and quite appropriately. At any rate, some had the 'will'. This is observable on the public scene; and they have it still. To them belongs the continuity and with them as well as with 'those up and coming', it will become clear – as Slobodan Šnajder is wont to say – that "the biggest traitors were the biggest patriots."

What has left an indelible impression on You, having done creative and having met many people appearing at the Center for Cultural Decontamination whether as creators or spectators?

– First of all, the people with whom I have worked and with whom I continue working to this day at the Center exist in no other age or space. The things we have been through together and what we have achieved has resulted in a highly emancipated and emancipating group of people that above all enjoys mutual respect and love. To this day, everyone is glad to come and work, to be together. What more could you want? We are all glad to 'come to work'. Each one of us, upon returning from a trip, come first to the Center - be it bombing, be it winter, be it hot weather, be it war, be it 'eruption of peace'. Friendship, alliance with many of our associates, seeing eye to eye – is one of the fascinating privileges throughout these past fifteen years. I simply regret not having enough time to remember all the unique things that happened at the Center because things happened here that could happen nowhere else. Anyhow, all this could be a subject of someone's literary work. I hope in a way some such literary work would appear as we approach the Center's fifteenth anniversary or… someday.