ABOUT US

OUR IDEA

OUR MOTIVATION

In our age ever so overwhelming with visual data we find it crucially important for documentarists and social scientists to cooperate with visual artists, film and theater-makers in order for their work to be not only relevant but visually enticing as well.

Yet, visual anthropology in the digital age is one of the most underdeveloped social sciences and there’s barely any institutions or organizations that give it the key importance it should have

OUR GOALS

The VAC aims to be a creative hub and a database that fills the aforementioned gap.

The hub that we imagine is unique: motion picture and photography, any kind of visual art shouldn’t just be a tool in the hand of the scientist. Visual anthropology and film are to have a symbiotic relationship: documentaries and feature film can have an anthropological approach and anthropology and social science in general can have an artistic approach.

OUR VISION

It is our belief that the much desired social change depends on these interdisciplinary perspectives.

We believe that the development of a global consciousness of humanity is only possible if there are international organizations that set the enforcing of such consciousness as their goal. The VAC in Belgrade, Serbia is our first step on a long road that leads to a global network of similar hubs aiming to be a powerhouse of socially sensitive artistic and scientific work.

OUR TOOLS

Every year we organize a School of Visual Anthropology (SVA).

Through this school we are not only spreading the ideas of visual anthropology and educating people in its' tools. We are also building an international community of independent creative thinkers with a strong interest in using tools of anthropology combined with video/photo/audio-making in order to create a stronger sense of community in a world overwhelmed by differences.

INDEPENDENCE

We are a completely independent non-profit organization, not a part of any existing institution. Although we are not opposed to collaboration with governmental institutions, we do not want our infrastructure to depend on anybody else but the community we are creating. We want our unique artistic and scientific approach to stay free and individual, non-biased by existing power structures and political tendencies.

OUR TEAM

Relja Pekić

Dedicated lover of anthropology, movies and football club "Partizan". He never gets tired of the work he loves.

Responsible for the scientific approach in our work.

Master of ethnology and anthropology, a documentary and visual anthropologist from Belgrade, and his interest in the field of scientific research is mostly focused on visual anthropology, anthropology of sport, anthropology of tourism, applied anthropology and sensory ethnography.

Editor of the magazine for interdisciplinary audiovisual research, visual anthropology and ethnographic film - "Vizantrop". He is the author of several short ethnographic films that were screened at ethnographic festivals in Ljubljana, Zadar, Prague, Belgrade, Prizren, Moscow and Skopje, and for the film "Crossroads of Culture" (2013) he received the audience award for the best student film at SEF festival in Croatia.

He is a founder of the "Visual Anthropology School" workshop from Belgrade and participated as a lecturer at many seminars and conferences in the Balkans.

Miklós Barna Lipkovski

A free spirit and with a relaxed approach to life, Miklós is also a hard-worker and a dedicated movie lover. He is responsible for the technical proficiency and high quality of the films shot within the ŠVA.

He was born in Budapest in 1987, spent his childhood years in Rome. Lived in Budapest, Bologna, Berlin and is currently based in Belgrade.

Works as a freelance photographer, video artist and journalist.

He finished his MA in television journalism and documentary film directing in 2006 at the University of film and theatre in Budapest.

He has been working in digital media covering different fields ever since.

He has been working as a video journalist for Radio Free Europe since 2021.

His focus has been split between journalism and artistic approach towards video- and filmmaking. His films have been selected for international festivals in the region and he has received a journalistic award in 2023.

Speaks Hungarian, Serbian, Italian, English and German.

Marija Barna Lipkovski

Marija is a professional theater director, performer, researcher and educator. Her interest in visual anthropology is connected to her interest in performative aspects of anthropology and anthropological aspects of the performative.

She is running the theater company Tri Groša/Threepenny with her friend and colleague Ana Pinter. Tri Groša is dedicated to discovering new modes of artistic, production and management practices. She is also active as a freelance theater director.

She was born in Belgrade, Serbia in September 1989. Immediately after finishing high school, she was admitted to the Faculty of dramatic arts, Belgrade University of arts. There she finished the MA studies of theater and radio directing in 2015 as an excellent student. As a part of her studies she was a DAAD scholarship holder, and as such studied for one year on „Ernst Busch Hochshule f. Schauspielkunst“ in Berlin, Germany. In 2020 she successfully obtained her PhD degree in Scene design with the thesis: “Construction of personal Self-identity in the Internet-chronotope”.

Her obsessive subject is the obscure border between reality and fiction. She explores this border through various artistic genres and scientific articles.

Marija is fluent in Serbian, English and German, and can communicate in Hungarian and Russian.

Ana Pinter

Ana Pinter is a stage director, researcher and educator based in Belgrade. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature and Theory of Literature and a BA in Theatre and Radio Directing, as well as an MA in Theory of Drama and Media.

At the moment, she is enrolled in PhD transdisciplinary studies of contemporary art and media. She was one of the founders of the “Tri groša“ company (2015) that has introduced more than 30 performances, practices-as-research, educational and other projects to both international and local audiences so far.

In her practice, Ana is merging artistic and scientific fields, and consecutively developing new methods and approaches to performing arts audiences.

Ana’s initiation into anthropological discourses took shape in 2013-14 at the Institute of Indonesian Arts in Surakarta, Central Java, in the field of wayang kulit art.

She was one of the founders of the Visual Anthropology Center (2018), further solidifying her commitment to interdisciplinary exploration. Since 2020. with colleagues from Tri groša and VAC, Ana manages Community Centre Krov in Belgrade, a multifunctional space of non-formal education and highly participative social programs, trying out practices of the commons and self-sustainability as well as the principles of flat hierarchy.

Nenad Pinter

Nenad Pinter is an audio-visual tech and multimedia producer. He's also a cultural producer and one of the coordinators of the Krov community center in Belgrade, Serbia. He's been involved in creating theatrical performances, multimedia exhibitions, and other contemporary digital performances.

From 2017 to 2023, he worked as a coordinator at the Cultural center Rex and the Fund B92 Foundation. He helped organize and implement projects like Free Zone film festival, Battle for Knowledge, No Noise music festival, and Women empowering project. He was responsible for producing and implementing cultural programs and content.

With his wife Ana Pinter he's also engaged in the theater and educational platform "Threepenny". Involved in creation on several theatrical performances, including Phaedra (2017), Not the right leg (2018), Nobody and nothing (2020), Hamlet (2022), and Where are you, God of machines? (2022).

Since 2019, he's been working as a producer and coordinator for the Visual Anthropology Center and the Krov community Center. He's responsible for managing projects, coordinating technical aspects, and working with local communities.

Nikola Radeka

Nikola Radeka is an ethnomusicologist from Belgrade; he completed his MA studies in ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade. He has been conducting ethnomusicological field research since 2008, which, through audiovisual ethnography, served as the initial spark for entering the field of documentary film.

So far his research covered vocal practices of Dinaric immigrants and musicians in public transport in Belgrade, posthumous rituals among the Vlachs, the practice of electronic music performers (which also represents the current focus of research), and the two-part singing of the older vocal practice in the rural areas of Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina.

He is the president and one of the founders of the Ethnomusicological Activities Centre, within which he has implemented several projects related to ethnomusicological field research. He was involved in production of documentary films, multimedia art and interactive sculpture. He is the founder and director of the FESTUM festival since 2010, as well as the Festival of Traditional Music held in Paris (2018), Belgrade (2019), and Kraljevo (2021).

He has been active in electronic music performance and music production since 2015. He founded a conceptual music event called Slivnik (Drain), which promotes alternative directions in popular electronic music.

OUR SPACE

Community center Krov [Roof] is a collectives of anthropologists, visual anthropologists, film and theater directors, artists, ethnomusicologists and decentralized open source orchestra gathered around the idea of creating an open common space for the development of an audiovisual archive for ethnographic films, multimedia exhibitions, ethnomusicological works, open source decentralization and knowledge sharing.

You can find KROV's Facebook page here.