Konstrakta Distances Herself from RTS Promo Video as Serbia’s Eurovision Debate Turns Political
A curious detail in RTS’s latest promotional video set Serbian social media ablaze this week: a short clip from Konstrakta’s iconic 2022 Eurovision performance, the now-legendary In corpore sano delivered with Zemlja gruva. The avant-pop ritual that made Europe collectively Google “What is Meghan Markle’s hair routine?” brought Serbia its strongest result in years, finishing fourth and instantly cementing Konstrakta as a cultural force.
Two years later, in 2024, she returned to Pesma za Evroviziju with Novo, bolje. The song quickly became a fan favourite, though it ultimately failed to win the ticket to Eurovision.
But despite the visibility she gained through the contest, Konstrakta was one of the first to publicly react to the new RTS promo, writing a brief but cutting clarification on her Instagram story:
“We will not participate this year.”
The message spread like wildfire, widely interpreted not as a comment on Eurovision but as a gesture of solidarity with university students who, for nearly a year, have accused the public broadcaster of selectively covering — or outright ignoring — their protests.
A musician who refuses to look away
Konstrakta’s stance comes as no surprise. Since the beginning of the student blockades, she has been physically present at demonstrations, marching alongside students and citizens, offering clear and consistent support both in person and online.
“I support their demands,” she told N1. “Demands for justice, for safety, for systemic accountability. This feels like a moment in which we might finally push for that — at least to rebalance things.”
Her activism has been praised for its clarity and its refusal to hide behind celebrity neutrality. In interviews, she has stressed that the demands from students are not ideological or performative — they’re existential.
“Simple, existential demands — and that’s why the system resists them”
“People keep saying there’s no system,” she explained. “There is a system — it’s just calibrated to serve itself and reproduce itself.”
She added that students’ demands are “radically simple: justice, safety, responsibility.”
Why, then, has fulfilling them become so complicated?
“It’s logical,” she said. “These demands clash directly with the ways power is exercised here.”
Her remarks, widely circulated by Nova, underline a sentiment growing among young people in Serbia: that the problem is not the absence of institutions, but the way they function — inward, upward, never outward.
Eurovision becomes collateral in a larger cultural storm
For fans hoping for a Konstrakta comeback, her message was a disappointment. For many others, it was a statement — one that went far beyond Eurovision.
Her absence from the selection isn’t musical; it’s meaningful. And once again, without theatrics, without ornament, Konstrakta has managed to turn a single sentence into a political earthquake.
Source: Direktno.rs
