Artistic intervention “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”

The artistic intervention “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” whose authors are Rena Rädle and Vladan Jeremić will be presented on May 14, as part of the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Yugoslavia. Electric Lust, Fossil Regress, Planetary Ownership and Finite Ores are just a few expressive names of art objects purposefully designed through a dialogical relationship with selected objects from the Museum’s collections. This event is part of the Museum’s continuous work on the permanent exhibition, which is focusing this year on the industrial heritage seen as an important aspect of the scientific-technical and cultural-political heritage of Yugoslavia. The event starts at 1.00 p.m. with a public guided tour by the artists, followed by a musical program for the audience in the Museum’s cafe and garden.

According to the artists Rädle & Jeremić, some objects exhibited at the permanent exhibition affirm the ideas of prosperity and growth through the concept of technological progress and the process of industrialization, while others can be seen as bearers of emancipatory values ​​and material traces of various forms of sociality. As nowadays we can clearly see the drastic consequences of seemingly unlimited growth and extractivism, Rena Rädle and Vladan Jeremić point out that social cohesion needs to be rebuilt and suggest potentials for a different society in its emergence. Touching upon, among other things, the issue of mineral wealth as a former guarantee of social progress, especially in socialism, plastics as a symbol of “careless consumerism”, challenges due to the change in electricity production and mechanization, problems of precarious work and consequences of factory privatization, the artists purposefully single out inherited values ​​that we can still rely on, while at the same time marking those places that, in their opinion, should stay in the past forever.

The exhibition intervention “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” is part of the practice of joint reflection on Yugoslav heritage with actors of the local art scene, whom the Museum of Yugoslavia continuously affirms, and it has been realized in cooperation with curators Simona Ognjanović and Marija Đorgović. The opening of the intervention is being organized as part of the European Museum Night, so the audience will be able to see it until 10.00 p.m. that day.

Rena Rädle and Vladan Jeremić live and work in Belgrade. Their artistic practice includes installations and interventions in the public space. Through the joint practice, Rena and Vladan explore the relationship between art and politics by revealing important social contradictions. They have exhibited, among else, at: MUAC, Mexico City; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Creative Time Summit, Miami; nGbK, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana; MMOMA, Moscow; Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje; Contemporary Art Centre of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki; Tallinn Kunstihoone, Tallinn; Intercultural Museum, Oslo; 49th and 56th October Salon, Belgrade; Autostrada Biennale, Prizren; Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad; Tirana Art Lab, Tirana; Museum of Yugoslavia, Belgrade; 18th Tallinn Print Triennial, Kuslev’s  House, Podgorica and Matica Srpska Gallery, Novi Sad.