Kristina and art have long since become one

If we speak, we have said what we did not mean to say/ If we remain silent, we have said nothing/ But we have remained silent for a long time / Every word means what / What its silence means", are the lines of the poet of fire and death, the "prince of poetry" Branko Miljkovic.

Those verses, as the art historian says Kristina Radovic, editor at JU "Zahumlje", best describe her eternal hesitation whether to say something or remain silent. It was the same during the interview for "Magazin" - something was said, something was kept silent, but in every sentence spoken and silenced was Kristina. Or art. Anyway, because Kristina and art have long since become one. And cultural events in the city under Trebjes are almost unimaginable without her - whether she organizes them, moderates them, or provides support from the audience.

The world can do nothing to a man who sings in misfortune

Kristina Radović completed art history in Belgrade and graduated with a degree in "Painting in Hitchcock's films".

"In the final year of the faculty, prof. Ph.D Slobodan Mijušković, an art historian, lectured on 'The Use of Painting in Hitchcock's Films'. What I found interesting about Hitchcock is that he never asks the standard question of who is to blame, but the concept of his films, as he says Gilles Deleuze, is based on the exposition of the 'couple of relations in which the culprit and the crime are included'. Image/painting is exactly the means he uses to show the audience these relationships. Exceptional lectures by prof. Mijušković and my curiosity to learn as much as possible about Hitchcock's films and the way images/painting are used in the film, as well as the interweaving of these two media, led me to defend my graduate thesis on this topic, to further engage in research on it and to maintain and two lectures in our city", explains Kristina why she decided on Hitchcock and painting in his films.

After graduating from college, she returned to her hometown and gained her first work experience at the Nikšić High School, where, in addition to regular classes, she also organized sections, and in 2012 she even managed to prepare the play "Obsession: Picasso and Dora Mar" with the students, in which they participated in the revue part of the Kotor Festival of Theater for Children.

The Cultural Development Support Program is starting, and Kristina, as the head of the team that realizes the said program in Nikšić, organizes numerous cultural events, opens exhibitions, but also prepares them, such as an exhibition of old record covers, a retrospective exhibition of modern art from the local museum, an exhibition of photographs and documents on the occasion 120 years of "Zahumlja"... She was the selector of the 54th Hercegovina art salon, the author of the series "Gorostasi slobode" about the monumental heritage of the NOB, as well as the multimedia project "Tango: About Heroes and Love" and the latest "Imaginarium". She works at JU "Zahumlje" as a program editor and although she put a special stamp on everything she did and painted every event with authentic colors, "Tango" and "Imaginarium" somehow stood out. Or they were singled out by the story that Kristina intended for them.

"The multimedia theater project 'Tango - About Heroes and Love' is a story about people who, from the beginning of tango, at the end of the XNUMXth century, until today, were able to express their nostalgia, patriotism, love, jealousy, passion, longing, passion for football, at the same time life. The subtitle of the project, 'About heroes and love', is a slightly modified allusion to the well-known work of the Argentine writer and scientist Ernesto Sabato, whose works form the framework of this project, and the writer himself guides us through the chronological development of tango, an autobiography, through the story of the heroes of the XNUMXth century and their lives. The idea for this project has its roots in one of Sabat's libertarian thoughts, which reads: "The world can't do anything to a man who sings in misfortune".

"Imaginarium" started this year. Four sessions were held, followed by a short break, and continued in the fall.

"As far as 'Imaginarium' is concerned, images are a phenomenon and one of the most ambiguous and broad terms used by theoreticians and practitioners of all kinds of art, and as such my eternal inspiration. The idea was to look at and affirm the contemporary art scene and criticism through the phenomenon of paintings, especially among the younger generations, to develop and suggest a valuable attitude about concrete works of art through a conversation with renowned figures from the regional and national cultural and artistic scene".

Make a soul movement and change yourself

She admits that she doesn't know when she realized that art would be her calling and not just a passion. This, she says, happened unconsciously, "probably in one of those moments" when she was looking for "art in life" and imperceptibly moved "into life in art".

"Art is a more beautiful way to the truth. Friedrich Nietzsche said that 'we have art in order not to die of the truth'. Studying the history of human thought and different types of art, I realized that the task of art is not to copy the truth, but to make it visible in its own way. As for culture, there are over 200 definitions in sociology. For me, culture would be any external or internal process that leads to the growth of a person, and therefore the society in which he lives," she says.

She admits that the main heroine of her favorite novel "The Master and Margarita" is the most similar to her in literature, and if she was a picture it would be "The Lady with an Ermine" or one of Picasso's portraits of Dora Mar. In life, she is most annoyed by dehumanization, and in culture "the fact that in this digital age of ours, it's as if culture has somehow become boring".

"Consequently, the category is out of place and, as such, completely unnecessary. There is more and more striving for a sensation that is always more exciting and which in its rootlessness leads to dehumanization".

She was never attracted by sensationalism, and culture cannot be boring to her, but very necessary.

"I believe in the idea of ​​tradition as a driving principle in the author's work. E.g. Thomas Mann finds his foothold in the work of Goethe and the philosophical thought of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, so I conscientiously study all those writers and those works on whose tradition the work I read is based. As for writers and works, I like Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Mann, Bulgakov, Turnier, Markes, Sabat, Andrić, Selimović, Crnjanski and Kish. I love everything written by Božo Koprivica, especially the novels 'Only the gods can promise' and 'Street dream'. I use the above-mentioned principle when it comes to painting. I love Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Caravaggio and everything that the famous Italian historian and art theorist Filiberto Mena means by the analytical line of modern art, starting from the creation of post-impressionism, all the way to the dematerialization of the art object in conceptual art".

Kristina is also a member of the "Zahumlje" choir, because as Miljković wrote, "a song is not written, it is lived". And Kristina lives art to the fullest, and when asked if we can defeat non-culture with culture, she answers that we can only when we defeat ourselves.

"I will quote Josif Brodsky: I don't believe in political movements, I believe in a personal movement, a movement of the soul, when a person stares at himself and feels so ashamed that he wants to change something in himself, not in the outside world."

Nikšić is a city with a long and valuable cultural tradition, and Zahumlje is a temple of culture. Kristina put it all together and presented it in the exhibition "Spark of the Immortal Flame", which she organized on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of "Zahumlje".

"The exhibition covered the time period from 1898 to 2018 and represents a very rare and impressive view of hundreds of photos, documents, posters from the archives of this institution, family albums of many members of this Society and their heirs, as well as documents collected from the city archives. , private and museum collections from the country and region. The exhibition can be considered interdisciplinary, because through photographs and documents, apart from the history of the Society's activities, it touches on several areas, the cultural, artistic, political and even economic driving force in the development of Nikšić. This visual story pays tribute to the merits of 'Zahumlje', which participated in the founding of new institutions and enabled the expression of young, gifted artists who marked and will mark the time in which they lived and live, and who cared and care for the preservation of cultural heritage of the city and the country," says the author of the exhibition.