Almost everyone was bewildered when entering Belgrade across Branko’s Bridge by the strange view of two houses built on a roof of one of the buildings. They were a symptom of the turbulent and incompetent strategies of the nineties, but their function was also to accommodate refugee families. Nowadays, these houses are hidden, because, among other things, the strange view is not in harmony with nearby corporate commercials.

These houses were famous and so Kalle Brolin came all the way from Sweeden to interview the persons who lived there. This interview was a motive for a video work within the project that intended to criticise, intervene or offer the alternative to the non–place. The mentioned houses, which narrative is illuminated by artistic procedure, have served as a good example of illustrating real needs of individuals and their (dis)functional realities that is as an example of art that stands for a complex, other side of a given concept.

Marc Augé has formulated the term non–place in his book by the same name. Instability of individual histories formed under influence of collective history is reflected nowadays in this term. Non–places present the effect of the state of supermodernism. This effect initiates bonding among people by different abstract systems of communication, like automated teller machines, hypermarkets, parkings, airports etc. We face a paradox here. The paradox of supermodernism is manifested through finding the experience of a community in anonymity and loneliness, which are characteristic for non–places. Global capital flow not only rapidly defines our environment by its creation; it also profiles individuals by giving them already defined functions with a consequent limitation of personal freedoms.

It is even possible to interpret different realities in the art world as non–places. Art historian Guillaume Désanges thinks that art critique is overfed with texts, used by all, but understood by few. He refers to numerous conferences organized in the world of art as non–places, with known references, quotations and depersonalized, transitory logic, which makes us feel isolated.

Hence the need to create areas of negotiations and the necessity for more creative organizing and consequential production of different sense. Due to the relationship of citizens towards its history, Kalemegdan is not a typical non–place. However, the visual programme of the BELEF is focused around the transitory parts of this fortress, which are rarely individualized. Located in this manner, this project should be understood in a broader city context.

Negotiation is realized between the city, as the institution that creates strategies based on certain quantity of powers and tactics of individuals/contemporary artists, which create the space for new functions in, what would only seem to be an environment defined in advance at first glance. Contemporary artists’ tactics are based in this case on the skill of cunning acting, which was described in the book The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certau as the quality of individuals to avoid the boundaries in their submission to global limitations of the urbanized society and use them with – daily ingenuity, adjusting them by inserting among them their own décor and personal courses.

The substance of what is negotiated and defined as a key question are the possibilities of creation of community outside the non–place, the community in which we are not lonely or where we at least do not deny it. Negotiations are based on consensus, but their goal is not absolute harmony. They are based on experiment and mutual reciprocity. Contemporary art, personal décor and course presented here are realized in small gestures, defined by Mika Hannula in his book The Politics of Small Gestures (Chances andChallenges for Contemporary Art) as a possibility to shape our own version of time and space which coexists with the society of spectacle. Small gestures are formed from the inability of contemporary art to compete with the rules of the game and the abilities in the world of advertising. But, in the world where advertising kills individuality and the feeling of community by rapidly creating non–places, small gestures with its internal logic generate the possibilities to invent alternatives and point out the importance of individual stories.

If the space, according to Michel de Certeau, represents an applied place and a point where courses intersect, by creating small gestures we have tried to bring back to life Kalemegdan, confronting the non– places at the same time. With small gestures artists develop a direct relationship towards the environment without any ambition to find their place in the system, but with a desire to intervene with the intimate other thus reviving that other as a complementary and constitutional.

Tactics of small gestures in this year’s BELEF differ from one another in the way they realize their space. But, if it is possible to find a mutual denominator among them, that would be the wish to move in order to pass, like in Kontravidikovcima (Counter-gazebos) of Milena Putnik, the distance from others and to instigate the idea of interaction in close surroundings. Certain gates, thresholds and crossroads of Kalemegdan, places that symbolize movement and relationship to others have been activated. The characteristic of the majority of small gestures is that they are based on a certain type of narration, as the only possible way to transform places into spaces and spaces into places. De Certeau considers narration to be an offence, because it surpasses, it breaks and gives way not only to the view but to departure as well. Vremenska patrola (Time Patrol) by Janos Sugar collects the stories of the present, contemporary other. In the video work Ka novoj adresi (Towards a New Address), Swedish artist Charlotte Karlsson incarnates the place in a conversation with young mothers, and the stories of space interweave and organize places in the works of Kalla Brolin and in a funny exchange of passwords between collocutors in their compassionate closeness in the work Tajne Beograde (Secrets of Belgrade) of the Dutch artist Anna Verhoijzen. Janko Pavlović confronts the passages by naming invisible trees, transforming them into space based on the commandment derived form oneself as the other. His alley becomes a trajectory given an unforeseen sense by imagination.

Non–places are considered by Augé to be characteristic for the states of supermodernism reflected in a speed-up time and space and a loss of individuality. The experience of loneliness is present among them, based on communication of the public force with individuals by the means of billboards and screens, but without any intervention of people. Unlike the texts that conquer space, but simplify individuals, Pia Sandstrom’s posters called From This Side of the Forest I Long for the Ocean include a deep intimacy of individuals on the other side and imaginary spaces they pass through. Neon sign Uvek stranci (AlwaysStrangers) of the collective Claire Fontaine stands in a direct opposition with commercials of big corporations that only seemingly make us feel at home, while in fact they only deepen the feeling of loneliness. The sign bearing the original caption Strangers Everywhere was translated here with always. We should bear in mind that the state of supermodernism, which influences creation of non – places, makes the time keep up with the space due to a fact that we pass through non–places and that its measuring unit is the time. Installation Zauvek (Foreverer) by Dragan Đorđević makes the movement through the Clock Tower of Kalemegdan extraordinary by direct sound questions. The work of Dejan Anđelković and Jelica Sretenović proves that Augé is right when he says that history can be reduced to today’s and yesterday’s news. Intervention of their small gesture is condensed in the truth that each individual takes his or her motives, words and images from inexhaustible reserves of the present day.

The tactics of small gestures that confronts the society of spectacle, a step towards an individual opposed to loneliness inside the community, negotiations instead of representations, relationship of spaces and individuals, movement rather than passive observation make this year’s BELEF special.