UROTNICI

Friday, August 11
Church of St. Nicholas Franciscan Monastery, Prčanj, 10 p.m
UROTNICI

Stage reading of the dramatic text Urotnici by Igor Štiks and Vladimir Arsenijević,
based on the motifs of KROKODIL’s Common Library edition
Director: Boris Liješević
Read by: Svetozar Cvetković, Isidora Minić, Dejan Dedić, Marko Grabež

 
What happens when, against all laws of space and time, Bogdan, Borka, Mirko, Sam, Predrag, Svetlana, Saša, Miroslav, Daša and Danilo meet? And what is their connection with writers whose surnames are Bogdanović, Pavićević, Kovač, Mehmedinović, Matvejević, Slapšak, Hemon, Krleža, Drndić and Kiš? What kind of conspiracy are they involved in? What kind of action are they calling us to? Based on the texts published in the Common Library edition, this exciting mixture of voices and linguistic and artistic polyphony was created, convincingly showing us that, although today we find ourselves divided into several different countries, and many of us are scattered, we are not strangers to each other – because there are no passports in literature. The bonds that exist between all of us, which rest on the common social property of both language and a great literary heritage, are much stronger than the destructive forces that in the past few decades have produced greater evil than we could have imagined. This evil is discussed in Urotnici, as is a conspiracy for a different, better future. Literature has a key place in it, because imagination is more important to us today than ever before. Readers, viewers, who speak, use, create, and breathe a common language and to whom it belongs, wherever they are, are invited to an adventure, or even better, an adventure of reading, discovering, getting to know, and thinking. This is an expression of the tenacity of optimism and the firm belief that the bonds on which the literary republic rests in the European South will live on.

Despite and against.

Partners of the program:

Vladimir Arsenijević is an award-winning and internationally recognized Serbian writer, translator, editor, publicist, and cultural worker. He won the 1994 NIN Award for his first novel In the Hold, thus becoming the youngest ever recipient of this prestigious literary award. In the Hold was also the first debut novel to be awarded this prize. This anti-war novel was soon translated into 20 languages, placing Arsenijević among the most translated Serbian writers. Since then, Arsenijević has published numerous novels, graphic novels, collections of short stories, and books of essays. His essays and columns are regularly published in print and online media throughout the region of the former Yugoslavia. He is also known as an editor, in which role he formed and developed the publishing company RENDE, where he worked as the editor-in-chief from its founding in 2000 until 2007. From 2007 to 2011, he managed the Belgrade branch of the prominent Croatian VBZ publishing house. In 2009, Vladimir Arsenijević founded the KROKODIL Association, of which he has functioned as the President and a member of the Steering Board.

Igor Štiks is a novelist and university professor. He published the award-winning novels A Castle in Romagna (2000) and Elijah’s Chair (2006), which have been translated into fifteen languages so far, and in 2017 the novel In the Cut. The stage adaptation of Elijah’s Chair, directed by Boris Liješević, won the Grand Prix of the 2011 BITEF. In 2015, Liješević staged Igor Štiks’s first play Flour in the Veins  at the Sarajevo War Theater, and in 2017 Liješević also staged Štiks’s drama Zrenjanin. In 2015, London’s Bloomsbury published his monograph titled Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States: One Hundred Years of Citizenship, which was then published by Zagreb’s Fraktura (2016). Igor Štiks is the co-editor of the collections of papers Citizenship after Yugoslavia (2012) and Citizenship Rights (2013). With Srećko Horvat, he published the essay The Right of Rebellion (Fraktura, 2010) and edited the anthology Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism (English edition Verso, 2015; Fraktura, 2015). Štiks is also the author of the book of poems History of a Flood (2008). He was honored with the prestigious French distinction “Chevalier des arts et des lettres” for his literary and intellectual achievements.