The Dreams We Call Our Own

The Dreams We Call Our Own builds on Jasmina Cibic’s long-term research into the cultural and ideological infrastructures of the Non-Aligned Movement, focusing specifically on the exchanges between artists, curators, academics, and political figures that took place in Titograd, Yugoslavia, between 21 and 25 October 1985. Convened during a moment of increasing geopolitical instability, the gathering addressed questions of cultural independence, spiritual decolonisation, emancipation, and the role of art and culture in shaping new political imaginaries beyond the bipolar divisions of the Cold War. These meetings proposed culture not merely as representation, but as an active tool for constructing alternative models of collective belonging and international solidarity.

Drawing extensively from the archival transcripts of these debates, Cibic assembled a propositional text in the form of a political address. Constructed entirely from fragments of speeches, lectures, and discussions found within the archive, the libretto brings together instruction-like statements on self-determination, resistance, and the emancipation of oppressed identities. Detached from their original speakers and historical contexts, these fragments are reconfigured into a speculative collective voice that oscillates between manifesto, rehearsal, and invocation.

Conceived as a deconstruction of the patriarchal form of political address itself, The Dreams We Call Our Own was developed in collaboration with composer and vocalist Barbara Kinga Majewska, who created a new composition for eight singers. First presented within the architecture of the Kunsthaus Graz, the performers occupied the upper gallery suspended within a series of hanging structures that functioned simultaneously as scenographic devices and symbolic amplifiers for the enacted archival voices.

Distributed throughout the space, the singers activated the installation through a durational, looping composition that unfolded without fixed beginning or end, encouraging audiences to navigate the work through a form of non-hierarchical listening. The suspended bodies, dispersed voices, and fragmented political language transformed the exhibition environment into a speculative stage in which historical rhetoric could be re-heard, re-performed, and collectively renegotiated.

By reassembling historical fragments drawn from the ideological and linguistic mechanisms through which patriarchal and political systems have historically constructed consensus, The Dreams We Call Our Own proposes a reversal of instrumentalisation. Here, the very tools once used to stage power—language, culture, choreography, and scenography—become vehicles for imagining new forms of communication, solidarity, and collective world-building.

The project was made with support of the Art Collection of Non-Aligned Countries Laboratory project at the Museum of Contemporary Art Montenegro. The Laboratory is led and developed by a team of curators and conservators: Marina Šaranović, Anita Ćulafić, Nada Baković and Natalija Vujošević.