Serbia's Exit festival retains its activist roots
03/08/2012
While Exit is largely known as a four-day music festival, it also retains its activist roots and continues to promote progressive ideas.
By Lily Lynch for Southeast European Times in Belgrade -- 03/08/12
 A panel discussion at the Exit festival discussed the implications of the recent elections in Serbia and how to form political alternatives in the future. [Lily Lynch/SETimes] |
The annual summer Exit festival in the city of Novi Sad started in 2000 as a protest against Slobodan Milosevic's regime. Since then, it has drawn hundreds of musicians and millions of people from around the world.
Some events at this year's Exit festival reflected Serbia's recent elections. A panel discussion addressed the implications of the May vote, and how to form political alternatives.
The same panel discussed the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, for which a 17th anniversary observance was held just a day prior to the opening of the festival.
The Srebrenica massacre, which many Serbs controversially refuse to call genocide, refers to the murder of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, mostly men and boys, by Bosnian Serb forces in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Several professors, writers, and activists discussed the "genocide denial" prevalent in Serbian society and within the new government.
Srecko Sekeljic, innovation projects strategist for the Institute for Sustainable Communities, attended the panel discussion.
"Exit is actually an important activist event in addition to being a musical event, especially this year when a new nationalist government has been elected, and a new nationalist president as well … At Exit we also had a chance to hear about Srebrenica which has been neglected in Serbian mainstream media and even in academia."
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