Djeve Collective

Djeve Collective is a post-architectural collective, created by experimenting with virtual collaboration, initiated from Belgrade, Berlin and Stockholm. We talked to Nevena Balalić, Katarina Petrović and Marina Ilić from Djeve Collective.

Your name "Djeve Collective" is probably confusing to every single one of our non-Slavic readers. Tell us a little bit about how the collective got together and why you chose this particular name. 

Djeve is an archaic word coming from the old slavic language and is still used in various forms in many languages. It means young women, virgins, goddesses. We named the collective quite recently and intuitively, although we have been collaborating for more than seven years, both formally and informally. When we had to write a team name for the “Art pilgrimage” competition submission, we did it at the very last minute and just asked ourselves - Who are we? The answer was fast and clear - djeve.

The name represents many important aspects of our work. A majority of architectural practices are still under the names or acronyms of the owners, which we find rather egocentric and irrelevant. All three of us are still very young in architectural years, and do consider ourselves virgins, in terms of not allowing ourselves to be touched by any predetermined values, structures and norms. We also value the fact that we all belong to the same social group, and do care about our position and rights as female architects in the society.

Art Pilgrimage - reconstruction of a former castle in Favignana, Sicily - competition entry

You call yourself a "post-architectural" collective. What do you mean by this? 

On one hand we refer to “post – “ as something that comes after. In this sense it is meant to be a critique on the current state of architecture and the need to step away from traditional architecture processes.

All of us execute complex buildings as practicing architects on a daily basis, and we deal with the real context scenarios and systems in real time and place. Therefore, we are strongly aware of all the participants in the design chain, including the coexistence of the client and budget limitations as a vivid setting with strong impact on the design itself. In that reality, the architect often comes as the very last in the chain and ends up as pure executor of someone else's ideas, systems and politics. This framework we want to abolish by creating alternative systems. In a position where we are liberated from “the chain”, while at the same time having awareness and knowledge about the realistic space and time frame, we found a gap, a potential to act and speak up.

On the other hand, the term “post – “ in art is often referred to as something eclectic. Our references are less of strictly architectural nature, but we rather draw upon multiple artistic disciplines and insights, which we transpose into a concept in particular cases. When we create projects we often ask ourselves – what would Tarkovsky or Sunn o))) or Michael Gira or Björk or Jarmusch or (...) have done if asked to design this. Or what would Gira and Tarkovsky do in collaboration? Perhaps something repetitive but “frozen“ in time for a long period etc. Those are examples of intervening references and expanding scenarios, playing with possibilities and shaping our own style in parallel. This is why we say that „we use architectural language to articulate non architectural scenarios“. We seek to write, listen, experiment, draw, ask and ultimately create these alternative systems.

From the visual sessions - Churches, photo by Djeve Collective

Your projects and artistic sensibilities seem to be quite different. Your works encompass different media and different art forms. Some of your works seem to be political in a very direct way, others less so. Some deal with society, some with the body, etc. What is the mission of the collective, what ideas unite you and guide you?

Even though it wasn’t historically represented in that way, architecture was always a collective effort. Collectivism as an internal non-hierarchical setup carries the potential of gathering individuals around the same idea, but with different approaches and sensibilities.  Our creative outcomes are different because we deliberately make the individual freedom the goal, and not the unification of the outcome. When it comes to the practical organization, there are three levels of functioning within Djeve - individual, through external interactions and as a collective. 

Gender is an important topic for you, and you explore it in various ways, some more intuitive to laypersons than others. How can architecture help us understand gender issues?

Architecture is the most direct way to reflect on the current state of society and freeze it in a built form. By the way we build houses, governmental buildings, hospitals, toilets we can get an immediate answer to how the society reflects on living, family structures, healthcare and gender roles. Women as a social group should negotiate these standards, raise a voice and urge for the need for the transformation of certain typologies. If we go further and analyze beyond the built walls, we will discover that women are still minor property owners, unsafe in public spaces, unequally paid in many professions and so on. 

Furthermore, we can hardly learn about gender in architecture from the official history books. Even though women are equally qualified to be architects, they weren’t historically acknowledged. Acknowledgement and importance of female architects were never interpreted in schools and mainstream media as a relevant narrative. Even though the modern times are now long gone, women are still fighting for equal visibility within the public realm.

The question we want to raise is how to make a step away from the references made with a male sensibility and learn how to incorporate different narratives into current architectural practices? To make it clear, we don't consider the topic of female gender as an exclusive one. One should speak from the point of view of structuralizing society in which all of the different social groups have equal economical and social rights. The purpose of isolating women as a category and analyzing it has the ultimate purpose of inclusion. Or, as Despina Stratigakos in her book “Where are the women architects?” wrote: “For all of you who, like me, care deeply about architecture, and want to see it become a truly inclusive profession, I ask you to be vocal and make trouble.”

Analog Revival - extension and refurbishment of a former foil factory in Cesis, Latvia - competition entry

"Djeva says hey" is an interesting, interactive project that examines the relationship between the individual and the collective. It's very interesting to see how a message translates in radically different ways around the world. What strikes me as fascinating is that you reverse what seems to be our common Western notion that individuality is what is preferred. What do you feel is the strength of the collective over the individual? 

The Western individuality does systematically feed the ridiculous fear of losing identity through collectivism, and the truth is, in our opinion, the opposite. In our case, we help each other to verbalize thoughts and emotions, realize our ideas and express our individuality. In reality, it functions more like a collective mentorship. We talk to each other on a weekly basis in what we call “sessions”. In this way we train ourselves to be resistant to the critique, and feel free to leave our personal shell. When working individually, one can feel blocked in the process, and that's when the collective jumps in by recognizing those moments better as detached from the subject.

“Djeva says hey” does reflect the relationship between the individual and the collective in that sense. This community driven process aims to enhance a sense of collectivity surrounding female values, in a form of an experiment on different levels of interaction. It is encouraging to see how the whole process is embraced, but also to notice dissimilarities in various parts of the world. When translating to different languages, we have realized how hard it is to choose the right word for female, because every language has a specific social construct around it. By addressing the woman internationally in a language directly understandable, slightly intrigued but not invasive or vulgar, “Djeva says hey” aims to put focus on a global issue.

Part of the “Djeva says hey” project, photo by DjeveCollective

Marina Ilic's Midnight March explores the female form, but in a way that seems to be in line with your preference for the collective rather than the individual. There is paradoxically something both fragile and intimate and very much impersonal about this series. What were you trying to capture with the series? In particular, with the one brush stroke approach to each of them?

At first working on that project was a very private process with the intention to focus on personal struggles. While developing the project my thoughts about the value of strength that comes from the sense of togetherness have become stronger. The representation of a nude female form is quite delicate as often is associated with provocative, but that exposed moment is actually the moment when all the different woman sensibilities are dominantly visible. Symbolically each silhouette represents the voice of the woman in a moment of confronting her own fears and by multiplying it, the voices become stronger.

One painting excluded from the group becomes more of an abstraction that, in some cases can’t be visually connected with the form of the body, but when assembled together, it creates a strong visual identity. Used as a starting point for “Djeva says hey” collaboration, “Midnight March” spontaneously switched from private to public.

“Midnight march”, Photo by Denis Ilečić

As a collective you seem to be scattered around Europe, being based in Berlin, Belgrade and Stockholm. These are not just different cities, but cultural environments with profoundly different ideas about gender roles and norms. Is your geographical dispersion a significant factor in your approach to aesthetics and to your choice of subject for your art works? 

Geographical dispersion influences our work enormously. Internally, the fact that our communication is placed in a virtual domain adds one more layer and challenges the way we operate. Externally, the fact that we live in different social and cultural contexts is helping us to reveal the universal and common threads and reflect upon intercultural issues. On the contrary, we can trace the specificities, question and compare the ways in which different systems and cultures deal with particular issues.

What’s next we can expect from Djeve collective?

We are working on a concept for a magazine. A lot of our colleagues and friends have unique artistic voices of their own and we believe that they need to be heard, seen and experienced in a different format. We see the form of a magazine as an embodiment of the above mentioned need to gather people around one vision, and it would be still us as Djeve in the background, but more as curators of the entire affair. 

www.djevecollective.com