"raw season"

The mandate entrusted to the Belgrade Raw collective by the Artget gallery (The Cultural Centre of Belgrade), for a period of seven months during the 2013 exhibition season, was a great opportunity and responsibility, especially in the context of extremely unfavorable economic conditions for art production in Serbia. A short period of time meant that any attempt to comprehensively present current affairs in photography would be unfeasible for us, nor was our position such that we were able to lay claim to it.

The authors who were part of the program share with us a similar understanding of the world and culture, and what they have in common is that their work is significantly based in the time and space in which they create. We invited authors from the region, but also from around the world, with whom we had already established contact. In addition, the zero program budget had a strong influence on the selection process, because we were forced to limit ourselves to authors whose exhibitions would be free – that is, whose complete production, including travel and accommodation costs, would be financed by the authors themselves.

Taking all that into account, we have set our main goal to be the production of the most captivating and appealing exhibitions or events, rather than the presentation of some specific and overly defined idea for the entire season. Partly because of the name of the collective, and partly because of the raw and direct approach to our curatorial work, we entitled the project Raw Season – completely in accordance with the way it was framed and built.

As part of Raw Season, from May to December 2013, the following artists, collectives and institution exhibited: Krešimir Zadravec, City Department of the National Library of Bor, Merlin Nadj Torma, Matt Lutton, photo collective Strangers, Blake Andrews, Donald Weber, Sanja Knežević, Peter Brook, Strange.rs…