From Calling to Calling some “Evil Spirits”

Any time the TINA (There IS NO ALTERNATIVE) World is struggling with its contradictions and conflicts the questions and answers about a radical change are at stake. Among a variety of their concepts and contents there is still a unifying topic – a role of the working class in an expected change. It is obvious that the supposed revolutionary subject is unrecognizable in a current distribution of roles (and means) in the global class struggle.

Intentionally or not, many artists engaged in tracing of this subject and in reflecting on its supposed qualities, capacities and missions. No wonder, since there is no an ambitious political campaign or social debate in which these issues are not obviously dominant or decisively underlying. The speculations and negotiations about the need and “the will” of the people permanently project on the screen of societal expectation and imagination. Which screen and its content is of course daily updated and firmly controlled by the ruling classes, hence the obvious constrains to speculations and frames for negotiations.

The question arises if it is at all a task of (popular) art and culture to open new spaces of debate and new horizons of imagination – that would resist and confront the given constraining and framing. Could they and would they (art and culture agencies and actors) daily negotiate their existence and profile in a hegemonic social and political sphere without paying too high a price for it?

In order to contribute to an understanding of ideological and esthetical positions and dynamics of all these processes the course will critically examine an interesting phenomenon in popular culture, observable in some very famous movies and TV serials – a vilification and defamation of a figure of a working class/oppressed/low born characters. The pattern of classical despise (of ruled classes by ruling classes) via class hatred (as seen from the position of class struggle “from above”) towards class punishing (of “evil spirits”) appears in more than a few world-wide successful productions.

The task of the participants is to explore this phenomenon, starting with an instructive model observable in the famous novel by Dostoevsky (“Demons” or “Evil Spirits”) and continuing with examination of what seems whether like a sincere implementation or merely unintentional, superficial application of such a model - by recognized authors and their acclaimed master pieces from Tarantino to Bong-Joon-ho, from Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones.

The work will be focused on selected excerpts which - through collaborative activist and theoretical analyses – could enable discussion and interpretation of probable or possible meanings and messages from different ideological standpoints. Participants will be also invited to propose for analyses other characteristic examples from popular culture. The course could result in a serial of published notes from the debates.

Course leader

Nebojša Milikić is a Cultural worker and producer who lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia.

Target group

This course is designed for BA and MA students, artists, architects and researchers of visual arts, humanities and social sciences, art history and curatorial studies, architecture and design, and anyone with a keen interest in the subject area.

Course aim

Student work will be focused on reading selected excerpts which - through collaborative activist and theoretical analyses – could enable discussion and interpretation of probable or possible meanings and messages from different ideological standpoints. Participants will be also invited to propose for analyses other characteristic examples from popular culture. The course could result in a serial of published notes from the debates.