Hi Gina, thank you for accepting this interview. As an introductive question, can you describe yourself, your professional activity, and your social company ?

I am Gina Larson, from Denver, Colorado. However, I live in the Balkans for 7 years at this point. Originally, I was a Peacecorps volunteer, helping teach English in Prizren, Kosovo*. I actually met my partner Nenad, now fiancée, during my volunteering time. We had to design a social project at this moment, and we directly headed off because he had this art-based NGO which was working in to bring music and art to the youth there, regarding the fact that afterschool programs like these didn’t exist in the school curriculum.

Peacecorps Program is usually a 2 year contract, and at the end of it, you are done and supposed to move on. It’s not a job. At the end, I was thinking of what is the coolest thing we can do next. We were looking around and see what resources we had, and Nenad family is from Kosovo*, and they had one house in Smederevo, Serbia. They had built this house during the war, but then moved, and it was left empty for 30 years. So it was available, and we wanted to use this.

We were really interested in this idea of “art colonies”. To explain it easily, I would say that multiple artists are invited and live together for 2 weeks. They can create together and get mutually inspired by others’ art. We were obsessed to this idea of seeing people from different backgrounds work together. Our idea was to organize permanent art colonies, but in a less formal way. We didn’t want them having to fill an application, formalities etc. Our idea was to make it more opened and free. The place goal was to meet other artists, get inspired by them, or by local culture.

Nenad also had a background of running a bar, coffee shop, pub in his small village. I had a background in grant writing. Mashing those perspectives, we came up with the idea of making House of Urnebes. We still have to find how to describe it, but let’s say it’s an art residency space.

To make a quick resume, on the first floor there would be a coffee shop and events venue. The second floor has hostel-style bedrooms, with bunk-beds. In the attic is the atelier, with easels, paints, shelves. Hopefully in the near future there will be a functional basement, where we would put a recording studio there.

We want to use this studio for supporting local and travelling artists. It would be a place where potentially backpacking people with artistic vibes would stop by, meet other artists, and collaborate. Or they could organize projects together. Artists from different media would meet and lead projects together. For example, what would a street graffiti artist and a classic violinist be able to do with each other ? or how would they be able to get inspired by each other while living together for a week ?

Can you describe us a typical organization plan of an event in your hostel. For example, you recently organized a concert with KoleGTH, and Menya Polubily Chervy. How did all of this occur ?

I will answer that question with a project we’ve done before. Last summer, we’ve been for about two summers working on renovations of the house, with friends, or even friends of friends. It’s been so much fun, and some people would ask to come for giving a hand.

Last year, we were led to the point of being bored of construction, and excited to find artistic people in the area. But honestly, construction is a never-ending job.

Last year we lead a project called “outside in”, where we offered graffiti and street artists a free place to stay, offering paid food and paying their paint. We also let them choose which walls they wanted to cover, and didn’t tell them what to do. They had pretty much a full liberty of doing what they wanted. In the end, we had 6 different artists, half from Serbia, half from outside of the country. One of the room they did was the basement of our house. Now, there is a big painting of a caveman scene, on a wall, and on the other you can see a Sun Goddess.

At that time, we weren’t opened yet, but in this place we were just hosting few opened public parties, like a Halloween party. We also have a projector, so we did Basketball viewing parties. We had people come through, neighbours, friends of friends, it was very nice!

One day, I got a message from a teenager from Smederevo, asking if he could use the basement for a rap concert. We were interested, but I explained him I didn’t have speakers or microphones, not the basic stuff for music concerts. He told us he had everything needed. He just thought we were cool people. I wanted to tell him he was brave to ask us. I was also proud of us being opened, fun loving people where he would feel comfortable asking.

It was cool, they came and helped for consolidating this never-ending construction. They came up for sound check,  and we collaborated on marketing. But actually, it was their show. They did the creative part of the marketing by themselves, and we’ve pushed it through the medias we already had. I would say it was highly successful! We always wanted this space to be cross cultural collaboration space, so to have this person come to us with a project idea from the community was wonderful. He is a Serbian rapper, but there was another guy from Russia –living in Belgrade now–. It was fun to have this project fall upon our doorstep. It was a proof of concept, not only does this works but also people of this community need help supporting their ideas that are cross-cultural collaboration art.

I think especially about Smederevo’s artist culture development. It might be easier for them to lead those projects in Belgrade, but Smederevo is smaller, what can you tell us about this ?

Smederevo is this place which has pros and cons. It is close to Belgrade; it is also culture available but nothing comes to Smederevo because it’s close to Belgrade. People won’t do things they have already done in the capital city. However we had a lot of luck with artists being In Belgrade, hearing about us and wanting to come. They wanted to have a taste of Serbia, but not the capital city. Smederevo is also close enough to Belgrade for being able to travel on a day trip by bus. It feels more like traditional Serbian culture.

The fortresses of both cities are clear example of those vibes differences. If you go to the Belgrade fortress, they would try to sell you a t-shirt or souvenirs right away. Inside Smedevero’s fortress, there is a football field and a park with kids running around.

What about your recent event Elements of hUmaNITY which you called a “virtual art gallery”. You had many artists from all around the world, Indonesia, Armenia, Argentina, Nigeria, or even Uzbekistan. May I ask you how you had the idea to organize such thing ?

HoU has mostly only been operating during the warmer months, from late spring to early sall. We do not have a heating system installed yet, so when its cold, no one can come and stay. However, we still wanted to organize one cross-cultural event… so we did it virtually!

For the project “Elements of hUmaNITY”, we collaborated with a friend of mine from California who runs a small business called “Awakened Creators”, it’s a community space for artists to get over a creative blog. Our idea was to have artists from different countries create three pieces of artwork inspired by the themes: mind, body, and soul. For us, it was not only about seeing how artists from different cultures interpret these themes, but also how they express themselves through different mediums.

We invited all of them on a WhatsApp group, and these people were talking about the different connotations of their art depending on their place. As an example, Sri Lankan vision of the soul is different from the one of somebody from Texas. To be honest, one of my favourite part is when I watch nowadays those people posting on social media. Actually, I can see that the artists who participated in our project still like and comment each others posts, which is another of our mission.

Another project was “no transition needed project”, we did this one on the same basis.

I understand you, and this shows how it became a hub for all of these artists to meet! Speaking about this, do you develop your activities all alone or are you helped with volunteers ?

We are mostly developing all of the projects on our own, except when artists come with their already prepared ideas and present them. We are also happy to do things like this. Right now, we are in the middle of the constructions. Now that our house can host people and let them participate in events, we would like to improve our community building.

We want to create spaces and events at the same time, not only involving our members. I often find people who want to participate in a place they’re travelling to, not just bounce around the touristy side. Many people were being ecstatic to help with installing these things in Serbia.  Came up with most projects ideas but want to find people to collaborate with. We’re always eager to find people to collaborate with.