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The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
has organized the art colony within “Serbia and Kosovo:
Intercultural Icebreakers” program on March 6-10, 2017. Sixteen
young artists from Kosovo and Serbia, working or studying in the
fields of culture and arts, spent a creative week together in
Vrdnik, Serbia making a stop-motion movie. Prior to the colony,
these young artists have participated in a ten days long study tour,
during which they attended various lectures, workshops, visited
cultural institutions and organizations, enjoyed cultural and
artistic events in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Prishtina and Prizren, and
had an opportunity to make plans for a joint project, to get to know
each other, as well as societies and cultures they are coming from.
During the art colony, young artists had an unique
opportunity to develop their ideas and learn about different
techniques for creating a stop-motion movie, with the help of their
mentor Nebojsa Petrovic, Master of Arts in the field of graphics and
sociologist Demir Mekic. Their short film will be based on shared
stories and experiences and will depict some of the challenges young
people face today in Serbia and Kosovo.
One of the participants, Shqipe Gashi, who studies
acting at Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Prishtina shared her
impressions:
“The Art Colony was a great experience for me! It
was such a pleasure to meet new peers and spend time again with
people I already knew. It was an honor for me to be selected as
participant. I think that this kind of initiatives are a small step
to get things better between Kosovo and Serbia. I am happy that I
had a chance to made the first steps into changing things for the
better. I fully enjoyed these seven days in Vrdnik with all my
Albanian and Serbian friends!
Together, we created our little creative hub, got
to know each other and one of the most important parts for me was
sharing personal and very authentic and moving stories, and making
new and meaningful friendships.
We also learned a lot about techniques with regard
to creating animation movies, which is very useful and valuable for
us actors, performers and movie directors. Working on a scene for
our joint stop-motion movie based on one of my personal experiences
was very valuable for me.
I am so grateful that I was given a chance to
express myself freely with the support of my new friends form the
most understanding and encouraging project team!”
And, Rade Obradović student from Belgrade said:
“The activity that had great influence on me
during the art colony were workshops with Demir. I was given a rare
chance to fully express myself by looking deeply into your heart. I
was lucky enough to participate in this program and to meet good and
inspiring people, first during the seminar and later to live the
moments during art colony that will continue to have positive
influence on my personality in the future.
One can either easily find a true connection with
someone or not, and circumstances in which we work with each other
can greatly help or prevent finding that special connections. In my
opinion, all were given a perfect environment to get to know each
other which created a flow of amazing creative ideas!
We were privileged to have amazingly encouraging
working conditions, and were invited into open space and felt
completely free to develop our ideas in directions of our choice,
all of that with full support of Jelena, Demir and Nebojsa, from
whom we learned a lot about animated movies and translating each of
our skills and talents onto the screen. While working on a
performance with my new friend Izabela, another artist from Novi
Sad, I went through different phases of creative process (from
initial enthusiasm, through fall of energy, blockade, until
discovery of new excitement and explosion of ideas which led to new
ways in which I was able to artistically express myself.)”
The overall goal of this program is to contribute
to renewing old and create new ties between young people, academic
and artistic community, media and civil society from Belgrade and
Prishtina by promoting intercultural dialogue, reconciliation and
normalization process.
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