Monuments Should Not Be Trusted: Yugoslav Interdisciplinary Art Practices in an International Context (2015 – 2020) DRAFT
- Submitting institution
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Birkbeck College
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 2013
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Nottingham Contemporary
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of first exhibition
- January
- Year of first exhibition
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- 'Monuments Should Not Be Trusted’ is result of five years field research into artistic practices on the territory of former Yugoslavia. Initial short research trips were followed by me relocating to Zagreb, Croatia, where much of the material is held, for two years. From 2013 to 2015 I visited artists’ studios, museum and television archives and specialist libraries, conducting over 20 audio interviews with cultural workers across Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, as well as identifying key material culture artefacts. This thorough and original research resulted in an exhibition and conference presented in the UK in 2016, accompanied by a catalogue.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- In 2014 I was commissioned by Alex Farquharson, then Director of Nottingham Contemporary (current Director, Tate Britain) to present my research as an exhibition, conference, and accompanying events at the Nottingham Contemporary arts centre. I developed four strands for the exhibition ‘Monuments Should Not Be Trusted’ which took place between January and March 2016. The themes were Socialism and Class Difference; Comradess Superwoman; Public Space and The Presence of Tito; Utopian Consumerism and Subcultures. With over 100 works and over 30 artists from the region of the former Yugoslavia this project remains the largest UK exhibition to date to showcase Yugoslav cultural outputs. By highlighting new and previously under-researched material the exhibition created new contexts and framings of cultural outputs from the region, generating new knowledge of Yugoslav practices as internationally relevant and important for the cultural history of the 20th Century; by approaching the project thematically and placing the exhibited material in the international context of conceptual art, pop culture and the 1968 student protests, the exhibition embodied new ways of thinking about Yugoslav cultural outputs. The exhibition drew on research which involved several years’ field work in the region, gathering new material from artists’, museum and television archives, material culture
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artefacts and conducting over 20 audio interviews with cultural workers from across the region. The exhibition challenged the totalitarian paradigm of reading Yugoslav art via the binary political narratives of communism and capitalism. The research highlighted previously under-researched connections across artistic disciplines of visual and performing arts, pop music, television, and placed these works in an international context of global artistic movements, shedding a new light on Yugoslav art as internationally relevant and deeply connected to global cultural shifts of the period.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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