VLADIMIR PIŠTALO FOR KURIR: ‘Families most harmed by cell phones! Imagine our children educated by ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE!’

On 21 June, the first day of summer, the recently established National Library of Serbia’s Vladan Desnica Award was given to writer Goran Petrović for the second time. The manager of this cultural institution, Vladimir Pištalo, considers the premiere of the Milenijum u Beogradu (The Millennium in Belgrade) production at Belef a landmark of the past month.

The Milenijum U Beogradu production premiered in early July. Alongside Milena Marković’s Deca (Children), it is a part of the National Theatre’s Modern Classics series. How did you like the theatrical reading of this novel?

“I was positively surprised and excited. In her dramatization, Katarina Todorović insisted on the novel’s emotional component. She linked scenes from various parts of the book using an internal logic rather than mechanically. In her interpretation, the city of Belgrade represents an undreamt dream. Marko Čelebić directed a very dynamic production, pervaded by the music of The New Wave. The production ends with the song “Beograd Spava” (Belgrade is Sleeping), by the band U Škripcu. I knew Delča. The actors often have just that brutal energy with which I wrote Milenijum.”

Your novel Milenijum u Beogradu has a special place for many people. What has writing it brought to you personally?

“There are novels about cities, such as Petersburg by Andrei Bely, or Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, or Manhattan Transfer by Dos Passos. Belgrade has few of its novels. I don’t mean the ones that barely touch on the city. I mean a saga about a city. The background to Milenijum U Beogradu is an entire history of the city – from the Scordisci Celts, through the White Russians, up to the present day. The second level is a story of three generations of Belgrade locals, of whom the grandfather is a Belgrade surrealist, the son a member of the Medijala, and the grandson is a representative of the New Wave. The sons in our city never pick up where their fathers left off; rather, they must dig it up from under the lava, like in Pompeii. The third level of the story covers the period from Tito’s death until the 2000 NATO bombing campaign. ‘Millennium’ is, of course, a metaphor of the end of time. The first millennium – the year 1000 – was a time when many people expected Christ’s Second Coming, giving away everything they had and climbing up hills dressed in white. Afterwards, as time went on, they found themselves without a penny to their name in a new millennium. The second millennium – the year 2000 – went by rather unremarkably everywhere but in Belgrade, where the bombing represented a sort of infernal fireworks.”

To what extent do political developments affect the modern family?

“In the 1960s, they used to say that the personal is the political. A friend of mine thinks that the process of urbanization has changed society more than Communism. Before World War II, you had 90 percent of the populace living in rural areas, whereas nowadays some 60 percent live in cities. Andrić once wrote: ‘God, what will become of us if life keeps changing us so much and so radically?’ When I think of the family, I think of belonging, of showing warmth, and telling stories. It is perhaps most harmed by cell phones, with their narcissism and echo chambers, as well as algorithmic hierarchies – what shows up first in Google searches, what comes second, or tenth. Imagine a world where children are educated by toys with artificial intelligence. And artificial intelligence has all the prejudices you enter into it.”

What is your assessment of the present moment in the world? How much has the war in Ukraine changed your image of the world? Are we closer to a more just society at a point when the war in Europe has no end in sight?

“We are not getting closer to anything that is more just. But, as you know, the world is always in crisis. I recently read a statement by Frank Zappa, which is optimistic precisely because none of us have the promise of tomorrow. He says that if, God forbid, tomorrow is my last day on this earth, it won't be spent listening to some news person telling me how rotten we are and how rotten life is. Turn down the volume, and turn up life, he says. We haven’t signed any contract against ourselves. A human being has the right to witness their life in every sense, even positive.”

How much does this time inspire you to write? What can we expect from you in the near future?

“Any time is good for writing. You know that Goethe used to say, ‘One must move in order to be moved.’ I was writing while I was moving from the US to Serbia, and all the time, every day, as the National Library Manager. I have just finished a new novel, titled Pesma O Tri Sveta. It will be published in October.”

How is the filming of your work Tesla, Portret Među Maskama (Tesla: A Portrait with Masks) coming along?

[Laughs] “It’s a stop and go thing. Someone becomes interested, things become serious, and then they slow down.“

The media often compare the global influence of Novak Đoković and Nikola Tesla. Do you think that the global narrative about the Serbs has finally changed and that we are no longer “the bad buys” from the Balkans?

“Wouldn’t it be nice to think that it is so?”

‘I would like us to reconstruct the Kosančićev Venac Street library’

You have been successful as the Manager of the National Library of Serbia, and have given the Vladan Desnica Award for a second consecutive year. What challenges do you face as the manager of this institution?

“I like this job. It is meaningful, as are many things to do with books. At least in my world. I’d like it the most if we could reconstruct the National Library of Serbia in Kosančićev Venac Street, which went down in flames on 6 April 1941, together with half a million works and 1,300 manuscripts. A new library would be a memorial centre. The centre would tell a story of the culturecide, the country, and the city. Like the Nikola Tesla Museum, it would be visited by every foreigner who comes to Belgrade.”

Kurir.rs Ljubomir Radanov