About Autokomanda
Autokomanda is the name of a space based in Belgrade, Serbia, currently located in half of an apartment. It is dedicated to visual arts and mostly funded by its members and patrons, alongside occasional financial and in-kind donations for specific projects, as the temporary project space used by Voždovačka galerija (non-profit organization registered in Belgrade, whose primary activities are dedicated to contemporary art and its promotion). The project organizes four exhibitions per year that last for around two months each, and functions as a kunstverein (art club).
In relation to its geographic circumstance, the project explores the gravity of the center and the meaning of the periphery, referring to the central position of Belgrade in the Western Balkans region, and the peripheral context of the Balkans in proximity to the EU, but also other geographic positions, such as the Mediterranean Sea, former USSR, etc. The project questions these malleable relations in a direct, almost banal way, taking its name from the crossroads junction within Belgrade that separates, or rather connects, the center and the periphery, overlapping with the main highway in Serbia, part of the European route E75 that goes from Norway to Greece. The name is a sort of pun: “autokomanda” refers to the various directions of car travel, but it could also refer to auto (self) commanding (directing) – which is what the project aims to be, a self-directed endeavor.
In terms of its programme, the project strives to abandon formalist thinking in art and to broaden the scope of looking, especially in the way visual art is perceived locally, and the way local art is perceived internationally. Its goal is to create a space that hosts art from the international scene, and artists whose practices address diverse social, economic and cultural matters. Autokomanda’s mission is to facilitate intersectional encounters, and to create a hospitable environment through which we learn how to host, to focus, or re-focus in times of crisis, to understand artistic labor and its relation to the economy, to treat the notions of luxury and waste, sense and non-sense, while embracing all of the values that each of these notions entail.
Autokomanda’s principle is not to bother with the categories of good and bad, to moralize or to teach, but rather to open up, expose, show, and practice kind assertive gestures.