Table Of ContentRetracing Images
Balkan Studies Library
Editor-in-Chief
Zoran Milutinović, University College London
Editorial Board
Gordon N. Bardos, Columbia University
Alex Drace-Francis, University of Amsterdam
Jasna Dragović-Soso, Goldsmiths, University of London
Christian Voss, Humboldt University, Berlin
Advisory Board
Marie-Janine Calic, University of Munich
Lenard J. Cohen, Simon Fraser University
Radmila Gorup, Columbia University
Robert M. Hayden, University of Pittsburgh
Robert Hodel, Hamburg University
Anna Krasteva, New Bulgarian University
Galin Tihanov, The University of Manchester
Maria Todorova, University of Illinois
Andrew Wachtel, Northwestern University
VOLUME 4
Retracing Images
Visual Culture after Yugoslavia
Edited by
Daniel Šuber and Slobodan Karamanić
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2012
Cover Illustration: Raša Todosijević, “Gott liebt die Serben” (God loves the Serbs) (1995) – Courtesy
of Centar za kulturnu dekontaminaciju (Belgrade) Archives.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Retracing images : visual culture after Yugoslavia / edited by Daniel Šuber and Slobodan
Karamanić.
p. cm. — (Balkan studies library, ISSN 1877-6272 ; v. 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-21030-1 (hbk. : acid-free paper)
1. Yugoslavia—Intellectual life—1992–2003. 2. Yugoslavia—Politics and government—1992–2003.
3. Yugoslavia—Social conditions. 4. Yugoslav War, 1991–1995—Social aspects. 5. Post-communism—
Social aspects—Yugoslavia—History. 6. Art and state—Yugoslavia—History. 7. Art and society—
Yugoslavia—History. 8. Visual communication—Yugoslavia—History. 9. Popular culture—
Yugoslavia—History. 10. Political culture—Yugoslavia—History. I. Šuber, Daniel. II. Karamanić,
Slobodan.
DR1317.R48 2012
949.703—dc23
2011042629
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ISSN 1877-6272
ISBN 978 90 04 21030 1
Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ vii
List of Contributors ........................................................................................ ix
List of Figures ................................................................................................... xiii
Mapping the Field: Towards Reading Images in the
(Post-)Yugoslav Context .......................................................................... 1
Daniel Šuber and Slobodan Karamanić
PART I
ART AND THE OTHER SCENE
‘Image Games’: Political Imagology and the Mimicry of Power ....... 29
Zoran Terzić
The Function of the Signifijier ‘Totalitarianism’ in the Constitution
of the ‘East Art’ Field ................................................................................ 55
Miklavž Komelj
New Collectives: Art Networks and Cultural Policies in
Post-Yugoslav Spaces ................................................................................ 81
Sezgin Boynik
Spraying on Gallery Walls: Grafffijiti and the Art Field in Slovenia ... 107
Gregor Bulc
PART II
MOVING PICTURES: BEFORE AND AFTER DESTRUCTION
Changing Fates: The Role of the Hero in Yugoslav Cinema in the
Early and Late Sixties ............................................................................... 135
Davor Beganović
vi contents
Futur Antérieur of Yugoslav Cinema, or, Why Emir Kusturica’s
Legacy is Worth Fighting for .................................................................. 149
Nebojša Jovanović
The Nationalistic Turn and the Visual Response in Macedonian
Art and Cinema .......................................................................................... 171
Robert Alagjozovski
PART III
IMAGES IN RETROSPECT:
CREATING MEMORY, NEGATING HISTORY
‘Bosnian Girl’: Nationalism and Innocence through Images of
Women .......................................................................................................... 195
Elissa Helms
Reinventing Kosovo: Newborn and the Young Europeans .................. 223
Isabel Ströhle
Transformation of Memorial Sites in the Post-Yugoslav Context ... 251
Gal Kirn
Titostalgia. On the Post-Yugoslav Cognitive Map ................................. 283
Mitja Velikonja
Symbolic Landscape, Violence and the Normalization Process in
Post-Milošević Serbia ................................................................................ 313
Daniel Šuber and Slobodan Karamanić
Index ................................................................................................................... 337
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
During the last years we have received generous support from the Univer-
sity of Konstanz Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Integration.”
This funding enabled us to conduct fijieldwork in Serbia over the last few
years and to organize a workshop which eventually developed into the
present volume. We wish to express our appreciation to the participants
of the workshop that are – for varied reasons – not represented in this
volume. Naturally, we owe to the contributors for their benevolent and
stoic patience.
In the preparation of this book we have received the competent edito-
rial assistance from Jason Barker, Hendrik Stary and Jason L. Mast. Also,
the following persons have contributed in diffferent forms to its realization:
Vesna Jovanović, Lidija Radojević, Milan Rakita, Ozren Pupovac, Vladimir
Tupanjac, Manuela Unverdorben, and Sibylle Šuber. For the courtesy to
let us print their images we owe to many institutions, artists and indi-
viduals. We do not want to miss the opportunity to thank the anonymous
reviewers from whose expertise we have profijited signifijicantly. Finally, our
gratitude goes to the organizers and editors of the Balkan Studies Library
series for encouraging this joint project.
Daniel Šuber and Slobodan Karamanić
July 2011
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Robert Alagjozovski is a freelance researcher and critic of art and cul-
ture. He holds a M.A. in Comparative Literature from Skopje University.
He submitted a thesis on the subject of “The Theoretical and Poetical
Aspects of the Macedonian Postmodern Prose.” He is the author of three
books in the fijields of literary and fijilm criticism and over fijifty theoretical
essays, articles, and studies from the fijields of philology, fijilm and cultural
policy. His research interests include contemporary Macedonian fijilm and
literature, especially the postmodernist corpus.
Davor Beganović is Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavic Lit-
erature at the University of Vienna. He holds a PhD in Slavic Literature.
His thesis was committed to the works of Danilo Kiš. He has been working
as Research Associate at the Center of Excellence 16 “Cultural Foundations
of Integration” (University of Konstanz). Among his many publications
belong two monographs: Poetry of Melancholy. On the Traces of Contem-
porary Bosnian-Herzegovinian Literature (Sarajevo, 2009) and Traumatic
Memory: Apocalyptic Prose of Danilo Kiš (Sarajevo and Zagreb, 2007).
Sezgin Boynik is a PhD candidate in the Cultural Policy Department at
the Jyväskylä University, where he is working on “Cultural Politics of the
Black Wave Cinema in Socialist Yugoslavia 1963–1972.” He has completed
his MA in Sociology at the Mimar Sinan University (Istanbul) with a thesis
on “Aesthetical-Political Strategies of Situationist International” in 2003.
He worked as a lecturer at the Prishtina University, and as a researcher at
the Gani Bobi – Institut for Humanistic Studies (Kosovo). He has written
and edited several publications, including one on the Situationist Interna-
tional (Art-Ist: Journal for Contemporary Art, no. 1, Istanbul 2004), a reader
on Nationalism and Contemporary Art – Critical Reader (with Minna Hen-
riksson, Prishtina, 2007), and Interrupted History of Punk and Underground
Resources in Turkey 1978–1999 (with Tolga Guldalli, Istanbul 2008).
Gregor Bulc studied Media and Communication at the University of
Ljubljana where he received his PhD in 2005. Currently, he is studying
Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
He lectured and conducted research on media representations, moral
x list of contributors
panics, mobile phone surveillance, and various forms of popular culture
such as popular music, comic books, talent shows, and street theatre. He
is the author of The Production of Culture (Proizvodnja kulture, Subkulturni
azil, 2004) and is working on his new book Cultural Intermediaries, Art
Discourse and Comics.
Elissa Helms, a cultural anthropologist, is Assistant Professor in the
Department of Gender Studies at the Central European University in
Budapest. Her work explores various aspects of gender, ethno-national-
ism, representation, and women’s activism in post-war, post-socialist Bos-
nia-Herzegovina (BiH). She has also published on masculinity, gendered
orientalism and balkanism, and the relationship between war crimes tri-
als and women’s victim associations in BiH. She is co-editor, with Xavier
Bougarel and Ger Duijzings, of a collection of local-level studies of post-
war BiH entitled, The New Bosnian Mosaic: Identities, Memories and Moral
Claims in a Postwar Society (Ashgate, 2007).
Gal Kirn is a PhD candidate at the Scientifijic Research Centre of the Slo-
venian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Ljubljana. His work combines
research on contemporary French philosophy (especially Louis Althusser)
with the history of the emergence of socialist Yugoslavia and its dissolu-
tion. He was a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht
(2008–10) and holds the position of a researcher at the Institut for Cultural
Inquiry in Berlin since 2010. He is a correspondent editor for the inter-
national journal Historical Materialism, as well as a book editor of Post-
fordism and its Discontents (Jan van Eyck Academie), and Postfordizem.
Teorije sodobnega kapitalizma (Peace Institute, Ljubljana). He is also co-
editor of New Public Spaces. Dissensual Political and Artistic Practices in
the post-Yugoslav context (Jan van Eyck Academie and Moderna Galerija,
Ljubljana).
Nebojša Jovanović is a PhD candidate in the Department of Gender Stud-
ies at the Central European University, Budapest. His research explores
Yugoslav and Bosnian cinema as the path to sexual politics in Bosnia-
Herzegovina, both during Yugoslav socialism and the post-Yugoslav
condition. He contributed to a number of journals for Critical Theory in
post-Yugoslav countries (Agregat, Arkzin, Borec, Časopis za kritiko znano-
sti, Frakcija, Prelom, Reč, Sarajevske sveske, Život umjetnosti). His texts are
included in The Real, the Desperate, the Absolute, edited by Marina Gržinić,
2001; Leap into the City. Cultural Positions, Political Conditions. Seven Scenes
