Baza Kulturnih Zbivanja Marks Four Years, Maybe Its Last

When someone throws a birthday party and asks the guests to help it survive another year, that stops being just a party. On Saturday, September 5, at Belgrade’s Silosi, Baza kulturnih zbivanja is doing exactly that: staging an all day program called “Baza u Silosima” (Baza at Silosi), with music, panel discussions, a bazaar and workshops for children, and using the same event to close out a month long donation drive without which, by the organizers’ own account, the future of the space is not certain.

Baza kulturnih zbivanja has existed for four years. In that time it has hosted more than 300 music events and over 100 exhibitions, along with workshops, film screenings and talks that, judging by how long the space has kept going without a large budget behind it, have clearly reached an audience that Serbia’s independent scene otherwise struggles to make room for. Through international projects, including InterConnected, Baza has connected young artists from across the region, and for some of them it was the venue of their very first performance or exhibition. It is the kind of track record that institutional cultural policy rarely writes on its own, since it tends to lack the patience for spaces that grow slowly and without a big announcement behind them.

That same space is now, according to its organizers, under threat from financial difficulties, and that is the reason the campaign was launched in the first place. “A month after we called on you to help Baza keep existing, we decided to do what we do best,” Baza kulturnih zbivanja said in its invitation to the event, announcing that it would gather people, put together a program and celebrate what it has achieved so far. It is a sentence that carries both an admission and a tactic in the same breath: the campaign has not succeeded on its own, so its finale is being turned into a concert.

The program is built wide. On the live stage, performers include Nataleé, Lena Stamenkovic, Bam Bam Kolektiv, Dunja i Zare, Anja Sakovic, Bora Eskic, Leks, Blank and Gigi i Horacio, while the DJ program falls to Iva Arifaj, Stefan Racic, Djordje Bastovanovic, Jelly For The Babies, Janko, Dakman and Gostoja. The lineup is varied enough that it reads less like a single genre showcase and more like a cross section of everything that has passed through Baza in recent years.

Two panel discussions bring a more serious tone. The first, “Independent Cultural Scene: How to Survive and Stay?”, brings together participants from Belgrade, Novi Sad, Sremska Mitrovica and Kosjeric, precisely the kind of towns where independent spaces usually work without any network linking them to one another. The second, “Artistic Work: Between Authenticity and Commercial Sale,” with Marko Culum, Zhiva, Teodora Jeremic and Katarina Popovic, takes on a question every independent scene has to answer for itself, usually without a clear answer: how much an artist can sell before losing the reason they started making work in the first place.

Children get a block of their own: an art workshop from the Zona umetnosti atelier, a dance show, a Beyblade tournament and a program with animators. For all ages there are also workshops on plant terrariums, embroidery, graffiti and tarot, while the bazaar and auction run throughout the day. Admission is symbolic, 500 dinars, with visitors free to add more if they can, which is, in effect, the same model the campaign wrapping up on Saturday was built on: small contributions instead of one big donor.

We have written before about the independent scene, and about Bitef. We had not written before about this particular space hanging by a thread, and that difference is what makes Saturday’s program less a celebration and more a test of how ready the city actually is to pay a 500 dinar ticket for something that could otherwise quietly disappear.