The Dreams We Call Our Own 2023

Jasmina Cibic: The Dreams We Call Our Own, a performative installation for 8 voices
In collaboration with Barbara Kinga Majewska
Co-comissoned by Kunsthaus Graz and Steirisher herbst ‘23

The Dreams We Call Our Own builds on the artist’s research on the exchanges between the art and culture workers of the Non-Aligned Countries held in Titograd, Yugoslavia between 21st and 25th October 1985. There, in a series of lectures and presentations, academics, artists, curators and politicians shared strategies on achieving cultural independence, spiritual decolonisation, moral rehabilitation and emancipation of the developing countries of the Non-Aligned; these were leaders of the cultural spheres that aimed to create new scenographic backdrops as the founders of the alternative world-building project of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) within the bi-polar division of the world during the cold war.
Cibic has meticulously combed through the archive of these meetings and debates and from it drew together a propositional text that takes form of a political address. Combining sentences from diverse historical contributions found in the archive – Cibic collected instruction-like phrases that suggest how to achieve self-determination of an oppressed identity.
Cibic conceived the work The Dreams We Call Our Own as a deconstruction of the patriarchal form of the medium of political address itself. The artist has invited the composer and artist Barbara Kinga Majewska to create a new musical composition for eight singers. The performance engaged the octet within the space of the top floor of Kunsthaus Graz. Spaced throughout the architecture, the performers inhabit it suspended from hanging structures – constructions that create a metaphoric amplifier for the enacted archival traces of self-determination.
As the viewers navigated the space, the durational performance was presented as a loop, inviting a meditation on the birth of a new language through a newly proposed prism of non-hierarchical listening.
By reassembling a series of historical ready-mades drawn from different – but always constant – patriarchal sublimation tactics of language and communication – with art and culture as their tools – The Dreams We Call Our Own intended to create a speculative stage where a reversal of instrumentalisation takes place – as the elements of national scenography become the conductors of a renewed communication system with its audience.

The project was made with support of the Art Collection of Non-Aligned Countries Laboratory project at the Museum of Contemporary Art Montenegro. The Laboratory is led and developed by a team of curators and conservators: Marina Šaranović, Anita Ćulafić, Nada Baković and Natalija Vujošević.