Why are 'the Balkans' so (or still) fashionable at the moment? Why do we all keep switching on Balkan issues…Will the "Balkan-trend" subside after the sudden spread of an overwhelming interest in it…? What will be next fashionable item after all these Balkan scenarios to spend euros on?
'Balkanness' (as belonging to a certain area and to a certain range of mentalities) is, again, under definition. It is of certain actuality the political correctness of questioning Balkanness vs. globalization vs. 'europenization' - although globalization implies the nightmare of losing cultural identities.
Identification is, in a way, enclosing, in another way, disclosing…but what about neo-identification, re-identification, self-identification… and so on?
Do new generations (so globalized) feel the Balkanness anymore? Do they try to escape this temperamental and somewhat neurotic, bordered reality? Young auto-exiles from Balkan countries - enacting a real exodus -, do they still identify themselves with this area, or do they mostly want to escape their ephemeral Balkan capitals, or at least to act as nomads, in between… For them national vs. international is less than an issue…
Is the West trying to culturally (and not only) colonialize/ integrate the Balkans and the 'Wild East'? Or to 'implement' a kind of new, subtle "Kultur-rassismus" after the fall of the Iron Curtain, as my Balkan friend Uros Djuric put it? Or is it just a friendly approach to meet differentia? To meet the Other?
It seems that we have to assume this label… to be 'ghetto-ized' and wait to be discovered as Europe enlarged… we are a territory that should be explored. That should be researched upon. That should be Westernally contextualized. (The Balkans are interesting only if (re-)discovered by Western curators or theorists - of course always with the backstage, more or less overt help of Eastern curators and theorists.) The Balkan information is ingurgitated and digested mainly through or with Western filters and labels.
Most of the time, searching for and buying mainly clichés, (everybody is seemingly astonished and disappointed that Balkan art is sometimes so 'similar to European art'), curators invent bazaar-like displays, meeting the expectations of their audiences.
Westerners are PR-izing and advertising the Balkans and in a way we feel ashamed, in a way grateful… Important is the corpus of information and analysis built up about the Balkans, under the umbrella and within the context of Western research, a warrant of earnest and efficient effort. Paternalist attitudes towards Easterners are also commonplace.
The Other is considered - and obviously it is from a certain point of view -, clearly inferior…But this is euphemistically hidden under cynically polite formulas… (Sometimes they do force one to become a nationalist, à rebours).
Do Balkan "patterns" & "clichés" still stand for real common ground or are they useful mainly for the cultural discourse of nowadays Western approaches? (Helpful in mentally appropriating the Other, before physically doing so).
Balkanness has been already transcended by globalization or by absorption into the cynically euphemistic label "former Eastern block"…
Histories and temperamental peculiarities are concocted in the mythical melting pot of the Balkans, this dark side, mysterious, incongruous - an ethnic and religious puzzle-like area of Europe…
Intriguing and exciting, for the outsider, the real vs. the virtual Balkans is an issue to be re-clarified, sorting among many hypotheses, metaphors and bits of folklore.
Bound/less Borders, Balkania (In Search of), Blood & Honey, In Den Schluchten des Balkan, Cosmopolis… A similar discourse was formerly extended to all Eastern European countries, (but not anymore as the Central Northern part of it seems to have more or less reached the Western Europeans standard - remember After The Wall, L'autre moitié de l'Europe?). That discourse belongs to the past, as those areas are now peacefully gliding toward globalization.
The Balkan spirit so much spoken about seems to be standing still at the dawn of 21st century, as the ultimate outpost of the dark/ deep Europe…
Stability/ permanence/ pacification, being imposed from outside (in fact this sudden spread of interest toward the Balkans is mainly sustained and financed by the Stability Pact), as opposed to instability/ transience/ the ephemeral/ uncertainty of inside. Idiosyncrasy and destabilization (as inner behaviors) are to be studied, concluded upon and possibly eradicated for a future pacific co-existence.
To be labeled 'Balkan' artist - a label imposed by a 'neo-colonial' wave of curators -, and accept it implies self-irony, painful contradictions and acceptance of complexes that permeate the subconscious… ("The surest sign of Balkan identity is the resistance to Balkan identity", someone said.)
Visual culture products - intended rather like a complex venue for awareness and interpretation of national/ regional identity, through which people come into consciousness as members of a particular community, are still insufficient in the majority of Balkan countries (after years devoted to bad taste and thus, according to Kristeva, lacking the coagulation of civic identity) and seem to need implementation from civilizations of the visual coming from Outside.
Balkan search/ find/ and finally press Enter by the Outside user.
In counterbalance, there is a spread of 'against' stances/ to subvert/ to shut down the Balkan label by Inside users.
Boundlessly bounded/ still exotic/ a black hole to be explored/ an European gap? Or a positive Alterity/ as a source (seemingly freshly discovered) of European culture…?
The Balkans are considered the classical bridge between East and West, but also, a kind of paradoxical periphery of both… a hybrid.
Seclusion and exposure to dramatic events made considering the future more positively a strange utopia.
But we're still hoping that maybe not… that maybe we hide a lot of potentialities… (Balancing between nostalgic hope and defeatism is maybe another cliché to be explored here).
One thing is sure: the Balkan second-hand European area is producing a first-hand intello network striving to improve their condition… and trying hard to escape the second-hand complexes and fatalisms by establishing contacts with first-hand intello networks of the first-hand Western European area…
Are we witnessing the last attempts to define the monster next door, the gap, the borderline, to draw the line before finally integrating and melting with… toward a NEW Europe…(Another cliché. But clichés is what we really have the more reliable and sure… and relaxing and useful, and in clichés we want to invest and in clichés we trust and we can sell also, much easier, clichés).
For Westerners it is an actual task to approach and afterwards maybe cautiously appropriate the dangerous zone, the derelict zone, the ugly zone (see Kristeva's geo-aesthetics), the suffering zone (Europe's still suffering zone). Waiting to be diagnosed and cured. Or to be taken advantage of, because weak. To normalize it or better to preserve it like an exotic/ abnormal item, still suscitating the zoo effect, as the still mysterious side of Europe… to be 'clarified' (another cliché) and helped to (re)-emerge.
Dismantling the myth or feeding the myth? What would be more suitable? Maintaining differentia or striving towards an osmotic Europe seems to be, at the moment, the Hamletian question of new geopolitics.
Because, paradoxically, everybody is tempted to do both…from Inside and from Outside.
'Ghetto'-ized or not, 'cliché-ized' or not, approaching this area is surely approaching another valuable area of art.