In 2009, Treći Beograd/Third Belgrade was initiated as an artist collective who shared the same artistic strategy. The most important element of their utopian concept was a physical and a mental space. While the physical space was defined by a House of Art on the opposite side of River Danube – a “third Belgrade” not yet, physically or mentally, connected with the existing two Belgrades, the old city on the right side of the Sava and Danube river banks and New Belgrade on the opposite side of the Sava – the mental space was constituted by a consistent concept of an artist collective as well as the interaction with other artists. This was the starting point for the Treći Beograd contribution to the Urban Incubator: Belgrade- the utopian imagination of a collaborative and interactive art practice in a network of very diverse positions, languages, generations, mentalities, and media.
The Treći Beograd project – “We also love the Art of Others” – aimed at inviting eminent local and international artists, representatives of different schools, to work in the context of Savamala. These artists were selected on the principle of love, the common principal being that you can only love what you know and understand very well. This idea was mirrored in the context of Savamala.
For Treći Beograd/Third Belgrade, this was an experiment with an unpredictable outcome. In no way it was intended to court flatter a rather popular taste and reception of art but rather to raise the awareness of Savamala´s residents about another, contemporary visual language. The initial questions for the programme year´s work were: How can artistic quality be achieved and in which ways do the people who live in Savamala benefit thereof? What effects can visual artists have in Savamala? From the artistic perspective, the Urban Incubator: Belgrade involvement caused fundamental change: Our conception of a utopian common ground has undergone significant change, even experienced a break-down through the Savamala experience. Our own artistic strategies were questioned by the scope and intensity of the project work within the Urban Incubator and had to be de-constructed and re-constructed. Our experience of various forms and approaches of collaborative art practice in Savamala made it very clear to us that artistic strategies in the future would have to face and to accommodate to new challenges. During 2013, Treći Beograd achieved more than expected: The number of participants, both participating artists and students and young people taking part in workshops, talks and other events, surpassed all expectations. So did the number of artistic works produced over the year.
