Balkan Disco
12 photographs
70 cm x 100 cm
2010–2012
The work was presented as a spatial installation at the 54th October Salon in 2013, in the building of the former Kluz Department Store, 4 Masarikova St. in Belgrade. All the photographs were taken at the “Balkan” Disco in Vicenza in 2010. This disco-installation was an incorporation of a nightclub into the concept of an exhibition. She also participated in the 55th October Salon, Disappearing Things, 2014.
The title was borrowed from one of the numerous nightclubs bearing the name “Balkan” (e.g., Balkan Disco in Vicenza, Italy; Balkan Disco Express in Vienna, Austria; Balkan Night in Hamburg, Germany), where the “Balkan” music – traditional turbo-folk – is played. In the 1990s, turbo-folk music had a key role in defining the Serbian social and national identity. By recontextualizing the disco within the art space, the work becomes a kind of ready-made, thus examining the boundaries of aesthetics and ethics, geography and geopolitics, as well as everyday life and artificial artworks. In this light, the Balkans ceases to be a geographical and becomes a cultural determinant: today, the Balkans is becoming a stereotypical marker of a place for having a good time.
The spatial installation exhibited at the 54th October Salon included 13 photographs lined on alubond, a neon lighting, disco ball, bar, bar stools, gin-tonic, waitress.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Gift Contract: III-5-287/ 22.9.2014.
Inventory No. 1347
Photo: installation view 54th October Salon, Ana Kostić
Selected Bibliography:
54th October Salon, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2013
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Andrea Palašti (1984, Novi Sad, Serbia) in her art practice focuses on the issues of cultural geography, history and everyday life. She graduated in photography from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. In 2015 she received her academic title of Doctor of Science in Arts and Media from the Belgrade University of Arts, the Group for Theory of Arts and Media of the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Studies. She is the winner of the 54th October Salon in Belgrade (2013), as well as the Iskra Kultura Award, given by the Vojvodina Institute of Culture (2016). As part of the research fellowship from the Institute for Contemporary History, she spent some time at the photographic archive of the Federal Archives (Berlin / Koblenz, Germany), the Wiener Library (London, England) and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. The kültüř gemma! Foundation and the Ministry of Culture of the City of Vienna granted her a fellowship in 2018, for a research project carried out in collaboration with the National Museum in Vienna, dealing with the study of private photographs taken during the Second World War.
Together with Srđan Keča, she collaborated with the team of authors of the exhibition project 14-14, which represented the Republic of Serbia at the 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2014. Currently, she works as an assistant professor at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, on the subject of Visual Elements, Department of New Media Art. More information at www.andreapalasti.com