Exhibition view as part of SPAPORT Biennial, in Rudi Čajavec factory, Banja Luka |
[Rajka and Vukašin]
Through their life, Rajka and Vukašin Borojević lived in Belgrade and many places in former Yugoslavia and actively contributed to these environments. Starting from scratch every time, like nothing was ever done before, they embarked on a number of endeavours in the zeal of building a new society after the WW2. Following their pre WW2 experiments in Kačanik, Kosovo, in 1946 they established and built Vitaminka, fruit processing factory in Banja Luka (the factory still exists today), and as its directors team accomplished the first five-year plan. In the early 1950’s, in the far away mountainous village Donji Dubac, Serbia, they self-initiated the Orlujak, herbal production and processing cooperative (Orlujak, zadruga za proizvodnju i preradu lekovitog bilja) and the Dragačevo women cooperative (Dragačevska zadruga žena) – the latter which grew to a couple of hundred female members who would through weaving make their own economy, and would travel the world. One of the remarkable documents from this time is a documentary film The Best Husband (1968), by Vera Jocić.
Rajka and Vukašin Borojević, in Kačanik, Kosovo, 1935 |
[resonance]
(Ana:)
"I knew these stories since my childhood, but now looking back we
detected that they resonate quite well with current, even 'fashionable'
strands present in the contemporary art world like self-organisation,
collectivism, radical education, the socialist project as an
emancipatory opportunity, or the empowerment of women. However, these
concepts do not easily connect to concepts like competition and profit
making."
Is this ability to connect all of them, and entrepreneurship
(the act of organizing and managing an enterprise, esp. a business,
usually with considerable initiative and risk - to undertake, attempt,
begin up on, fall, initiate, set about, set to, take on, take over, to
take upon one…), something that made Rajka's and
Vukašin's life story exiting and worth telling to the
others? Entrepreneurship is usually related to a certain economy and
can be even translated as 'capitalist'. But how does it work when
entrepreneurship has a social relevance or is even primarily based on
it?.
The beginnings of the "Vitaminka" factory, set in Banja Luka (1946-1950), started out as a small private production of squeezed juices Keywords: work collective, education through work, competition |
Over 50 years of the "Dragačevo Women's Cooperative" in Donji Dubac, Serbia Keywords: self-empowerment, emancipation, (on the) road |
The Best Husband election, Donji Dubac, Serbia (1967) - base for the documentary film by Vera Jocić |
[social entrepreneurship today]
In
last two decades in Bosnia and Herzegovina (or Serbia or Croatia for
that matter) little has been left of any social trace in
entrepreneurship. However, since the start of the economic crisis in
2008, the socially relevant side of business has become more and more
important and present in the global discussion. What would socially
engaged business and economy be in Bosnia and Herzegovina today, beyond
humanitarian crisis, foreign support and external funding?
Starting from fragments originating from Rajka's and
Vukašin's rich private archive,
Taking Common Matter into Your Own Hands
constructs a personal and subjective interpretation of the
possibilities and motives of entrepreneurship from the life of these
two people – and bridges it through a set of 'open talks' to
the current context of Banja Luka and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Archival materials that document these initiatives are not
just notes from the past but a proposal for the future, examples of a
committed and emancipatory entrepreneurial activity as a possible
signpost for being able to come to grips with the present social and
economic situation of the region, which has been violated by the
aggressive and frequently rapinous privatisation and transition to a
neoliberal model. With a series of open conversations, the archive,
through the interventions of the participants, is activated and
transformed, opening up a potential for the imagination of a
self-organised and emancipatory activity now and in the
future” (Ivana Bago and Antonia Majaca in the exhibition
catalogue).
Open conversation sessions during SPAPORT Biennial |
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