Architecture of memory

POLITECNICO DI MILANO SCHOOL OF CIVIL ARCHITECTURE MSC ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN AA 2014/2015 HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE PROF. FEDERICO DEAMBROSIS

ARCHITECTURE OF MEMORY

YUGOSLAVIAN PARTISAN MEMORIALS BETWEEN ART, REVOLUTION AND IDEOLOGY

SRNA TULIĆ

“I dream of a Europe without monuments, a Europe without monuments of death and destruction.

Maybe with monuments to love, happiness and laughter.”1 Bogdan Bogdanović

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B.Bogdanović “Zelena kutija – knjiga snova”; Novi Sad: Mediterran Publishing; 2009.

CONTENT

ABSTRACT

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INTRODUCTION

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MONUMENTS AND EX-YUGOSLAVIA

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MONUMENTS AND TYPOLOGY

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FOUR CASE STUDIES_ KOZARA, PODGARIĆ, KOSMAJ AND TJENTIŠTE

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MONUMENTS AND ARCHITECTS_ BOGDAN BOGDANOVIĆ

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MONUMENTS AND ORNAMENT(S)_ ARCHAISM AND BOGDANOVIĆ

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MONUMENTS AND THE QUESTION OF THREE D_ DESTRUCTION, DECAY AND DECONTEXTUALIZATION

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CONCLUSION

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REFERENCES

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ABSTRACT How to think of a memorial dedicated to a revolution? A memorial assumes conservation, preservation, established memory while revolution assumes demolition, the reversion of the world as we know it and its ranking.

What monuments have in common is the abstract, often monumental, but yet always unusual and supreme expressive form. During the 60s and the 70s of the past century, more than one thousand partisan monuments, with peculiar aesthetic qualities, were constructed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. They are a collection of impressive architectural and urban projects marking the events of WWII where some of them mark the most important partisan mythology battlefields. Places where their victory turned into a defeat. As war memorials they are unique: they don`t take for their main theme the battle and death, but rather life, resistance and energy that drives it are placed in the first plan.

In their abstract expressive form, they are a possible legacy outside of their official history. The formal honesty of these monuments at the same time speaks about a special character of Yugoslavian socialism which, despite the one-party system, kept the liberal attitudes and in the wider context (than elsewhere) always allowed the possibility of different.

Even in their overall concept they are turned to life as their mare function was not only to be a memorial, but firstly a place for jaunts and school trips. They are often located in attractive landscape scenarios, often in rise areas, in national parks, in the mountains and desolated forests. Yet, their urban design involves thought routes with benches, stairs cases, graveyards etc. The mandatory school trips to these sites were considered as a cultural activity as the sites are emphasised by a simple amphitheatre (sittings in semi-circles, often articulated, almost as theatres that are sometimes abstract) which can be found around almost any monument. With their open nature location they created an invisible network of symbolical places which still generate the Yugoslavian space and spirit. In the light of the presence of natural heritage, looking at this empty stage under the open sky, it is very easy to imagine different festivities.

This paper intends to research the influence the modernist ideas in the typologies found; the movement the architecture itself has placed in them; the role of architects in their creation; the ideological and revolutionary messages and common questions their creation had, has and could challenge in the future.

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INTRODUCTION How to think of a memorial to a revolution? A memorial assumes conservation, preservation, established memory while revolution assumes demolition, the reversion of the world as we know it and its ranking. The meaning of memory is essential when we talk about a memorial: it is a monument of the remembrance of people and events and at the same time it represents a universal message directed to the collective awareness.

In “Nine Points on Monumentality”2 , J. L. Sert, F. Léger and S. Giedion debate the importance of monuments as links between the past and the future. They argue that monuments are said to serve as “a heritage”, and presumably if this is done effectively, the monument will be of value. They express the man`s highest cultural needs and they are a translation of collective force into a symbol. Therefore, monuments are possible when a period of unifying consciousness and unifying culture exists. Wars and crisis change the community life and people`s need for the representation of their social life is not a merely functional matter. They want their aspiration for monumentality, joy, pride, and excitement to be satisfied. Thus, a monument is an integration of work of different professions. It is important to plan the sites of monuments as they will create vast open spaces where the monumental architecture finds its appropriate setting. The use of modern materials and techniques are an advantage as they offer rather more possibilities in the expressive language of the “artwork”. At the very end, the monumental architecture is not purely a functional matter, through its monumentality it regains its lyrical value and develops new opportunities.

MONUMENTS AND EX-YUGOSLAVIA In the official memory of a socialist Yugoslavia nothing could compete with World War II. There were good motives for that: the war was a period of truly vast suffering, which left the population devastated and homeless. A stunning number of casualties had to be commemorated: over one million, ranking in Europe only behind Poland and the Soviet Union3. Just as importantly, the war was commemorated as the beginning of socialism. What was remembered was of it was precisely selective and it represented the only past worth remembering. At the same time, the war was more than just a past. Unlike Germany`s Stunde Null, which instituted a radical break by resetting the historical clock in May 19454, the war extended its relevance in Yugoslavia far beyond that date as a source of the founding values of the post-war order: socialist revolution, anti-fascism, and the Yugoslav “brotherhood and unity” (orig. bratstvo jedinstvo). It was thus part of a continuous present or, as a widespread expression at that time named it, of the “ongoing revolution”.

Such complex and unclear relationship towards the past determined the basis of commemoration, which produced countless pieces of art, music, literature, and film, as well as hundreds of built monuments, scattered all over Yugoslavia. There is no simple way to describe these memorials. They were commissioned by a variety of representatives and at various levels of political hierarchy, they vary in type, location, size, style, tone and their relationship to history.

The roots of such variety can be traced to the 1948 break with the USSR. Before the break, commemorative projects were expected to follow the socialist realist formula: realistic representation, obvious symbolism, and a triumphant mood5. The pattern was established by the sculptor August Augustinčić and the architect Drago Galić in 1947. After the Communist party released the control over culture in the early 1950s, following such models was not only needless. It became a painful reminder of the Soviet domination. The question of collective remembrance thus had to be modelled once again, with few appropriate examples available.

J. L. Sert, F. Léger and S. Giedion; “Nine Points on Monumentality”; 1943 V.Vučković on number of Yugoslav victims during WWII; Magazine Naša Reč, issue 368; October 1985.

4 Burghardt R., Kirn G: Jugoslovenski partizanski spomenici - Između revolucionarne politike i apstraktnog modernizma, JugoLink pregled postjugoslovenskih istraživanja, Year 2 Vol. 1, 2012 5 Kulić V., Mrduljaš M., Thaler W. “Modernism In-between, The mediatory architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia”; Berlin: Jovis; July 2012 2 3

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Map of ex-Yugoslavia with the marked monuments

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The first examples of the break of tradition were the monuments dedicated to the Jewish victims of fascism in Belgrade by the architect Bogdan Bogdanović from 1952 and the Memorial Cemetery Kampor from 1953 by the architect Edvard Ravnikar6. These two monuments were also responsible for legitimizing architecture as a profession that could be fully entrusted with commemoration. Before the war, it was the prominent sculptors (Augustinčić, Bodnarov, Bakić, Kršinić etc.) who crossed over into architecture when working on important state-financed commissions.

Now it was architects who led the way by hiding the borders between disciplines, as architecture, sculpture, and landscape became increasingly indistinguishable from each other.

Model of Evard Ravnikar`s project forMemorial Cemetery in Kampor, 1953 6

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Burghardt R: Partizanski spomenici – Putovanje u jugoslovensku modernu, KVART – magazine for architecture, design and lifestyle, pages 72-77, Serbia

MONUMENTS AND TYPOLOGY Between 1945 and 1990, several thousand monuments to the revolution (NOB7 movement) were erected. Many had already been built in the 1940s and early 1950s, often as modest commemorative plaques on which the names of local partisans and killed villagers were listed. This “first phase of memorialization” was based on a mixture of popular forms of sculpture, and had a realist trace. Noteworthy here is that monuments to the partisan struggle do not resemble the many examples of massive socialist realist monuments that are more typical both the Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union. Then in the second phase, from the 1960s to 1980s, a widespread movement of memorial building [or memorialization] emerged under the label of “socialist modernism”8. The monuments were not only modernist, but they contained their own peculiar typologies: monumental, symbolic (forms of stars, fist, wings, hands, flowers, and rocks), daring (sometimes structurally bold), otherworldly and imaginary. Most of the monuments to the revolution in Yugoslavia were therefor erected on historic sites of the partisan battles, and as a consequence are nearly always located outside towns or villages, among open landscapes and national parks.

They form an invisible network of figurative sites that still generate a consciously created Yugoslav space. However, they do not occupy the more classic and very visible sites of representation such as the central streets and squares of big cities. Many of these memorials were located in parks, showcased by leisure-time destinations with picnic facilities, cafés, restaurants, or even hotels. In yet other memorial parks, museums or amphitheatres served as openair classrooms. In addition to their double function as sites of grief and celebration, memorial parks were imagined as hybrid complexes, integrating leisure with education, architecture with sculpture, objects with the surrounding scenery. Sometimes museum and sculpture merged; sometimes the sculpture itself was actually fundamental to the amphitheatre. The mission of the amphitheatre seemed to be important: it was regularly integrated into the sculpture, while sometimes the monument itself unfolded into a stage set. There was a dialogue between natural and manmade which brought to a question of the relationship between man and its surrounding. Monument`s forms often became tangible only when passed through it, when in that moment they would invite us to explore the relationship between the sculptural form and our bodies. Many of the monuments allegorically represent a universal narrative of time, in which they turn towards the future in an abstract position9. As such, they have a tendency towards escapism, marking the history as a movement to a better future. This motive can be found in the return of the symbolism of the wings or the massive forms that rime towards the sky, and which reminiscent the rocket launchers.

Monumental forms and vertical expressions in some of the memorials only intensify the passive position of the observer, although none of the monuments have a tendency of fully subordinating the subject, which was typical for Stalinist or fascist monuments. As classical modernist pieces of art, they stand as objects in the landscape, and the landscape surrounding them is transformed into a park that in turn stages the monument.

Vojin Bakić`s study for the monument Petrova Gora, 1979-1981 NOB – Narodnooslobodilačka borba (World War II partisan fights) Kulić V., Mrduljaš M., Thaler W. “Modernism In-between, The mediatory architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia”; Berlin: Jovis; July 2012 9 R. Burghardt, G. Kirn “Jugoslovenski partizanski spomenici - Između revolucionarne politike i apstraktnog modernizma”; JugoLink pregled postjugoslovenskih istraživanja; Year 2 Vol. 1; 2012.

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Inherent motives of the monuments include various tries at universality on an official and artistic level, in addition to the universality conditioned by their politics. There is a certain fascination for the very extensive character of the monuments; a formal strength that outlives its own time, and that, simultaneously, is the result of very specific historical circumstances. The idea of the communist revolution contains many all-embracing claims such as the equality of men and women, but even more than that, it aims to integrate the perspective of a worldwide or even cosmic planetary community. In the specific case of the Yugoslavia, its application took the form of the ending private property and a more just circulation of surplus value, in addition to the projects of modernization, education, antifascism and the construction of a common, multi-ethnic space10.

The main task of these monuments to the revolution was to consider how their universal claims were addressed, and then later formalized into an artistic language. The Yugoslav monuments function by institutionalizing collective memory of WWII events. They then suggest formal signals of opening towards the future. It is clear that the most obvious approach of representing universalism is abstraction. In the abstract formal language of the Yugoslav revolution, memorials activate a certain feeling of openness that permits personal relations11. They remain open to various interpretations, and they rouse imaginations. Their abstract vocabulary allows for an appropriation of meaning that bypasses official narrations, allowing access to the monuments even for people who disagree with their official politic.

Miodrag Živković and Aleksandar Đokić, monument Kadinjača, 1979

R. Burghardt, G. Kirn “Jugoslovenski partizanski spomenici - Između revolucionarne politike i apstraktnog modernizma”; JugoLink pregled postjugoslovenskih istraživanja; Year 2 Vol. 1; 2012.

11 J. Kempenaers (2010) “Spomenik”; Amsterdam: Roma Publications; 141; 2010.

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FOUR CASE STUDIES_Kozara, Podgarić, Kosmaj and Tjentište In north Bosnia, in the area of the national park Kozara, in 1972 Dušan Džamonja designed and erected the monument in a form of a cylinder made of 20 trapezoid columns, between which conical openings are found. Visitors can enter the monument through openings, which are designed in a manner that the visitor needs to pass by rather than enter normally. Inside the cylinder a person is standing in a dark space in the form of a chimney, Inside a person has a feeling that is placed in a trap, that is surrounded, which is a clear reference on the events happened during WWII in the area of Kozara. The German troops, with the help of Croatian fascists (ustaše), surrounded the partisans and the villagers that were escaping from the fascistic terror. The cylindrical form thus is associating on the claustrophobic experience, and on the other hand on the integrative idea of Kolo, a traditional dance that was practiced by the local population (Kozaračko kolo).from which through the above mentioned opening a view towards the outside is experiences. The conical form of the openings was made so that it is easier to enter the monuments rather than to exit it. Exiting the monument is physically a not easy act but on the outside a wide open space is located that was used for dancing kolo in the time prior to world wars. But these two circles emphasise two logics that are contradicting each other’s: one based on the antifascist solidarity which goes over ethical principles, and the other that surrounds the first with the intention of destroying it, the logic of fascist hate and ethnical division.

Thus, the siege can be interrupted only though a different kind of circle – kolo.

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The monument in Podgarić is an example of abstract plastic which is represented by the stylised wings of freedom and victory. The wings on the monuments are horizontally ordered ribbed layers, out of which two are placed on one wing and three on the second.

The “body” of the monument is connected with the ground through a squared base, which symbolises the penetration in the space, the absorption of energy from Earth itself. Composed id the angled pieces of light aluminium, symbolises life, which in the conclusion composes the monument in a symbol of the victory of life over death and defeat.

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The third monuments is located on Kosmaj, a small mountain in central Serbia, and is another monument that marks the partisan backing out. Same as in Kozara, the monuments is placed on the highest position in this mountain region. The five fingers pointing towards the sky, whose base has a form of a five-pointed star, create an object that from the distance seems as a unique form.

But approaching the monument, one can see that the finger-like forms are not connected and that the geometrical shape of the star becomes barely readable in the space between the five fingers. In the moments when the finer-like shapes become separated from each other’s, the monument reveals its structural challenge, a kind of exercise pointed against the forces of gravity.

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Last, but not the least, is the monument to the Battle of Sutjeska. This battle represented on the most important moments, if not even the turnover in the history of the partisan movement in WWII. Although surrounded with high mountains on the borders between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, the partisan main command managed to save themselves from German and Nazi troops but thousands of partisans died in the woods near the village Tjentište. On that very spot, a monument by Miodrag Živković was erected in 1971. The monuments is composed of two monumental rocks, which make an artificial canyon and thus symbolically represent the place of the partisan breaking. The sculpture reproduces the experience of marching through the mountain setting. The formation of the rocks changes constantly, depending on the position and the movement of the visitor.

Approaching the monument the rocks seem massive and monolith. When the pathway between the two rocks is passed, one notices that the monument has a more open form and it becomes more refined. Continuing the climb on the pathway and looking down towards the monument, we can observe how the rocks transform into wings.

With the continuing of the movements on the pathway that leads towards a small museum, in which a famous mural

by Krsto Hegedušid is located, we have a feeling that the rocks are transformed into fingers. As a very subtile effect, the symmetry of the rocks, which is very present from the front side, is slowly moved when passing through the monument, evoking fundamental asymetry. The rocks are very similar, but are not identical copies of eachothers.

All of the four monuments, as well all the others erected in this period, do not represent only monuments to fallen soldiers. Each is unique but they all have a common symbolism, and that is what the fallen have given their life for: freedom, victory and better life. None of the authors have specifically defined the symbolism behind his monument, but the interpretation of its meaning is unique in the eyes of each observer.

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MONUMENTS AND ARCHITECTS_Bogdan Bogdanović Bogdan Bogdanović built his largest and most well-known memorials during the 1960s, including those in Prilep (1961), Mostar (1965), Kruševac (1965) and Jasenovac (1966). Common to all of them is the way how they all blurred the lines between landscape, sculpture, and architecture, although in each memorial the three disciplines were combined in different proportions.

The so-called Slobodište (Freedom ground) near the city of Kruševac is a massive piece of land art with architectural and sculptural accents scattered throughout.

Jasenovac features a series of tumuli – ancient burial mounds – which remind of the massive killing that occurred at the site during the wartime concentration camp. The focus of the complex is a massive concrete flower straddling an underground crypt, a formally exuberant piece of sculpture whose rigorous geometry reveals it was designed by an architect.

Jasenovac memorial

The Prilep memorial is almost pure sculpture – although carefully arranged against the backdrop of the surrounding landscape, consisting of a series of vaguely anthropomorphic stone figures engaged in a funerary sance.

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Prilep

Finally, the Partisan necropolis in Mostar from 1965 synthesizes all three disciplines: a “city of the dead” in stone, carved into the side of a hill, with its own streets, gates, terraces, and fountains, decorated with a wealth of symbolic hand-carved ornaments.

Partisan necropolis, Mostar

Bogdan Bogdanović on the monument “The Flower” in Jasenovac: “... And so as a basic symbol a flower was chosen, a sign of eternal renewal, and after a series of variants stylized as a flower - building, as a superstructure turned with a crypt towards the victims of which has its roots, and a crown, a kind of an inverted dome – towards the light and sun, symbolically, to life and freedom.”

Bogdan Bogdanovic on the monument Flower in Jasenovac; Jasenovac, news and radio news institution Jedinstvo, Sisak in 1966 12

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Javna ustanova spomen-područje Jasenovac http://www.jusp-jasenovac.hr/Default.aspx?sid=5923

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MONUMENTS AND ORNAMENTS_archaism and Bogdanović Now we can realize that the artists had their own symbol, tor how they describe it, “formless, variable, abstract”, they did not serve the motherland in the way that their decoration was the flag, proletariat or the five-pointed star.

They were not the architects who “served the party” no matter how it could be interpreted as a mockery of the Committee (state party).

At a time in which the ornament was thrown to the extent that the ornament was considered even the treating by hand and stone, according to Bogdanović himself, he wrote the thesis “Machine or by hand?” and then he answered himself - by hand! Versus “ornament is a crime”, he asks about the “Values of ornament” which he saw as the erotic energy of architectural ornamentation.

Its symbol is archaic, it can be Mesopotamian, it may be an ancient Chinese, an early Christian, he made his symbol on the finer stage of nationalism, forming metaphors from the origin of human civilization, always avoiding national boundaries, he explained – he takes pre-Balkan and general human time for inspiration, because Yugoslavia is complex and complicated. He did not enjoy analysing the symbols, but he was doing it, considering it his duty, realizing that he must take the chance that he would not be available in any other socialist country.

Sculptor or an architect - the eternal question that Bogdanović asks and analyses. His decoration on the memorials could be interpreted as “understanding for that particular grain of genius that kitsch often embraces” by Miodrag Protić. His sculpture has nothing to do with being liked or disliked, his work is always active and it seems to be more experimental than we can analyse. However, not always the critics and theoreticians of architecture were easy on Bogdanović. Matko Mestrović in his book “Od pojedinačnog općem” comments Bogdanović winning the competition for Jasenovac memorial as follows: “The idea that by this relief deploys a large, monumental flower and than a number of smaller lead flowers as plastic and symbolic accents, it purely literal and wasted. More than in any of his previous work here there were expresses all the deficiencies by Bogdanović and the wrong starting point of his approach in such a task.” Perhaps Matko Maštrović expected from the memorial complex a space that by its look would reminiscent the scene of battles and destruction, but Bogdan made and elegant stone flower ... And from Jasenovac, no hesitation will not happen again in his work life.

MONUMENTS AND THREE D_Destruction,Decay and Decontextualization As from Bogdanović`s fever dreams on which he wrote about in his “Zelena kutija”13 (Green box), monuments that represented memories of the war, now become topics of war of memories – whose are they, who made them, for whom they were made, on whose territory are they located... And so in a few lines in the book “Re: Vision” (Re:vizija) an ordinary event which shows the whole absurdity of the Yugoslav story, of all the eras was described: when, in 1999, not knowing whether he crossed the entity border14, in the Vraca Memorial Park above Sarajevo, a reporter of magazine Dani asked a boy there playing, “Kid, is this our monument?”, the boy replied: “No, it was Tito’s.” The largest number of damaged monuments is still in such a state, the perpetrators were unidentified, the authorities have never agitated themselves (they even used to tolerated these events), because all of these memorials are actually bringing up the former regime, which now wants to be forgotten.

But Bogdanović admits that these monuments can`t be understand as before, now and in the future, although we are aware that the past cannot be erased, but in the words of Paul Ricoeur – it is disposed, left aside. Can this teach us something? Why democracy has no monuments? Is it necessary to consider the relationship of ideology and symbolism? Can one destroy the other?

If we partly agree with the statement that the new historical context re-appropriated monuments for the nationalist cause, then we disagree with the theory that their abstract form allowed an easy re-adjustment. On the other hand, it was exactly because of their antifascist and communist heritage, which symbolizes the other space (Yugoslavia), that many modernist partisan memorials have been demolished and/or left to decay. They had to be demolished, because they were a symbol of a different future that personified the Universalist claim of the partisan figure.

Nowadays, the situation is different from area to area and the specific context. Most of the monuments are abandoned, some are devastated or completely destroyed. Only the monuments on the territory of Macedonia (FYROM), survived the breakup of Yugoslavia and are well maintained. And it is not without reason: the partisan history is very suitable for the integration into a new narrative sovereign Macedonian nation15. For it is through autonomy in the socialist Yugoslavia that Macedonia came to their independent national state.

For it is through autonomy in the socialist Yugoslavia that Macedonia came to their independent national state.

Sadly, in other states the partisan memory is increasingly destined to oblivion. Monuments have been partly forgotten by most people, and due to their distant locations have become less and less visited (mainly the last surviving partisans and art/architecture historians). Some monuments have even been removed or destroyed in the cases where their history has directly contradicted the nationalist interests, such as the anti-fascist sites in Croatia and Bosnia. In states such as Slovenia and Serbia, the story of self-liberation and partisan battles have been more easily integrated into the new nationalistic descriptions and have been reunited with those of other patriotic groups such as the Chetniks and Home Guards, who have received their own memorial sites.

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B.Bogdanović “Zelena kutija – knjiga snova”; Novi Sad: Mediterran Publishing; 2009.

Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995, with the Dayton peace agreement, was divided into two entities: Federation of BiH and Republic of Srpska R. Burghardt “Partizanski spomenici – Putovanje u jugoslovensku modernu”; KVART – magazine for architecture, design and lifestyle; pages 72-77; Serbia

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Thus, the monuments at the same time are found in the wake of the collapse of the Yugoslav universalism, the tragic breakup of a country that with its specific modernism had a bright future, whereas now as a fragmented region hardly any perspective. The breakup that from the position of Yugoslavia is particularly painful, especially because its non-aligned way represented an alternative to the authoritative bureaucracy of the Soviet Union and to the alienating capitalism of the West, and maybe a viable possibility of a better system.

In this way the modern movement (orig. moderna) served as an educational medium that combined the relatively isolated country to the international trends and at the same time an instrument of reconstruction of Yugoslav society.

Monuments like the physical witnesses of that time still connect what, today, is not connected in any way. They create a nationwide network of invisible points, which extends over the entire territory of the former Yugoslavia. And in the meantime, in particular are linked to the breaking and dividing the once common space.

It becomes a hope that the recent academic turn towards the “archaeologies of modernism” has awaken a renewed interest for these monuments. They attract attention as peculiar design objects posted on many art blogs, generating both enthusiasm and discussion. The monuments still capture people’s imaginations. It could be argued that this interest is very helpful in saving some of the sites from total demolition, in that it insists on their high artistic value. In this small way, the sites of the monuments become “eternal” and fight the common manners of dealings with the past.

CONCLUSION As we have seen in the case of Yugoslav monuments, the maxim of Walter Benjamin’s official history as “history written by the victors”16 has experienced some turnover in the Yugoslav context, where the history of the partisan battle, the struggle of the oppressed, is reversed in the history of the winners. What is interesting in this event is that the occupied and the oppressed managed to free and transform society even without much foreign help, whether from the East or the West, all the way to the last phase of WWII. The autonomy of Yugoslav politics, unfinished modernization, was unquestionably disturbing for imperialist role in the Balkans, but it became something especially disturbing for the current, even the European collective memory, as opposed to structural logic of the present, which was based on the trauma and the victims.

Today, the partisan history is deleted. They wiped out the new winners, anti-narrative and nationalism in post-Yugoslav space. This defeat is to be found in the ruins of the monuments of the revolution, who personified the general rejection of (Yugoslav) revolution. The victors have become current witnesses of segregation and oppression, they have become not the victim, already back part of the history of oppression17. This fundamental statement and open the joint space through a new language seems to be an adequate response to the political project of socialist Yugoslavia. The monument marks a clear position in space. As such, it is an object of arguments, scandals, opinions and present. The argument over the interpretation of the Yugoslav past is perhaps one of the suggestive places where post-Yugoslav societies have to face not only with the shared past, but also with their common (European) future.

Consistent with this, a monument to the revolution, meriting its name, can only refer to something unfinished.

In its hybrid in between position, Yugoslavia produced a genuinely particular memorial typology that linked the memory of WWII to the promise of the future brought forward by the socialist revolution. Instead of formally addressing suffering, modernist memorial sites were intended to catalyse universal gestures of reconciliation, resistance, and modern progress. Examining Yugoslav monuments to the revolution is a way of speaking certain moments, ones that neither fit easily into the expected monumental story nor into the artistic commemorative genre. The political aspect of remembrance is obvious. Whose stories are being told, and by whom, is crucial for the determination of present and future. Some argue that memory must address specific stories of places, people and events that are long gone, and that have been buried in history. However, only through the materialization of the emotional objects can we save these stories from complete oblivion.18 Yugoslavia is a country that today exists only in memory. Perhaps it is on these memorial sites, and through the legacy of the exceptional monuments they contain, that historical play is again placed plain. Who today is interested in these monuments? Their symbolism?

The locals are not interested. Politicians do not benefit from them. Young people are not aware of them. Elderly want to forget about it. Those that try to remember are those that lived WWII, but time is not their ally.

Although the real future of these monuments is already in the past, they continue to be a promise of a better future in the formal power of the sculpture. As physical witnesses, these monuments are now not only monuments of World War II or the Partisan struggle, they already have become monuments of Yugoslavia itself, its progressive anti-nationalistic and anti-fascist perspective. They continue to maintain an invisible network throughout the territory of the former Yugoslavia and a reminder on the disorder and the segmentation of the former single space.

How it all started with a dream of Bogdanović, an (evil) hunch is that it may also end with him.

“My long-time feverish dreams about how someone crashes monuments at night and destroys the entire spatial landscape of the continent, now seem to be a bit of exercise. On the news that, one after another, in the space of two days, at the memorial cemetery in Mostar echoed threatening two mines, during the whole night something was buzzing in the ear. What is next? Well then, tries to establish the amazement: how little it takes sometimes to get out of himself, as in the destroyed city?”19 Walter Benjamin “On the Concept of History” Gesammelten Schriften I:2. Suhrkamp Verlag. Frankfurt am Main; 1974. Đurić D., Šuvaković M. “Impossible Histories – Historical Avant-gardes, Neo-avant-gardes, and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia 1918 – 1991”, Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press; 2003.

18 S. Horvatinčić “Spomenici posvećeni radu i radničkom pokretu u socijalištičkoj Jugoslaviji”; Zagreb: Institut za povijest umjetnosti; etnološka tribina 37, vol.

44, pages 153-168; 2014.

19 B.Bogdanović “Zelena kutija – knjiga snova”; Novi Sad: Mediterran Publishing; 2009.

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Articles: R. Burghardt “Partizanski spomenici – Putovanje u jugoslovensku modernu”; KVART – magazine for architecture, design and lifestyle; pages 72-77; Serbia S. Horvatinčić “Spomenici posvećeni radu i radničkom pokretu u socijalištičkoj Jugoslaviji”; Zagreb: Institut za povijest umjetnosti; etnološka tribina 37, vol. 44, pages 153-168; 2014.

I. Ristić “Bogdan Bogdanović. Baumester und Zeichner”; Vienna: University of Vienna; 2009.

R. Burghardt, G. Kirn “Jugoslovenski partizanski spomenici - Između revolucionarne politike i apstraktnog modernizma”; JugoLink pregled postjugoslovenskih istraživanja; Year 2 Vol. 1; 2012.

J. Kempenaers (2010) “Spomenik”; Amsterdam: Roma Publications; 141; 2010.

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