From Crisis to Community. An Atlas of Collaborative Tactics of Inhabiting
Maria Minić
Thursday, 08 April 2025.
19.00 OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION
08–17.05.2025.
→ BINA KABINA, Mila Milunovića 1, FFA Beograd
What happens when citizens are not supported by the state in their housing struggles?
How do they react and resist pressures over space and housing?
What role does solidarity play in contemporary practices of inhabiting?
These questions are at the heart of this exhibition, which explores how Belgraders respond to the effects of profit-driven urban agendas and opaque institutional practices. In a city where such dynamics undermine the quality of everyday life and the right to inhabit, collaborative tactics have emerged as powerful tools for collective action. Belgrade’s residents engage in collective efforts – sharing, defending, co-building, supporting one another – to address housing challenges and reclaim agency over their living environments.
The exhibition draws on findings from fieldwork conducted in Belgrade in 2024, using ethnographic and architectural methods and insights from interviews with 20 residents. It showcases an atlas of collaborative tactics of inhabiting developed at various scales – household, building, neighbourhood – and their potential to reshape the urban landscape.
By highlighting often ephemeral and undocumented yet essential practices of inhabiting, the exhibition reveals an interwoven landscape of active communities. These communities form a self-managed urban infrastructure that challenges – from below – the economic, political, and institutional powers promoting a neoliberal, individualised, and profit-driven city.
Conceived as an ecosystem of activities, the exhibition features events and workshops centred on housing and collaborative practices. The core exhibition, hosted at BINA Kabina (BINA Cabin), invites visitors to engage in depth and in their own time with these ideas, while participatory events in different Belgrade neighbourhoods bring tactics into immediate conversation with the city’s inhabitants.
The exhibition invites visitors to consider a transformative question: What kind of city can be imagined and built when development is rooted in collaborative tactics of inhabiting, rather than being solely driven by economic gain?
