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Backwards

Backwards
/12
    • Backwards
    • NAZAD
  • 2006/2008
  • video, color and b&w, sound
  • 5min, 22sec
The video “Nazad” (Backwards) shows a musical and scenic action that expresses opposition to regressive social phenomena; this action was realized by Horkeškart in 2006 and announced publicly on posters done in Škart’s typically altered typeface. Members of the choir, dressed in blue work clothes, enacted their singing performance in front of the four institutions most responsible for the backwardness of state and society – the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Supreme Court, and the Serbian Government. Two founders of the internet portal and radio show Peščanik proposed the song featured in this video as an anthem for a new, independent Serbia. Its lyrics read as follows: “Rewind to dark / they signal to us / rewind to flaws / for ancient cause / rewind to mud / dip calloused hand / rewind to battle / for your motherland / rewind to calamity / both village and city / both old and young / let’s all rewind...” The second action to employ this song, which is documented in black and white, took place on 10 December 2008 in observance of International Human Rights Day at Republic Square in Belgrade, where Škart and Proba (another choir formed by Škart) had been invited to appear by the feminist anti-war organization Women in Black. As Proba performed ”Backwards,” an informal choir of young clero-fascists chanted their own songs. What followed was police interference—but the people whom they ultimately escorted away were members of the Coalition for a Secular State, a nongovernmental organization comprised of civil society activists. This video thus demonstrates how human rights are still at stake and not to be taken for granted. W.S.