MG+MSUM

As You Go Journal

At the current time, Biljana Ciric initiated a series of commentaries on the pandemic from Belgrade, Ljubljana, Addis Ababa, Bishkek, Shanghai, and Guangzhou to reflect challenges in a new reality. The As You Go Journal is published on the What Could Should Curating Do? (WCSCD) platform.

 

Current contributors to the As You Go Journal: Ocean Wavz, Katarina Kostandinović, Siniša Ilić, Bermet Borubaeva, Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumalie, Sarah Bushra, Nikita Yinqian Cai, Zdenka Badovinac and others.

 

Research partners of the project are: Moderna Galerija (Ljubljana, Slovenia), ArtEast (Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic), Times Museum (Guangzhou, China), National Library in Bor (Serbia), Addis Ababa University (Etiophia), and WCSCD (Belgrade, Serbia).

The journal starts with entries on the pandemic from colleagues and institutional partners from different localities that the project is engaging with. Their individual reflections on the pandemic from Belgrade, Ljubljana, Addis Ababa, Bishkek, Shanghai, and Guangzhou reflect their own personal challenges of being mother, partner, lover, friend, son and daughter, museum curator, director, and artist, in a new reality. Through these first texts for the journal, we try to understand how the pandemic changes the socio-political setting within the local context, how the community reflects on it, what institutions look like in this moment, how people connect, how you can protect yourself and loved-ones and stay awake to the challenges in front of us.

 

The online journal was originally framed as a vehicle that will track the progress of artists’ research and present archival material combining text, interviews and images-based contributions for the duration of the project. In addition, due to a lack of knowledge production platforms within the local contexts engaged by the project, the journal will provide for the development of exchange and the fostering of research.

 

The research inquiry focuses on Central Asia, the Balkans and East Africa and is conceived and developed with cells or partner institutions across these geographies, who will act as hosts and facilitators of the research to be done in collaboration with local communities. Research partners of the project are: Moderna Galerija (Ljubljana, Slovenia), ArtEast (Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic), Times Museum (Guangzhou, China), National Library in Bor (Serbia), Addis Ababa University (Etiophia), and WCSCD (Belgrade, Serbia).

 

As you go… roads under your feet towards the new future is a long-term project and research inquiry that reflects on the recent Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and how it will alter the aesthetics and practices of everyday life in different local contexts. The project was conceived and initiated in 2019 by Biljana Ciric, founder of What Could Should Curating Do? (WCSCD), after research visits to a number of localities in relation to Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2018, supported by Foundation for Arts Initiatives.

 

WCSCD has been initiated with a goal to foster the new generation of curators and artists as well as to raise awareness of the importance of curatorial knowledge and positions when thinking of art institutions and its role within larger social context to overcome the lack of formal education related to curating in the Balkan region.