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O BELGRADE!

Belgrade 09.jpg

The installation plays with perception: wandering around the garden, as motion-triggered music streams from the tree above (playing Czech composer Leos Janaček's "O Belgrade!") the viewer is invited to remember the region's history.  The Residency garden, with Heritage trees, references and reminds the public of the cutting of the local forests in ancient times by foreign occupiers. Ice melting in the cage, filled with flowers, references the matrilineal cults that spanned southeastern Europe during the sustainable agricultural era (29,000-25,000 BCE). Serbia's continuing cultural contacts with the world from the Vltava to the Rio Grande, and difficult healing with her historical neighbors is acknowledged in the beauty of the music. After a long, brutal war, and before that years of a closed society under communist rule, the question stands for Serbs: how to fill up and empty cage? Thanks to Curator and the Ambassaor's wife, Dr. Marilyn Wyatt, the exhibition was integrated with workshops, lectures at the University of Belgrade, tours of the installation by the public, and a visit by then Vice President of the U.S., Joe Biden. 

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