Predrag Caranovic sculptures Sep. 2014 | Page 106

Still, lots of professors were against it. Not all, but one in particular, whose name I need not to mention, was strongly against this method. It was a general opinion that it is unfair that most must pass though the four years of traditional high-school education, whereas few could skip it, so the criteria for my taking the exam were by far stricter. That was the most difficult exam of my life. I had to take the exam of all the lyceum subjects for all the four years all together. For example, as I took the exam of history, I had to take it from “Noj to Avnoj”, that is from the origins to the most recent history. Same level of difficulty for psychology, philosophy, logics…. And if I was to fail just one of the subjects, I would have to start all over again. One couldn’t take one subject at a time, so I was an extremely vast exam. What do you remember of your university period? Well, I will remember the university for my friendships and for some of my professors. My memory will always go to Radmila Mihajlovic, Momcilo Spremic, Slobodan Mijuskovic, Mladen Kozomara, Voja Djuric and, of course, Lazar Trifunovic. It is interesting to mention that the assistants were also Mladen Kozomara and Aljosa Mimica. They were teaching Marxism, but I heard from them for the first time about Marina Abramovic and other conceptual artists. Since they were all friends, they knew better than anyone what were Marina, Rasa, Nesa and Zoran working on. I found out more things about them from Mladen than from anyone else. They were philosophers, so they understood what the conceptualists were doing, and their wives were friends with Jasna Tijardovic, Dragica Vukadinovic and Dunja Blazevic, that were already part of SCK (Student Cultural Centre). Lazar Trifunovic was the most popular professor. Differently from other students, I never went with Laza to the pub (kafana), to his office or to excursions, occasions where he would entertain himself with students. I had no private acquaintance with