This web page is a part of the artwork called Becej | small town horror exhibited at the Gallery of Cultural Center of Belgrade. It is a part of the "Postcard" exhibition curated by Una Popovic and Aleksandra Mircic.
The artwork is one possible tourist campaign for the town of Becej. It consists of the series of five postcards, a slide show and this web page.


Becej | small town horror



Becej is a small town 125 Km to the north of Belgrade. It is positioned right in the middle of the province of Vojvodina, in the Pannonia plain, on the Tisa river. Becej’s rather prosperous history was replaced by a slow and yet dignifying decay towards the end of the 20th century. Becej imploded and became a perfect backdrop for a small town horror plot. You can see an almost always deserted main town square, half empty streets with the remnants of Austro-Hungarian architecture, windows with curtains always drawn, and the lazy muddy river. The local folk are very pleasant in a middle European kind of way, and yet a bit suspicious. Everything is quaint and peaceful, safe and everyday-like – but with a strange feeling that it is all just a surface, a stage set—that there is something very wrong right in front of our eyes and we cannot put our fingers on it. An eerie feeling that something sinister is lurking from beneath.

The geography of the horror genre is well populated by the “peaceful” small towns like Arkham, Dunwich and Innsmouth from H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction; Castle Rock, Salem’s Lot and Derry from Steven King’s fictional Maine topography; Haddonfield from John Carpenter’s “Halloween”; David Lynch’s legendary Twin Peaks, and the late 90’s Woodsboro of Wes Craven’s “Scream” or Blair from “Blair Witch Project”. Although thousands of miles away from its fellow towns, the town of Becej is a perfect destination for any horror fan. Surrounded by the endless plain, it will attract you with it’s black hole gravity. And maybe it will not let you go.

Believe my words. 35 years ago I was born there.