THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN EXPRESSING SOCIALLY ENGAGED ATTITUDE OF THE BELGRADE NEW WAVE SCENE

Text topic: Philosophy of Media

Text author: Нинослава Вићентић

The early 1980’s were marked by sudden eruption of creative energy that moved the local artistic production closer to global trends. Authentic values of the period in music known as the “New Wave” were expressed through various mutual activities, different forms of cultural resistance and open social-political intervention. Social function of these texts, as well as their exceptional originality, radicalism and visionariness, allow us to observe the new wave as an artistic movement of contemporary avant-garde, as well as to shed some light on its significant art production that determined and followed the musical expression, much better known to the general public. Works of the New Wave are typically on border areas of different arts. With the strong presence of music and dance, and based on its sensual character, this genre is especially close to theatre-performance art forms that are striving for urban, street culture. The new wave artists are using the media as the means of mutual communication, a space for exchange and verification of their own artistic positions, but also as a field of experiment, in both technical and ontological sense. Free of all constraints, and for a while overlooked by censorship, the New Wave managed to produce an abundance of initiatives in a very short time period, as well as to reactivate belittled artistic process. Such works say farewell to something that is obsolete, through forms that indicate future, whereas their content is more in what they anticipated then in what they realized. Individual artists through their common projects of this period were able to recognize the truth, which social and political system had a tendency to cover up. They were also sufficiently brave to present such truth in public, and sufficiently resourceful to present their ideas through available media, in which they confirmed Brecht’s opinion that avant-garde artist is the one who is wise enough to discover relevant truths.