“Im a Passport to Adventure”: considering our previous research.

Originally, concepts of power and national imagination became identified, prior to exploring Serbia. In order to analyse this further, as a group, participants were contacted, established and connected with. Participants included a variety of voices that we have since listened to, from a series of expert and non expert interviews, focus group with Belgrade University journalism students and immersing ourselves into a culture (ethnographic research) in order to fully expand how our knowledge is constructed that will therefore result in a greater understanding.

• An understanding of time and space of the Belgrade Fortress was preconceived and framed the way in which we have digested Serbia. Belgrade Fortress presents a response to time that is immeasurable and remains uncertain, which as will be later discussed, we have begun to realise is the current state of the national identity of Serbia: uncertain and an on going process of being established.
• The (absent) discourse of speed and urgency is important to reflect on. Milan identifies a cruel optimism that suggests that we should look forward to a future of career and working life. However, the question posed here is how can this become freely exerted in a state of control, which has been governed.
• **Phenomenology – Merleau-Ponty (1945) “we can only experience temporality not know our own. If time stood still, if we would imagine it”.
• The concept of imagination and social discourse of utopia is key to consider, and will be reflected in the concept of escapism through visual arts, media and stage performance. The mediation of arts within Serbia has begun to re construct the nation, though it will be shown, how this process has not been as smoothly reformed as understood from our original understanding.
• I therefore draw upon the reality of time that can be constructed by others, such as those in power: government. Capitalism produced the social discourse that ‘money is time’ therefore time has become constructed as a resource and a commodity.

Contemporary culture has an obsession with possession and desperation for speed – therefore the send of speeding up time is presented but neglected within Belgrade. Considering an online networked society (Virilio 2000) there has become a type of ‘black hole of inter connectivity’ of which the layers of history has become formed, the layers of which has begun this sense of uncertainty of national identity that has trickled down to a younger generation that will later be assessed on how they become to escape from this collective responsibility.

(a visual representation of layers can be shown through Belgrade’s numerous collection of street posters displayed as constructed below:)

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