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From 23 November to 12 December, a performance and exhibition titled #Meaning of Home_2022 was held in the District, as part of the Other? Europe programme arch. Within this programme, the meaning of home was re-examined through an interdisciplinary approach.

The opening of the exhibition took place on November 23 at 7 p.m., and on other days it remained open until December 12 at the following times:

– Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.
– Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Meaning of Home (Farsickness / Homesickness / Homelessness) was a long-term, interdisciplinary, collaborative project (research, surveys, textual and audio-visual works, performance) of the non-governmental organisation KEC Art Box from Novi Sad. It was conceived by multimedia artist Dragan Vojvodić and writer Ljiljana Maletin Vojvodić during their residency and research projects, in cooperation with artists and locals from the European Capitals of Culture (Plzeň 2015 and Tartu 2024), international residency centres (Typa Museum, Konstepidemin, Nelimarkka Museum, Gunnarshús), associations of artists and non-governmental organisations such as EU–Japan Fest in Tokyo, and in Finland, Estonia, Iceland, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Japan, etc.

Implemented with the participation of residents, curators, artists and volunteers from Estonia (Izabella Eck, Tartu 2024 Foundation), USA (Anthony Cervino, Shannon Egan / Ejecta Project), Sweden (Nils Ramhøj), Japan (Japanese artists in ART BOX residence in Novi Sad, through cooperation with the EU–Japan Fest from Tokyo) and Serbia (Stevan Kojić, Virtual. Unit – creative VR lab), the interdisciplinary exhibition #Meaning of Home_2022 re-examined the phenomenon of home in an interdisciplinary, local, and international context.

Questions that were raised included: Have social networks become our home? Has the experience of home lost its ethnic specificity in the context of globalisation? To what extent did social marginalisation, pandemics, and migration affect the content of the term? How did society see migrants and the homeless? Could art make us more socially responsible and sensitise our relationship with the marginalised, the Other, and the different? What about the people who lost their homes? Those who lived in nursing homes? Who were condemned to live on the streets? Was anyone thinking about them? Did we feel empathy? Could we help them, and did we want to help them? Was it our individual or collective responsibility/guilt?

During the exhibition, the creative and educational centre Art Box also presented the publication How to Understand New Art Practice, an illustrated bilingual guide. It was a Serbian-English map for navigating Novi Sad’s new artistic practices, intended for young people – an illustrated conceptual puzzle whose content emphasised the most important concepts, ideas, terms, and authors, and drew attention to alternative artistic expressions such as performance, artistic actions, exhibitions, and interventions in non-gallery spaces.

At the opening, the VR work by Virtual.Unit – creative VR lab was also presented, exploring the theme of the exhibition in the context of climate change through virtual reality, which visitors were able to experience using a VR headset.