Тhis summer marked an inaugural Hekler | Four Waters Summer School that took place in the village Ljubanje near Užice in Serbia, from July 5th till July 15th 2023. We celebrated five years of Hekler and three years of work we put towards conservation, restoration and building of the Four Waters Meeting Point.
We hosted 12 of our friends and collaborators – artists, architects, educators, and activists inviting them to think through the needs and potentials of Four Waters Meeting Point while rehearsing collective care. During the 10-day residency and retreat participants were provided with space to rest, reflect and play, healthy food, visits to local sites and initiatives, and opportunity to share their practices and research. We organized public presentations, screenings and workshops centering collaborative methods responsive to the site which engage a range of media, critical and experimental activations.
Marina Ilić (b.1988) is an architect with an international practice focused on reconstruction and adaptive reuse. She is a co-founder of DJEVE collective, a post-architectural collective structured in a way that encourages both internal and external collaboration, and at the same time keeps a strong notion of individual expression. Marina currently lives and works in Stockholm.
Margot Savin Vidović is an illustrator for children.
In 2017, together with her husband Marko Vidović, she founded a brand for children called Layra design. Layra is based on ilustration for children, making unique toys from wood, ceramics and other natural materials. In 2020, she enrolled in a ceramics course at Ceramics Square in Novi Sad. She studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad in the class of 2009. She is active in helping and rescuing animals in need.
Joshua Nierodzinski (b.1982) is an artist who merges painting and forensic photography to address personal and national histories. He is a co-founder of HEKLER, a transnational artist-run platform that fosters the critical and experimental examination of hospitality and conflict. Selected awards include the National Endowment for the Arts Grant and an artist-in-residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, The Sam and Adele Golden Foundation, and the Wassaic Artist Residency. Joshua is a recent AIM Bronx Museum Fellow and currently lives and works in Mexico City.
Miloš Bojović is a photographer and occasional writer. In his work, Miloš explores the relations of fear, anxiety, and possibilities of choice in the space of imagination. Experiments in the fields of image, sound, and text, he joins in video installations and film. He is a co-founder of ŽTMRLJ.PROD, a production house that explores topics inside the underground film, music videos, and stop-motion animation. Tightly collaborates with Jelena Prljević on various projects and ideas, where the Four Waters project is of the main interest. He writes different kinds of textual forms that are, so far, published in the online magazine Tag. He is based in Požega, Serbia.
Boško Bošković is a Reiki Master, trained & certified in the Usui Shiki Ryoho lineage and in sound healing from the Sound Healing Center in Sausalito, California. Boskovic is the founder of Let’s Heal NYC, a private practice specializing in Reiki treatments and Community Reiki coordinator at Minka Brooklyn He holds group Reiki & wellness classes at Grand Street Healing Project & various Senior Centers in NYC.
Ioannis Andronikidis is an art historian, writer, and translator. In 2021, he initiated an ongoing research project around the notions of translation and the archive. Originally presented as a series of bilingual poem letters in the context of The Whole Life Academy in Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HkW, Berlin), it has taken on different forms and materialities: text/photography/film/sound. The print publication Blue Magnets: translation as an_archival process, forthcoming by A) GLIMPSE) OF), is a continuation of the research project—a bilingual poetic epistolary correspondence between A1 and A2, which unfolds around his family archive. He has studied History, Archaeology, and History of Art at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and completed his MA thesis, Documented subjectivities, artistic autonomy, and the social register: critical analysis of Forensic Architecture’s vision, at the Edinburgh College of Art. His texts and translations, in different formats, can be found, among others, in Philosophy World Democracy, Another Gaze/Another Screen, TripleAmpersand &&&, Arts Catalyst, and Ultra Dogme. Since 2022, he has been undertaking research at The New Centre for Research and Practice.
Jelena Antanasijević is a costume designer and educator. Jelena holds MFA from the University of Connecticut and an MA from Belgrade Academy of Applied Arts. Since 2008, Jelena has designed costumes for over thirty productions including opera, musicals, dramas, devised plays, short films, TV, and commercials in the US and Belgrade, Serbia. Starting in 2017, she has been putting more focus on teaching costume design and technology at several schools, colleges, and universities in the United States: University of Connecticut, Community Roots at Brooklyn College, and most recently, at PACE University in New York City where she taught as a full-time faculty and acted as a costume director.
Presently – Jelena is launching her illustration business using her knowledge and storytelling skills as a costume designer.
Nina Komel is a visual artist and graphic designer. She attained her master’s degree from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, specializing in New Media. Additionally, she holds an undergraduate degree from the Painting department at the Academy of Arts in Banja Luka. In 2016, she was honored with the ZVONO award, recognizing her as a promising young visual artist in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Within the realm of visual arts, Komel delves into the exploration and reinterpretation of political landscapes, as well as personal narratives within the Balkan region. Her artistic concepts are centered around accentuating the perception of identifying absurd circumstances and the mundane intricacies that are integral to shared human experiences.
Dimitrije Turudić (b.1995, Užice) entered the Art High School in Užice in 2010, and graduated in 2014 with a degree in Graphic Design. In the same year, he enrolled the Faculty of Fine Arts, Painting Department, University of Belgrade, Serbia, mentored by professors Milivoj Miško Pavlović and Dobrica Bisenić, where he graduated in 2018. He completed his master’s studies in 2019 at the Painting Department under the mentorship of Dobrica Bisenić. He is recipient of the Dositeja Fund for Young Talents Stipend. He lives and works in Belgrade.
HEKLER is an artist-run platform and transnational community of artists, cultural workers and activists that foster critical and experimental examination of hospitality and conflict. We merge artistic, pedagogical, publishing and organizing strategies centering liberatory potential of collaborative and collective work. We celebrate collective rehearsal which weaves together transnational positionalities and radical imagination towards life-affirming future.