Residency of Petr Dlouhý and Bek Berger, hosted by Heartefact Pride Theatre Festival in partnership with New Performance Turku Biennal & Bazaar Festival
The mission of our (Petr & Bek) project titled Do You Want to Know the Future was to design a tarot deck with queer communities around the Heartefact Pride Theatre Festival that would address the ongoing issues and topics that participants were living through. We came for the first time in November (24. 11. - 1. 12. 2024), just a few weeks after a terrible accident happened at Novi Sad that resulted in the beginning of the student protest movement. At that time, it was still very subtle and many people we met did not believe it could grow into something bigger. We continued our work by meeting local artists, visiting institutions, and finally hosting a workshop introducing the tarot-reading practice (27. 11. 2024).
After we left, we kept in touch with the participants. While Western European media remained pretty much silent about the situation in Serbia, we were getting notes from them firsthand. And when we came for the second time (6. - 16. 2. 2025), we appeared in the turmoil of an entire country involved in protests against the corrupted government. Still driven by students and not political parties, the peaceful protesters became a significant hope for establishment change. The protests brought together people of all ages, genders, anddiverse political orientations and made them overcome their differences and unite under the vision of a brighter future.
Upon our arrival, we hosted a two-day workshop (8. - 9. 2. 2025) to design the new deck. We harvested words that were present in the mindsets of people involved in the protests and merged them with the participant's images. A deck of 28 tarot cards was made and printed with a simple aim: to foster and continue the ongoing endeavours of protesters and to have the cards as a tool for building a common agreement. Participants came out with special reading scores and named the deck "Dogovor kuću gradi: Špil za nove početke" (Agreement Builds the House: Deck for New Beginnings). For the final event (14. 2. 2025), we printed 140 copies of the tarot cards and trained 5 artists and cultural workers to become tarot readers. The deck now becomes theirs and our instrument to spread the word about the protests and involvement of people in forming a democratic future without corruption. The cards are about to be distributed as a practice in schools, universities, assemblies, plenums and wherever there is a need to practice agreement-making. To find out about the cards, visit the website.
We would like to conclude our story with a toast that we performed as a closing ritual of our entire process and as an acknowledgement to everyone who participated:
Dear all, we came to Belgrade as two strangers from different parts of the world. We came with our hearts and minds open with a simple mission: to listen.
And what we have heard was simply amazing. We heard diverse voices from the Heartefact and queer communities talking about the very moment in Belgrade, about the PRO-TESTING, assembling, commoning and creating a nourished ground for a better future. We heard voices speaking about hope and justice, about a re-established intergenerational trust and curiosity we can have for each other, no matter who we are. After a long time, we appeared to be in a turmoil of narrative that doesn’t search for what makes us different from each other but rather what brings us together.
We came to listen and learned what it means in practice that Dogovor kuću gradi. All of you are the voices of the future and we feel grateful for every minute of your presence and for being in the process of making the Deck For New Beginnings. What we have here is not only a testimony of our time together, of your thoughts and imagination, but it is also now yours and our tool to spread the word about what you are going through. It is mainly a tool to form the future that you want. May this deck support your endeavours and fight, may it help you bring people around a table. May it help you build a house with your agreements that can accommodate all those who have been oppressed, overlooked and pushed away for such a long time. We hope the house you will build is filled with joy and empathy.
Now, let’s make the house resonate with the sound of our glasses:
*cink* *cink* *cink*
Živjeli! To you! To us!
by Petr Dlouhý & Bek Berger
Pictures: ©Petr Dlouhý