new media center_kuda.org

HERALDS OF INSOLENCES

On Tuesday evening, in the second edition of the TV daily, we were informed that the Novi Sad group "Februar" held a multi-hour program in the Youth Center in Belgrade, filled mostly with verbal or written swearing and actions harmonized with swearing. The program was prepared by the same group to which the Novi Sad Youth Tribune recently showed hospitality, and because of whose program (which is then called the "January" program groups), well-known reactions followed in Novi Sad.

With a good dose of heroic violence, this group of hanged men wants to enter the dark side of the modern chronicle, pushing themselves into it with violence against established customs, over-polite behavior, habits, and perceptions of the majority. Not having the strength of the day to draw attention to themselves differently, the members of that group try to insult the majority with their performances who did not notice their inferior (say: poetic, or, say: painterly) work.

When contemporary creators are not able to draw attention to themselves with serious achievements, values, then they try to achieve that by swearing, exposing, describing love. Obscenity is as much about attracting attention as it is about providing an undeserved halo of courage. It is forgotten that swearing, naked body, and not at all chaste descriptions of adultery have found their place in art for many centuries and that, as a rule, they did not mind if they were in a functional context. In our time - but not now for the first time, but now perhaps more aggressively than before - obscenity seeks to be presented as an independent aesthetic and moral category in itself sufficient as a justification. Heralds of obscenity (or let's say our exact word: heralds of insolence) impose themselves with their imposed insolence because they are not recognized by other characteristics.

Such generalized conclusions are equally valid for one, deservedly or undeservedly, celebrated authors of songs, short stories, films, and for beginners. Reactions to the latest excesses in the Novi Sad Youth Tribune have shown that this environment does not want the intrusiveness of the general. Morally condemned in Novi Sad, these self-proclaimed avant-garde artists received hospitality in Belgrade. And there, as well as in Novi Sad, hospitality indicates to them the institution created under the patronage of the youth organization.

M.K.

The press material comes from the private archive of Slavko Bogdanović.