Symposium Socialist Monuments and Modernism

Modernism will be taken as the socio-political base whose (ideological) superstructure the monuments were supposed to be, that is to say, socialism will be understood as a modernist project. By taking modernism not only as a period in art history but as a social(ist) and political practice, differences between memorials in former socialist countries as well as their difference with memorials in the West will be questioned.

Questioning the decay and destruction of socialist monuments after the fall of the Iron curtain and the recent attempts of their valorisation from the position of a materialist history the conference will also address the aesthetic fetishism of Modernism today and attempts at its appropriation into the canon of national arts.

Koncept and production: Lana Lovrenčić & Tihana Pupovac
Moderators: Dafne Berc, Lana Lovrenčić & Tihana Pupovac

PROGRAM
Friday, 6.11.2015.

10:00 – 10:30 Introductory speech
10:30 – 13:30 Hero, partisan, worker: Figures of Modernity
Rachel Aumiller Finding Antigone Amongst Slovenia’s Undead
Tomislav Augustinčić  A People’s Hero, a Monument and the Social Memory. Rade Končar in the midst of Social(ist)/Modernist Projects and Paradigms of Production
Owen Hatherley Monuments to Glorious Defeat — Socialist Memorial Art in Britain

13:30 – 15:00 Lunch break buffet

15:00 – 18:00 Normalising Socialism
Aneta Vasileva, Emilia Kaleva  Recharging Socialism: Bulgarian Socialist Monuments in XXI. Century
Vlada Kulić Countering Orientalization
Agata Pyzik The Afterlife of Red Army Memorials in Poland: International Perspective
18:20 – 19:00 Round table discussion

Saturday, 7.11.2015.

10:00 – 13:00 Spaces of Post-socialism
Romeo Kodra Architectural Monumentalism in Transitional Albania
Goran Janev Burdensome Past: Challenging the Socialist Heritage in Macedonia
Iva Grubiša Who remembers in Trešnjevka? Memorials to Partisan Printing Houses Between Social Memory and Oblivion
13:15 – 14:00 Milan Rakita Modernizaton Discourse and its Discontents

14:00 - 14:20 Coffee break buffet

14:20 – 15:00 Round table discussion


Symposium is part of the project Heroes we love 2014-2017 co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

design: Dario Dević

support: European Commission, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, Government of the Republic of Croatia - Office for Cooperation with NGOs, Allianz Kulturstiftung