Radical Education Collective (eds.): New Public Spaces: Dissensual Political and Artistic Practices in the Post-Yugoslav Context (2009)

“This reader draws its inspiration from encounters and conversations with activists, artists, critical thinkers, curators, militant researchers and writers from Belgrade, Helsinki, Istanbul, Ljubljana, London, Pristina and Prizren in April and May 2008 at the social centre ROG and the AKC Metelkova mesto in Ljubljana. Those encounters challenged not only the distinction between ‘serious’ discussions and ‘informal’ debates – that instantly reproduce linear time and hierarchical space – but also our mutual ability to listen, talk and share experiences (instead of consume information). Contributions were subsequently elaborated into the reader, which consists of two parts. In the first part, engaged collectives reflect on the organisation of different political issues: from anti-capitalist and student struggles, to immigrant workers and the re-appropriation of public spaces in the region. The second part focuses on specific art collectives from Kosovo and Ljubljana, which are occupied with the question of space: why was space so important when rethinking the relation between art and politics, and also what can one do with the space? Here, a set of political practices enabled art collective to undermine the presupposed liberal border between public and private. The reader concludes with a presentation of some art projects that intervened and articulated spatial and visual transformations in the post-Yugoslav context.”

Edited and compiled by Gal Kirn, Gašper Kralj, and Bojana Piškur
Publisher Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, and Modern Galerija, Ljubljana, 2009
ISBN 9789072076878, 9072076877
194 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (4 MB)
PDFs

Osemdesata / The Eighties (2017) [Slovenian/English]

A magazine and booklet for a trilogy of exhibitions focusing on the 1980s and their legacy organized by Moderna galerija in Ljubljana.

Edited by Adela Železnik and Ana Mizerit
Publisher Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, 2017
Open access
24 & 80 pages
via MG+MSUM

Exhibitions

Magazine (8 MB)
Booklet: The Heritage of 1989. Case Study: The Second Yugoslav Documents Exhibition (14 MB)

See also The 1980s: Today’s Beginnings? An Alternative View on the 80s (2016).

Branislav Jakovljević: Alienation Effects: Performance and Self-Management in Yugoslavia, 1945-91 (2016)

“In the 1970s, Yugoslavia emerged as a dynamic environment for conceptual and performance art. At the same time, it pursued its own form of political economy of socialist self-management. Alienation Effects argues that a deep relationship existed between the democratization of the arts and industrial democracy, resulting in a culture difficult to classify. The book challenges the assumption that the art emerging in Eastern Europe before 1989 was either “official” or “dissident” art, and shows that the break up of Yugoslavia was not a result of “ancient hatreds” among its peoples but instead came from the distortion and defeat of the idea of self-management.

The case studies include mass performances organized during state holidays; proto-performance art, such as the 1954 production of Waiting for Godot in a former concentration camp in Belgrade; student demonstrations in 1968; and body art pieces by Gina Pane, Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovic, and others. Alienation Effects sheds new light on the work of well-known artists and scholars, including early experimental poetry by Slavoj Žižek, as well as performance and conceptual artists that deserve wider, international attention.”

Publisher University of Michigan Press, 2016
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License
ISBN 9780472900589
xii+369 pages

Reviews: Jestrović (Contemp Theatre Rev), Goulish (TDR), Tepavac (arcadia), Halilbašić (rezens.tfm), Radosavljević (Modern Drama), Jovićević (Peščanik).

Publisher
OAPEN
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (3 MB)
Images, PDF (HathiTrust)
PDF chapters (Jstor)