Propaganda School: ANTIQUIZATION PROPAGANDA

From Skopje 2014 to Skopje European Capital of Culture 2028

Saturday, 2 March 2024 at 12:00 PM
Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje
As part  of the exhibition Propaganda Station by Jonas Staal
Concept by Filip Jovanovski, Jonas Staal, Ivana Vaseva

The Propaganda School in Skopje intends to create a temporary discursive platform deconstructing the complexity of the antiquization propaganda mirrored in the project Skopje 2014. Through presentations of several theoreticians, activists, artists and journalists from North Macedonia, this program will offer interventionist contributions in the legal, media, semiotic, social and artistic aspects of the project erected in the “captured state” and try to ponder of its future existence facing the preparations and production of the capital project Skopje – European Capital of Culture 2028.

After almost 15 years since it was announced, this grandiose and controversial project, Skopje 2014, is still dwelling in the city center, reminding us how the propaganda machinery occupies the everyday, strengthening the national sentiments and traditional values through baroquization and antiquization of the city center.

Through the propaganda analysis of the tools and forms of this contemporary propaganda the aim of this gathering at the Propaganda School is to gain a precise definition on the work of antiquization propaganda, and explore models of counter-propaganda, or even emancipatory propaganda, to reclaim public space, public memory and the public imaginary.

Key questions to be discussed include:

• How to turn the built and installed infrastructure of the Skopje 2014 antiquization propaganda into an agent of (counter)propaganda?
• How do we prepare for Skopje 2028 not to become a repetition or further enforcement of antiquization propaganda? How to reclaim the cultural capital program to propagate emancipatory visions for the future of Skopje?

The Propaganda School consists of a session of short lectures followed by a wide discussion with audience.
The Propaganda School is in Macedonian, but English translation will be provided.

PROGRAM

12:00 – Ivana Vaseva, curator of the project: Propaganda Station in Skopje
12:15 – Tihomir Topuzovski, acting director of MoCA – Skopje: MoCA, plans and collaborations
12:30 – 13:00 – Jonas Staal: Art and Propaganda in the 21st century, author’s introduction
13:15 -15:00 Session I: Antiquization Propaganda, An attempt of a definition

Several short resumes

Katerina Kolozova, professor of philosophy and cultural theory at the Institute in Social Sciences and Humanities-Skopje: Self-victimization as the foundation of national pride;
Bojan Ivanov, art historian: Earthquake 1963-2014
Ana Petrusheva, director of BIRN Macedonia: Database Skopje 2014 Under a Magnifying Glass
Goran Janev, Professor at the Institute for Sociological Political and Juridical Research at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje: “Skopje 2014 Forever”, A City wrapped in ethnocratic propaganda.

15-15:30 Break

15:30-17:00 II Session: Propagating Skopje 2028: What do we want the city to be?
open debate with audience
Moderators: Irena Cvetkovikj and Jordan Shishovski

Invited speakers:

Nikola Naumoski, activist, Counter-movements against Skopje 2014
Nikola Gelevski, editor-in-chief of the Templum publishing house and ther web pafe okno.mk, writer, Architorture and Funeralization;
Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski, cultural worker, curator, researcher, program director of LOKOMOTIVA – Center for New Initiatives in Arts and Culture: Imagining Skopje – with art and culture towards the city of the future;
Marjan Zabrchanec, public relations consultant and former national coordinator for Government communications: The Public – food for or a Trojan horse against retrograde propaganda?

Supported by: Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam, Netherlands; co-funded by the European Union within the scope of the international project Islands of Kinship: A Collective Manual for Sustainable and Inclusive Art Institutions.