meeting

[anna balint]

 3/23/2004 4:37:02 AM, "Andrej Tisma" <aart at eunet.yu> wrote:

>
>>
>> you know ..
>> if it has not happened yet
>>
>> it could still happen
>
>I asked because the former Syndicate list had few meetings in different
>countries some years ago. I think Syndicate meeting was never held in
>Serbia, it was planed for 1999 but the bombing happened, so it was held in
>Budapest instead. Maybe Anna remembers.
>
>>
>> that's a good idea
>
>Yes, the live contact could show that we are just human beings.
>Andrej

 
Dear Andrej,

As for me, I plan to go to the picnic, I haven't been in Novi Sad now for
long years...

I remember the Budapest meeting, but differently. I thought that the 
syndicate meeting happened because the war in .yu started. I tried now to 
look up the archives, but it is no longer there, 
I get an Error 404 Not Found message only.
The meeting developed the concept of the Future States of
Balkania and the slogan "Ich bin ein Balkanier", and a residency program
/that was not realized in the end/ for providing safe environment for the 
work of artists, journalists, curators in the conflict region.

That was the syndicate in wartime... I know about  a lot of desperate 
individual messages, in the middle of the media war, but syndicate was the 
only information bridge I know that involved simultaneously partners equally 
from Nato countries and the bombed region.

Since peace  ties and contacts were reestablished with Serbia to a certain 
degree, that got a lot damaged. Also now a pogrom takes place in several
days, but they leave a long lasting effect behind. At the Budapest meeting 
also comrade Tito's dictum was borrowed and reversed -this might be still 
actual to a degree: We have to live like the war will last forever but be 
prepared that peace might start tomorrow.

I don't know much about political interests in Kosovo, but i can confirm from 
my own experince that pogroms are rarely spontaneous. I know this  because i 
was again at the wrong place in Romania when the anti-Hungarian pogroms 
started at the beginning of the 90's, last century. Fact was that
the interethnic civil war started exactly some days before the deadline that 
the Romanian secret police got to reorganise its body. Of course they 
suceeded to skip the deadline through the pogrom. The result were some dead
and injuried people, and a divided city. I still remember the Gypsy people
arriving to the frontline in Tg. Mures, they scanded: "Hungarians, don't be 
afraid, the Gypsies arrived to defend you!". Guess who got in prison
after all! Several Gypsy people.

greetings,
Anna