Walking as a Way of Knowing – Belgrade

This spring WCSCD platform launched “Walking as a Way of Knowing – Belgrade”, a captivating series of events in Belgrade, offering unparalleled experiences that blend culture, history, and architecture.

“Walking as a Way of Knowing – Belgrade” is a series of walks and unique explorations within the city, led by local artists and architects, designed through their own research interests. While drafting these walks, we had in mind Donna Haraway's thinking that only a

partial perspective promises an objective vision. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges)

These artist-led experiences are designed to showcase the multifaceted Belgrade, revealing its marginalized histories, and vibrant multicultural identity through different senses and insights. As Australian thinker Stephen Muecke argues that there is a need to study specific,

local places in order to “put things more on the scale of everyday living.”(Muecke, Benterrak and Roe, Reading the Country, 21)

This Saturday, on May 18 will be the last walk by Jelica Jovanović, an architect and a member of Grupa arhitekata, who will talk about the origin story of The Non-Aligned Movement, a political platform for the countries, predominantly situated in the Global South, which refused to join either Eastern or Western political blocs during the Cold War. Belgrade became an important city for the movement because in September 1961 it hosted the first

Conference of Heads of State or Governments of Non-Aligned Countries.

Such events later inspired many architectural and urban planning projects, some traces of which can still be

seen today. Hence this walk is a result of an incredibly thorough work with archives that turned into a great journey through modern history and politics of former Yugoslavia and present-day Serbia.

On May 25 we are going to have the last walk with Dunja Karanović about the history of feminist and anti-war movements in Belgrade from the 1970s and 1990s. In Belgrade street names, squares, and monuments reflect a revisionist, one-sided understanding of

history that celebrates violence and oppression. Thus the aim of this walk is to map out and

uncover some of the marginalized aspects of city’s recent history – the names and actions of feminist activists, their anti-war protests, calls for solidarity, and artistic interventions in urban spaces.

All walks in May start on Saturdays at 4:00 pm.

Please arrive 15 minutes prior to your walk.

For more information please visit https://www.wcscd.com or WCSCD on Instagram @whatcouldshouldcuratingdo

The WCSCD platform was founded in 2018 by an independent curator, Biljana Ćirić as a civic association, and its fundamental activity is an educational program that annually hosts international artists, curators, researchers and cultural workers with focus on different ways of learning and working in the arts. The program's goal is to support research and artistic methodologies that foster critical thinking skills in art education.