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Belgrade is the main center of the art, culture, contemporary international scene this summer. This year’s Belef07 (Belgrade Summer Festival) offers diversity and richness of culture programe during the summer with lots of events from July 23 – August 12 2007. Program of Belef presents the greatness of events in music, theatre, visual arts, new intiatives and educational segment. The Belef is opening tonight at 21:00 – Victor’s Plateau – concert of the legendary Afro – Peruvian singer Susana Baca. Other music events at belefs that you shoudl expect are very interesting and bring us great performers, world music mustians: Lajko Felix Trio & Brooklyn Funk Essentials (USA), Belgrade Yard Soundsystem “Soudscapes”Jimi Tenor & Kabu Kabu (Finland), Antonio Chainho Trio (Portugal), a legendary Chicago soul-jazz artist Terry Callier.

I was asked yesterday by an editor of one independent and the biggest media house in Serbia to write a text for their web portal – technology section, on fair use, a month after this, which is not easy for someone who is using cc licences, described here. However, I will be checking my email, writing as hell, and after being beyond of Belgrade and Beyond I need house restructuring regarding the design of the blog and the web site (days of manual html-ing are gone). I hope to catch somewhere wifi and keep up-to-date on interesting things by twittering at least.

Issue 12, closing in 33 days. Three themes:  Creative licence (photography as design), Family (Who are the people close to you?),  and Fashion (telling stories with photos and clothing). I’ve been busy to submit more, but you feel free to register and to participate.

It has been more than 50 years of the presence of Scandinavian design, and it is celebrated by exhibitions Beyond the Myth with various art works from Denmark, Island, Finland, Norway, Sweden.

This exhibition of design with over 200 artworks is placed at Muzej 25.maj in Belgrade from 6.Jun – 2. September 2007. Scandinavian design is clean, neat, with simple solutions, functionality and democratic approach. It presents paradigm to understand the organization of modern life as a movement of great importance in the history of design. In purpose of better perception this exhibition is founded on base of Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino. He emphasizes certain values that are important for creative people. Calvino writes about five different qualities of literature: Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, and Multiplicity (he had intended to write a sixth chapter on Consistency, before his untimely death). As Calvino is Italian literature writer, those qualities were emphasized as values important for creative people in design. He examines these qualities closely, using his “own facile language as the medium”. The exhibition tour program in Europe you can find here.  

I have been raised up, among other magazines that have been around me for years, with Wallpaper : international.design.interiors.fashion.travel. Wallpaper* is with me for the whole decade, when I was into architecture, making things, travelling, fashion, design. I was even recognizing both editions – while in London (UK), or while sitting at the Starbucks / bookstore drinking my ice apricot tea with cinnamon cake and reading the latest US edition. I know maybe sounds silly, but every event or emotion happened with Wallpaper*. Then, in Belgrade happened the best interior designed apartments, friends, overseas subscriptions and my deeper interest for design, interiors, and everything that surround us in everyday life, changing/making items, things, my work around apartment, and favourite architects and designers. Now I read Wallpaper* online.

All great magazines shift, shuffle, find space and re-shape to survive and prosper and Wallpaper* is no exception. Changing tastes, and our own success, are clearly mapped in this gallery of our first 100 covers. From the tentative first steps, back in 1996, through confident camp to the audacious experimental leaps that we have undertaken in the last year, Wallpaper* has always dared to bare, break boundaries and, occasionally, bemuse. We’ve still got it covered.

To see all 100 covers, click here.

Vote for your favourite and be in with a chance to win a set of Wallpaper* City Guides.

Lot of great covers, these are my three favourites, though it’s hard to choose among the great ones.

Among many installations and projects at Belgrade Design Week , during 8, 9, 10th of May, it was presented at the O3one gallery and Dom Omladine, project SKI LIFT by Jelena Miskovic. SKI LIFT is ready made installation, a custom-made chair lift in a suitable city centre location, introducing a new dimension in off-street transport for pedestrians. A 400m spectacle of riveted steel and cable, the project is both a curious attraction and a serious attempt to reinterpret space, architecture and mobility in the urban environment. Institutions and other artists involved into this project are: Mediamatic Gallery, Gerrit Rietvald Academy, Horse Move Project Space, Salto Amsterdam, as well as creative artist team: Mhairi Macfarlane, Andrew McKee, Marco de Koning, Mark Fos, Milos Djordjevic, Slobodan Mitrovic, Bogomir Doringer, Vladan Jeremic, Ivan Kadelburg.