Alienation Effects: Performance and Self-Management in Yugoslavia, 1945-91

383 Pages·2016·2.96 MB·English

by  Branislav Jakovljević

AlienAtion effects
THEATER: THEORY/TEXT/PERFORMANCE
Series Editors: David Krasner, Rebecca Schneider, and Harvey Young
Founding Editor: Enoch Brater
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Alienation Effects
PerformAnce And self- mAnAgement
in YugoslAviA, 1945– 91
Branislav Jakovljević
Ann Arbor
University of Michigan Press
Copyright © 2016 by the University of Michigan
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Published in the United States of America by the
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2019 2018 2017 2016  4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978- 0- 472- 07314- 6
To Nikola and Maria

Acknowledgments
I dedicate this book to my children, Nikola and Maria. Yugoslavia will be a
part of their lives more than they will ever be able to know— so much for
intangible heritage. I would have not been able to write this book without
the commitment and support of my wife, Jasminka. Much more than the
translations from the French in this book is hers.
In Alienation Effects, I investigate the transformation of performance,
broadly conceived, in Yugoslavia in the post– World War II period. In the
period that extended from the establishment of self- management as the
dominant ideological and economic model, contemporaneously with
early experimental work in theater and visual arts, to the hyperinflation
that spelled the end of the Yugoslav brand of labor and highly visible
postmodern cultural productions, the concept of performance in Yugo-
slavia spanned a broad range of activities, from labor organization to con-
ceptual art. Instead of composing a historical survey, in this book I have
tried to understand different historical periods by focusing on a select
number of case studies, each of them requiring a different methodology.
My work on the 1950s and early 1960s was based on archival research in
Serbia and the United States. This painstaking labor was made easier by
the assistance of friendly staff of the Archive of Yugoslavia (Arhiv Jugo-
slavije), Museum of Yugoslav History (Muzej istorije Jugoslavije, espe-
cially Momo Cvijović), and the Hoover Institute library at Stanford Uni-
versity. I am grateful to Mary Munill from the Stanford Library office for
Interlibrary Borrowing. Throughout the process, I relied on generous
help of my friends from the National Library of Serbia (Narodna bib-
lioteka Srbije): Svetlana Gavrilović, Sreten Ugričić, and Saša Ilić. In my
research on the late 1960s and 1970s (and beyond) I employed both archi-
val and ethnographic fieldwork methods. I am grateful to Slavica
Vukadinović, Srđjan Veljović, and Stevan Vuković for their help in ac-
cessing archival material held in Belgrade’s Student Cultural Center (Stu-
dentski kulturni centar, SKC). These documents came to life through my
conversations with some of the main protagonists of the conceptual art
viii Acknowledgments
scene in Belgrade of the 1970s and 1980s, Slobodan “Era” Milivojević,
Raša Todosijević, Zoran Popović, and Jasna Tijardović. I offer my thanks
to them for sharing their time and memories with me, and for giving me
a permission to use the photographs of their performances in this book.
Big thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić for their help in
obtaining the images of Mladen’s works and the permission to use them.
I also want to thank Dunja Blažević, Ljubica Mrkalj, Nebojša Janković,
and Žarko Papić for providing me with important information about
their activities on the Belgrade art scene of the 1970s, and Goran Đorđević
for letting me use images of some of his works. I also want to thank
Marinko Sudac, Irwin, Belgrade Student Cultural Center (SKC), and
Anne Marchand for allowing me to use the images from their collections.
The image on the book covers was made during the concert of Belgrade
Symphony in Train Factory “Goša” in Smederevska Palanka on the occa-
sion of Youth Day, on May 25 1954. I made every poossible effort to find
the person who made this photograph, but to no avail. The cover was
designed by Belgrade- based multimedia artist group Škart. My thanks go
to Đorđe Balmazović and Dragan Protić for their flexibility and for doing
great work under pressure of deadllines. I also want to acknowledge the
work of a new generation of artists, theoreticians, and art historians
whose critical interpretation of conceptual art in Serbia and Yugoslavia
was important for my own work: Milica Tomić, Branimir Stojanović, and
Jelena Vesić.
My archival research and fieldwork would not have been possible
without support from the Hellman Foundation and Stanford University.
Just as important as financial support was the intellectual and institu-
tional support of Harry Elam, under whose tenure as department chair of
Stanford Drama/TAPS I started this book, and of Alice Rayner, who
chaired the department when I finished. My special thanks to Peggy
Phelan for her friendship, support, and guidance throughout this period,
and beyond. I want to thank them and my other colleagues for providing
a cordial and supportive work environment. They taught me that self-
management is not only a principle of labor organization, but also a very
delicate art of working together. It is an art of generosity and care, and is
not limited to immediate interactions. In my labor on this book I bene-
fited enormously from Amelia Jones’s comments, from Mariellen Sand-
ford’s copyediting, and from the patience and understanding of my edi-
tor, LeAnn Fields. Ljubiša Matić made indexing into an art form. I am
indebted to him for his attentiveness to every word and letter in the book.
He was the last line of defense against typos and other omissions. I am
Acknowledgments ix
solely responsible for any mistakes, large and small, that made it into the
published version of the book.
My work on this book started long before I even thought of writing it. It
was fueled by the unraveling of the country where I was born and raised. I
received my first lessons about self- management as an egalitarian practice
and its distortions as an ideological discourse from my parents, Branislava
and Radoš; I articulated my first critiques of Yugoslav politics in conversa-
tions with my sister Lidija. This daily exercise of critical thinking continued
over the years through dialogues with my friends Perica Gunjić, Milan
Rakočević, Pavle Levi, and many others. I hope that in this book captures
some of the verve and passion of these shared experiences.