Student Cultural Center Belgrade

Studentski kulturni centar (SKC) Beograd. A cultural institution of contemporary art with a multimedia character focusing on new media located in Belgrade. The program ranges from film and theatre to exhibitions and concerts attracts younger population, alternative and professionally focused culture consumers. Directors: Dunja Blazevic (1975-79)..

Founded in 1968 by the Belgrade University and the University Board of Student Alliance of Belgrade with the initial mandate to provide cultural communication students of Belgrade University. Officially opened on 3 April 1971. On the occasion of April 4 Students Day it organised April Meetings between 1972 and 1977..

Directors: Dunja Blažević (1971–1977), Biljana Tomić-Denegri (1977-1999, 2000-2002), Dejan Đorić (1999-2000) Mirjana Boba Stojadinović (2002-2004), Stevan Vuković (2004-2011), Anđelija Stanojević (2011-), ...

Galerija Studentskog centra [Students’ Center Gallery] / Galerija SC was founded in 1962. Part of Skc, Belgrade. Directors were Dubravko Horvatić (1962–1964), Vjeran Zuppa (1964–1966), Želimir Koščević (1966–1980), Vladimir Gudac (1981–1989), and many others. Since 2003 Ksenija Baronica is head of the center. Selection of exhibitions organized at the Galerija SC:

• 1967, Hit Parade.
• 1968, Grupa OHO.
• 1970, Total Action.
• 1971, Goran Trbuljak.
• 1972, Bosch+ Bosch.
• 1973, Bucan Art.

Newspaper of the Student Centre Gallery, 1968-75

• Scans

Programming Principles of the Students' Cultural Center, 1971

The Students’ Cultural Center has, above all, an ambition to seek its audience among those students that

have been – to a certain extent – excluded from the Belgrade’s cultural curriculum. This determination represents an obligation for the future functioning of the Center, since its task is to create its own audience out of this kind of students by means of propagating, supporting and providing the infrastructure for active cultural life. Nevertheless, the program must not be subjected and adjusted to social or other constraints in order not to treat people as they were from some “other” social or cultural climate or not to succumb to the logic that distinguishes “high” from “low” cultural and artistic values.

The fact that the majority of students have dissatisfactory cultural education and that they adhere to mediocre or even primitive values does not absolve the Center from the duty to base each of its activities on an informed analysis of their cultural, aesthetical and scientific qualities. This fact of students’ precarious socio- economical position as well as their underdeveloped cultural and aesthetic education will lead: either to covering- up and prolonging of this state – which would provoke demagogy since the social investments and expectations are huge; or to creating a program that would produce such cultural values that could be immediately recognized as a integral part of the culture of our socialist society. Opting for the latter, the Center is determined to satisfy the broadest specter of cultural interests by diversifying its program: concerts of classical and contemporary music, exhibitions, discussions, film screenings, theatre plays, clubbing, and other appropriate entertainment contents.

To be up-to-date, to be engaged, to be direct or consciously distanced – in respect to the aesthetic components or the social implications of an artwork – are today’s basic prerequisites for working in contemporary culture and art, or any cultural activity generally. The Center sets for itself the task to offer its facilities for realization of those prerequisites, being equipped with a big hall (250 seats), a smaller dancing hall, two galleries, a club space,

restaurant and lounge. (Source: [1])

Programming Principles of the SKC Gallery, 1971

The Center’s Gallery is equipped with all the necessary facilities for developing any particular art

program. The fact that our time is the time of images, the time of communication brings about the importance of presentation and symbolic value of an image. This is nowadays all too well known in the fields of commerce and politics. Social sciences and art theory also emphasize the importance of the so-called visual culture and visual arts for the general development of cultural life and its forms. Certain art forms – interwoven with the socio- cultural functions of visual arts and their inherent values – are especially indispensable in this context: painting, graphics, drawing, sculpture, design, architecture, photography, visual qualities of film, etc.

Diverse tendencies exist on today’s visual arts scene of our society. In spite of certain immobility and the prevalence of the status quo, there are efforts to experiment and explore beyond the existing art canon. Exchanges with the main visual arts centers in our country, as well as abroad, are intensifying and there is a large number of artists which are – despite occasional epigoneism and uncritical or indifferent attitudes with the remains of provincialism – creating authentic artworks and thus contributing to the development of new values in visual arts. Therefore, the main tasks of the gallery are: affirmation of the existing authentic expressions, making the explorations and experimentations publicly accessible, and keeping up with up-to-date developments in our country and abroad. Retrospective and thematic exhibitions will keep the audience in contact with classical and contemporary artists from Yugoslavia and abroad. The Gallery’s art-policy will consist in clear differentiations in the affirmation of new, original and significant art developments, as well as in making connections with the historical, established and always relevant art practices. Collaboration with other galleries, museums and other art institutions, accompanied by the exchange with artists from all over our country and the world represent the

main prerequisites of that policy. (Source: [2])

Exhibitions

• SKC in ŠKUC: The Case of SKC in the 1970s, Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana, 8-23 May 2008. Curated by Prelom Kolektiv. Catalogue. [3]

Literature

• SKC and Political Practices of Art, 2008. Catalogue. [4]

• Jelena Vesić, Dušan Grlja, "Istraživačke bilješke: slučaj Studentskog kulturnog centra – Beograd 1970-ih godina / Research notes: the case of Student’s cultural centre – Belgrade in the 1970s", Život umjetnosti 83:2, 2008, pp 66-79. (Croatian)/(English)

• Jelena Vesić, "SKC kao mjesto performativne (samo)proizvodnje. Oktobar 75 – institucija, samoorganizacije, govor u prvom licu, kolektivizacija" / "SKC (Student Cultural Centre) as a Site of Performative (Self-)Production. October 75 – Institution, Self-Organization, First-Person Speech, Collectivization", Život umjetnosti 91:2, 2012, pp 30-53. (Croatian)/(English)

• Jelena Vesić, "The Student Cultural Centre (SKC) as the Art Scene", Parallel Chronologies, Budapest: tranzit.hu, 2012. (English)

• Seraina Renz, "‘Art and Revolution’: The Student Cultural Center in Belgrade as a Place between Affirmation and Critique", kunsttexte.de/ostblick 3: "Mythmaking Eastern Europe: Art in Response", ed. Mateusz Kapustka, 2014. (English)

• Marko Ilić, "The International Strike of Artists: Belgrade's SKC Gallery, 1971-1976", ch 3 in Ilić, A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia, MIT Press, 2021. [5] (English)

See also

• Serbia#Video_art

Links

• http://www.skc.org.rs/
• http://www.arhivaskc.org.rs/