Accepting powerlessness and creating

(oslobodjene.ba)

I return again, for the umpteenth time, to the question of the significance of culture and art in the framework of questioning social and political anomalies, or rather to the need to try to reach some different forms and models of existence through critical revaluation, by asking the right questions, through creative imagination. Of course, it is clear that this way cannot directly change things, acting within the framework of the cultural and artistic field, except in cases where individuals are directly engaged in party-political structures, in itself means agreeing to a kind of powerlessness to make those concrete advances in the arena of political struggle. Because, imagination, metaphor, allegory are not what can shake any government in direct action.

However, outside these mapped and determined horizons, there is plenty of space in which the necessary shift can be achieved, which could create an opportunity for opening up different perspectives, views that will offer an alternative, the possibility of interpreting reality unencumbered by daily political customs. This does not mean that we should close ourselves off in escapist ivory towers, giving up on engagement, but that through well-placed creative networks we should do everything possible to educate the audience, strengthen its questioning impulse, in order to ultimately have that cathartic effect, the need to look at ourselves with what we live in.

Only an awakened person, and culture and art have the power of awakening, is capable of coming to grips with what surrounds him, with which he constantly struggles. This experience of the other, depicted on stage, written in a novel, brought to life in poetry, conveyed through film or exhibition, and finally played on instruments, gives us the opportunity to become aware, understand and see in our own solitude before the world. Although culture and art in our framework, due to a series of constraining circumstances, are not to the extent of mass interest in which they should be, they exercise their indirect influence. Hence the question of their vitality and meaning is that they raise those topics that are uncomfortable for us, with which we do not easily come to terms, but through which we come to knowledge about our place in the world as it is today.

From this collision with reality, it is possible to create a much-needed crack, to exert the necessary influence for awareness, which would then be transferred to some broader political and social models. Where culture and art enter those critical points, into that which is reluctantly spoken about, that which is kept silent, there is also hope that change is possible, that a position is achievable through which the experience of living in this space and in these circumstances can be transformed. For this reason, it is extremely important to preserve cultural and artistic production intact, away from any kind of political influence that makes it captive and limited. What I mean by this is that no matter how impossible it may seem within the framework of the system to achieve free action that is not burdened by budgetary subsidies, there is still an opportunity for subversion, overcoming boundaries and opening up those thematic preoccupations that touch the neuralgic clashes of socio-political deviation. The only question is whether there is a real will on the part of those who create, to search for a way to communicate to the community within whose framework they operate the truths without which there is no movement forward.

On the other hand, in order to step into what is to come, it is necessary to be able to become aware of what was, and without mythologizing it, therefore, a critical dissection of the past, the culture of memory and its associated segments, imposes itself as a primary need for collective demystification. Although this is not easy to do in the circumstances in which we exist, insisting on rebellion against everything that exists should be the fundamental determinant of every entry into culture and art. Anything other than that is an imitation of the existing value system. Art and culture that are unable to give birth to a view that goes beyond the existing are not worthy of their mission. They then fail, agreeing to the givens without any impulse for change. Which is to say that they do not serve the truth, but recreate the universal lie, participate in it, contributing to the gloomy conditions in the community, suppressing every utopian aspiration and agreeing to serve the obscurantist narratives that keep us in the captivity in which we are now. Being in art and culture means believing that with your every move you contribute to the creation of an opportunity for change to become possible, no matter how quietly it may be, it is possible that the day will come when, based on our ideas, that dream change will happen. Therefore, we should not agree to self-censorship and deception, but proactively design every step, with the hope that what we do is our only possible pledge for the future.