19 Oct 2010

FAST FORWARD//Art and Politics: Milica Tomic and Saskia Holmkvist

Performative dialogue-interview between artists Milica Tomic/Belgrade and Saskia Holmkvist/Stockholm.

Round table with invited Serbian rooted thinkers, activists and artists: Borka Pavicevic (Centre for Culture Decontamination), Vladan Jeremic (Biro Beograd), Women in Black.

Moderator: Corina Oprea, Assistant Artistic Director – Intercult, Stockholm, post-master student in curatorial practices at Stockholm College University of Art and Design.

How effective do we expect artistic practice to be?
As producers, curators and audience, we sometimes require socially engaged artistic work to literally articulate responses, messages of change.
Art as a critical forum and the sensitive line between social activism and socially engaged art is at stake.
Requiring the public space for critical thought, artists immerse into the structures of the society, finding new methods to give voice to social/political issues.


Milica Tomic works and lives in Belgrade as a visual artist, primarily video, film, photography, performance, action, light and sound installation, web projects, discussions etc. Tomic's work centres on issues of political violence, nationality and identity, with particular attention to the tensions between personal experience and media constructed images.

Saskia Holmkvist is engaged in an art practice that moves between video, performance and site specific projects–in an ongoing artistic investigation into the relations of the politics of the authentic and credible. In the process she explores the negotiation of undertaking roles in life and how structures within language affect the politics of these positions. Holmkvist's interest lies in what is behind the apparent dialogue or culture such as manipulations, strategies, misunderstandings, translations and more.

FFW Art and Politics wants to stimulate public debates on the necessity of a critical dialogue on the civic participation of artists and their statements on political concepts such as democracy and social engagement.
More on FFW at www.intercult.se/fastforward

An initiative of Intercult, Stockholm in collaboration with Swedish Institute - Creative Force Western Balkans.