Tuesday 20th November, Milan, Triennale Bovisa

Art and Survival | Focus on Bosnia-Herzegovina

When the spotlights switch off on a post-conflict area

A study day on the subject of Human Rights and the role of Contemporary Art today.
The non profit Association Connecting Cultures will bring together professional figures, intellectuals and
artists from all over the world to discuss the subject of Human Rights and the contemporary arts. On the
occasion within this framework the ongoing Project Art and Survival in Bosnia-Herzegovina will be
presented.
At the closure of the conference the video review Bosnian selection! will be inaugurated, showing inside
the Triennale Bovisa, and on the maxi screen outside the premises.

The study day Art and Survival | Focus on Bosnia-Herzegovina will reconsider the state of the art
in a post conflict country such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the artistic project Art and Survival is taking
place. The study day is intended as a moment for reflection and better understanding of the potential of
art practices in the difficult and complex equation of human and economic development in countries
afflicted by diffuse war and the separation of communities. Even more frequently the destabilisation of
societies in Europe and elsewhere, leads not to wars between nations but to an escalation of internal
conflicts, often ethnically defined, resulting in the denial of the most elementary human rights. What are
the very real, unspoken, human and economic consequences of this alarming trend visible in many parts
of the world?

Connecting Cultures is an action research agency in the field of the contemporary arts, working as a
catylist for creative development in society and in territorial regeneration, promoting culture as a
powerful engine for the development of individual and local resources.
Through the Art project Art and Survival, Connecting Cultures applies the language of art in an
empathic approach on several levels in order to combat the stigma relating to mental health and the
widespread anxieties deriving from the social and psychological consequences of widespread violence.
Focussing attention on Bosnia-Herzegovina twelve years after the end of the conflict, Connecting Cultures
invited the artist Cesare Pietroiusti to conduct a workshop working with three of the most promising
Bosnian artists and with the patients of two Mental Health Centres in Mostar. The long preparatory phase
due to the complexities of creating a dialogue with and between the local institutions and the creation of
a network of organisations has been an important part of the process.
The different levels at which the project watches, its aims, ambitions and difficulties will be presented by
Cesare Pietroiusti and Anna Detheridge, president of Connecting Cultures. The artists selected (Sandra
Dukic, Arman Kulasic, Lala Rascic) have been invited to work on individual projects based on the
experience of the workshop. All the materials will be presented in an exhibition in 2008, which will
attempt to bring together and render visible not the success or failure, but all the complexities of this
explorative process with many different actors.
All the phases of the project, with special attention to the workshop experience, have been filmed by a
team of professional filmakers of the Centre for Contemporary Art of Sarajevo. With them Connecting
Cultures will produce a documentary on PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder): an illness which takes a
particularly heavy toll in post conflict countries, particularly devastating for the possibilities of
reconstruction of an everyday normality within those societies.

Tuesday 20th November at 6.30 pm, the Video Review entitled Bosnian Selection! will be
inaugurated. Nine artists from Bosnia-Herzegovina have been selected in collaboration with the
Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art in an organic overview of the video works produced during the
past ten years in the post-war society. The works of these artists, some emerging, others already well
known on the international scenario, will be visible every day until 2nd December at the Triennale Bovisa
and on the maxi screen outside from 6.00 pm until midnight. The selection will also include a short
intense documentary of the workshop and the relationship with the patients in the two Mostar Mental
Health Centres in October 2007.
STUDY DAY PROGRAMME

Focus for discussion will be the potential for Art and creativity in the field of Human Rights in adding a
dimension of hope and a vision to people’s lives. Speakers can freely discuss what they believe to be the
main political economic social or artistic obstacles to development in a post conflict country. It is
undeniable that the situation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, more than ten years after the end of the war, is not
greatly developed despite the quantities of aid and mobilisation of the international community.
Among the most devastating consequences in the area of human relations is the widespread persistance
and insidious presence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), an often unrecognised and pervasive
obstacle to survival. The permanence and possible deterioration of this condition with time, the difficulties
of addressing it have rarely been studied or faced publically. During the Study Day the project Art and
Survival will be presented and discussed by those involved, and project materials produced during the
workshop will been viewed.

TUESDAY 20TH NOVEMBER

I SESSION 9.30 – 13.00

• Fulvio Irace, historical of Architecture, member of the Board of La Triennale Foundation of Milan,
institutional partner;
• Anna Detheridge, President of Connecting Cultures, coordinator of Art and Survival Project;
• Loretta Bondi, UNOG-OHCHR; Office of the United Nations, High Commissioner for Human Rights;
• Vladimir Gligorov, Economist at Wiener Institut fur Internationale Wirtschaftvergleiche, expert in
long-term growth in transition countries that has dedicated long part of his studies to Balkan
countries;
• Paola Pierri, President of Unidea Foundation; private foundation established by UniCredito Italiano in
March 2003 which will plan and sustain interventions in the field of development solidarity and co-
operation. Unidea proposes intervening in social and humanitarian fields by operating in the sectors
of medical, educational and environmental aid;
• Richard Mollica, Director of the Harvard Programm in Refugee Trauma (HPRT) at Massachusetts
General Hospital and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School;

LUNCH BREAK

II SESSION 14.30 – 18.00

• Yohannes Kassahun, Director of IDLO Distance Learning and research Center. IDLO is a inter-
governmental development organization that fulfils its mandate by providing training, technical
assistance, research and publication to governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), local
communities and professional associations in developing countries, countries in economic transition
and countries emerging from armed conflict;
• Irfanka Pasagic, Psychiatrist born in Srebrenica that has founded in Tuzla the centre “Tuslanska
Amica”, that offers the Bosnians medical, social and legal assistance, also implementing a project of
adoption at distance;
• Goran Cerkez, Assistant Minister for Federal Ministry of Health of Bosnia-Herzegovina;
• Cesare Pietroiusti, artist, coordinator of Art and Survival Project;
• Lala Rascić, artist involved in Art and Survival Project.
BOSNIAN SELECTION! + THE WORKSHOP VIDEO

Nine artists from Bosnia-Herzegovina have been selected in collaboration with the Sarajevo Center for
Contemporary Art in an organic overview of the video works produced during the past ten years in the
post-war society. Video works are dealing with issues of trauma, identity, justice in politically engaged
way yet expressing great poetical quality. These works express the need and difficulty of rebuilding an
identity, a future, sometimes just an everyday reality. The video produced during the workshop in
October 2007 in Sarajevo and Mostar, which involved Cesare Pietroiusti and Connecting Cultures, the
SCCA and artists Sandra Dukić, Arman Kulašić and Lala Raščić, the patients and staff of the two Mental
Health Centres in Mostar, will be shown alongside the artists' videos.

TUESDAY 20TH NOVEMBER

18.30 VERNISSAGE

The projection will be opened by Davide Rampello, President of Fondazione La Triennale di Milano.

Artists selected:

• Maja Bajević
• Danica Dakic
• Gordana Galić Anñelić
• Šejla Kamerić
• Arman Kulašić
• Damir Nikšić
• Lala Raščić
• Nebojša Šerić - Shoba
• Alma Suljević

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INFO
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Art and Survival | Focus on Bosnia-Herzegovina

Triennale Bovisa
Via Lambruschini, 31 Milano
Tuesday 20th November 2007
9.30-13.00 | 14.30 - 18.00
free entrance, please confirm your participation
english language only.
info@connectingcultures.info | ph 02.89181326

Bosnian Selection!
Triennale Bovisa
Via Lambruschini, 31 Milano
20th November | 2nd December 2007
Tuesday 20th November, 18.30 vernissage
Tuesday – Sunday, inside 11|00 / outside 18|00
free entrance

A project by Connecting Cultures Fondazione La Triennale di Milano

Via Giorgio Merula, 62 20142 Milano Institutional Partner of the project
T/F +39.02.89181326
www.connectingcultures.info | info@connectingcultures.info