Lost Highway Expedition [LHE]
Artistic journey across nine cities in the Western Balkans (2006)
Collaborative participatory art and curatorial project
The Lost Highway Expedition is a journey to explore the unknown future of Europe. In August 2006, over 200 artists, activists, and cultural workers embarked on a month-long joint travel along the federal highway formerly known as the Highway of Brotherhood and Unity. The journey itself was conceived a collaborative artwork, produced around curated events in nine capital cities in the former Yugoslav republics: Ljubljana, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Skopje, Priština, Podgorica, and Sarajevo, as well as Tirana in Albania. Expedition participants formed a virtual and physical network aimed at forming new friendships and collaborations. The travel was self-organized, and the participants depended on each other to find their way from one city to another. The constantly expanding and shrinking group would meet in scheduled events in each city. Traveling through the politically unstable territories of the Western Balkans, the expedition’s aim was to explore the future of Europe and find new ways of creating a civil society through the artistic process. In a series of different events, participants of the expedition interacted with each other and produced works of art, architecture, and theory while simultaneously forming a temporary transcultural community.
Aside from other partners, Marjetica Potrč curated the Ljubljana section of the journey, and I curated the section in Sarajevo. The inquiry was not about Yugo-nostalgia but a possibility of communication after the bloody Yugoslav breakup. In absence of any cultural infrastructure, communication across the post-war society was almost non-existent. The joint crossing of the political borders meant overcoming the many psychological boundaries. This was the first time I visited Belgrade after the war, despite thinking that I would never again set foot in the city from which the Bosnian genocide was orchestrated. The collective expedition provided an artistic format for all of us to meet the “enemy,” overcome mutual estrangement and jointly imagine forms for a future dialogue.
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Duration: 30 July – 24 August 2006
Curatorial concept and production: LHE was initiated by Marjetica Potrč and Kyong Park in 2005. The curatorial concept and the expedition idea was developed by Centrala–Foundation for Future Cities, which includes Azra Akšamija, Katherine Carl, Ana Dzokić, Ivan Kucina, Marc Neelen, Kyong Park, Marjetica Potrč, and Srdjan Jovanović Weiss
Production partners: SKUC (Ljubljana); Mama, Platforma 9.81, WHW (Zagreb), Kuda.org (Novi Sad), Prelom kolektiv, School of Missing Studies (Belgrade), Missing Identity (Priština), Press for Exit (Skopje), and SCCA/Pro.ba (Sarajevo)
Sponsoring: Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ljubljana and the Trust for Mutual Understanding, New York. In-kind support from LHE partner organizations in the cities of the Lost Highway Expedition, as well as the Council for the Arts at MIT