JOANA KNEZEVIC 

 “BEAUTIFUL TROUBLE”

I really appreciate this book “Beautiful Trouble” for different reasons. There are so many things that can be very useful when we are stuck in our creative process. Even the title of the book is very inspiring and asks us to change our perspective and transform that ‘trouble” into an extraordinary challenge which can be a potential creative conclusion.

PRINCIPLES:                                               TACTIC:                                 THEORIES:

            

-Balance Art and Message                      -Guerrilla Project                 -The social cure (Otpor)

-Kill them with kindness                          -Human Banner                   -Ethical spectacle 

 

-Turn the tables

Among many theories, principles, and tactics it was very difficult to pick just those seven and not all of them. To me, they all interfere with each other and it is really hard to exclude something. I will take the Guerilla project via Human Banner tactic in order to put “Us and them” together and create the Ethical spectacle called “WE”. Creating our utopian body we can redefine our future. 

When I was at the High School I was a part of The social cure in Serbia “Otpor”. It was really fantastic as the ideology. In the beginning, we created many different Guerilla projects and the first one was a show on the coast in my hometown Novi Sad. It was the first performance art that I did. I clearly remember everything around that performance. People were angry and hungry at the same time. The main reason for “Otpor” was to remove our ex-president Slobodan Milosevic. We tried to balance art and to share our clear message through the murals around the cities, we’re dancing all over the country…we wanted better future for all of us, and we wanted to stop people immigration to other countries. Unfortunately, somebody dropped the ball and we were deceived. After that I decided to stop protesting, a young student died in the American embassy (he was killed by gas !) … Nobody was blamed, nobody took responsibility. “Otpor” was such a great idea but somebody was more hungry than the others. 

Using my previous experience in Serbia, I am very careful about doing activist/performance art today. However, I am very excited about that and ready to explore more and more.Time for research and discovery the cultural heritage, similarities, difference, and expectation for the future of one community towards the another and vice verse are very important before we even start choosing any tactics, principles or theories.  

The idea of "Kill them with kindness" and "Turn the tables" seem very useful and healthy in order to explore more about the relationship between Cuba and USA, particularly the topic about The Pedros Pan action. 

The Guerilla Project would be very interesting according to the question that many Cuban artists have still today ;,, What happened with Anna Mendieta?"