Book presentation & film screening  12.01.24, 6.30 p.m. Forum Saloon Entry: Free

Shaping Revolutionary Memory

Together with Sanja Horvatinčić and Beti Žerovc, the editors of the book Shaping Revolutionary Memory: The Production of Monuments in Socialist Yugoslavia, we will discuss memorials to the Second World War in Yugoslavia, we will talk about practices of memory culture in a socialist country, about architectural competitions and memory "from below", and finally we will reflect on the passing - of memory and of the monuments themselves.  
The discussion will be accompanied by the short amateur film Zaustavljena Istorija (Suspended History, 1961, Kino Klub Novi Sad, YU), which expands the view to cinematic practices of cultural remembrance. 

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The publication presents a comprehensive overview of the vast production of monuments in socialist Yugoslavia (1945–91) dedicated to the antifascist People’s Liberation Struggle in the Second World War and the socialist revolution. Since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, these monuments have been subject to various fates, from neglect and physical destruction to global fame generated by the high-modernist visual appeal of a number of them. But the full scope, wide-ranging diversity, and complex context of Yugoslav monument making, including its various contradictions, have remained largely unexplored. 

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The book offers a thorough and interdisciplinary exploration of this phenomenon and a rich visual material to examine its key characteristics and specificities: What memorial practices and commemorative traditions preceded the development of monument-making in socialism? Who commissioned these monuments and how did Yugoslav cultural and memory politics influence their production? Who were their authors and what defined their formal and typological features? How was Yugoslav monument production related to comparative efforts abroad? What commemorative practices developed around monuments? How is this legacy evaluated and received today, both in the post-Yugoslav successor states and internationally? 

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The event will be held in English.

Links:
https://www.archivebooks.org/shaping-revolutionary-memory/  
https://geschichte.uni-graz.at/de/suedost/  
 
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A cooperation of Forum Stadtpark, the Department of Southeast European History and Anthropology, and Southeast Europe Association e.V. (SOG). 

Shaping Revolutionary Memory

About the participants

Shaping Revolutionary Memory

Shaping Revolutionary Memory | 12.01.24
FORUM STADTPARK

Sanja Horvatinčić is a Research Associate at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb, Croatia. Her research focuses on the production of monuments and remembrance culture in socialist Yugoslavia, as well as on heritage and memory politics in the post-socialist context. She is currently a researcher at the project “Globe_EXCHANGE. Models and Practices of Global Cultural Exchange and Non-Aligned Movement”, and the coordinator of the project “Heritage from Below | Drežnica: Traces and Memories 1941-1945”. Along with Beti Žerovc, she is the co-author of the book Shaping Revolutionary Memory: The Production of Monuments in Socialist Yugoslavia (2023, Igor Zabel Association, Ljubljana, and Archive Books, Berlin). 

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Beti Žerovc  is a Slovene art historian and art theorist. She teaches at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Her areas of research are visual art and the art system since the mid-nineteenth century, with a focus on their role in society. Žerovc co-edited exhibition catalogues The Lives of Monuments: World War II and public monuments in Slovenia (2018, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana) and On the Brink: The Visual Arts in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929–1941) (2019, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana). Her last book When Attitudes Become the Norm: The Contemporary Curator and Institutional Art was published in 2015 and reprinted in 2018 (Igor Zabel Association, Ljubljana, and Archive Books, Berlin). Along with Sanja Horvatinčić, she is the co-author of the book Shaping Revolutionary Memory: The Production of Monuments in Socialist Yugoslavia, (2023, Igor Zabel Association, Ljubljana, and Archive Books, Berlin). 

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The co-author Heike Karge is Professor of Southeast European History and Anthropology at the Institute of History at the University of Graz. Her research areas are cultural and social history of Southeast and Eastern Europe, the cultural and social history of medicine and psychiatry, war, violence and memory, transitional justice, legal anthropology, and interdisciplinary trauma research. 

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Film Program:
Hanna Stein is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Southeast European History and Anthropology. In her dissertation, she examines eigensinnige, creative, and pragmatic practices in Yugoslav amateur film of the 1960s and 1970s. 

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Christina Sternisa, who will be moderating this evening, is a university assistant at the Department of Southeast European History and Anthropology. She writes her dissertation on the topic of places of resistance during the occupation in Athens. 

Shaping Revolutionary Memory