Zoran Popović's 1976 Film Struggle in New York Documents Radical Art Exchange Between Belgrade and New York

Zoran Popović's 1976 film Struggle in New York captures a significant East-West conceptual art dialogue. The Belgrade-based conceptual artist and his wife Jasna Tijardović, an art historian, spent 1974-1975 in New York engaging with the New York Art and Language group. This collaboration led to publications in the US journal The Fox and a 1975 seminar in Belgrade's Student Cultural Center featuring Art and Language members Mel Ramsden, Michael Corris, and Jill Breakstone. Popović returned to New York in fall 1976 to create the film, which documents artists and activists from Manhattan's downtown scene. The work employs documentary techniques to showcase radical practices critiquing art institutions, pushing institutional critique toward potential art practice abandonment. The essay examines differences between Yugoslav and American conceptual art, suggesting Popović used the New York group's internal crisis to reflect on Belgrade's politicized conceptual art unraveling. This exchange represents a rare instance of conceptual art dialogue across Cold War divides.