The war is over

The War is Over :)/?
A Creative Workshop for the Reinterpretation of Histories

How do secondary school students treat history they are being taught by the current educational system, family and media, and how do they perceive the prevailing visualization of historical events and trends? Do they see all those images of battles, army leaders, warriors and victims of war, which are so abundant in the visual part of historical textbooks, as the basic legacy which their generation should transmit to the next one? Or do this young people recognize in the stream of images a system of values belonging to an age that is already behind them? In other words, what do they recognize in those pictures: preserved traces of precious legacy from the past or ideologically colored constructions prescribing the ways in which the past should influence both the present and future? Beside this, does this generation perceive themselves as individuals with equal rights to their own visual interpretation of those parts of the past that they consider important and relevant?

The War is Over :)/? is a creative workshop for secondary school students. The aim of the workshop is to enable a creative and critical view of history through comparative presentation and interpretation of various visual materials concerning local history events. The main workshop techniques are collage and drawing. Participants will review and discuss the material culture of all those histories, combine elements from various official and private sources, and include them in new representations using visual codes familiar to their generation. Each participant will create their own images of some historical events or trends, and collaboratively the group will then compose a picture reflecting the creative chaos of different, mutually opposing historical attitudes, visions and evidences.  Next, the participants will analyze the textbooks they are currently using in the school, as well as the textbooks of history, arts and maternal languages from which previous generations learned. This will enable them to compare the visual content of those textbooks with pictures form their own family albums, books, and other unofficial sources.

It’s Time We Got To Know Each Other, 52nd October Salon, Belgrade, Serbia_2011

Further info on educational work:
www.izrazisecrtezom.net