We Have Built Cities for You
Seminars [2017]
We Have Built Cities for You – a series of seminars and lectures on the contradictions of Yugoslav socialism realized within the project “Pertej / Beyond / Over 20 years”
The concept of the exhibition, the production of the works and research, as well as the accompanying publications represent the collective work of the group that was formed during the initial, research phase of the project. The group consists of artists and researchers with experience in dealing with the topics the project focuses on, and artists and researchers who were in the phase of initiating new researches and activities related to the mentioned topics. The group formed in this way, together with the curators and organizers of the project, participated in a series of discursive programs (workshops, seminars, lectures, outdoor programs and guidance) organised over the course of a year 2017/2018, during which the basic themes of the project were further considered, common positions were formed and various possibilities of their communication were considered through the accompanying exhibition and publication.
Seminars for participants and public programs were organized in October and December 2017..
SEMINAR I
18. 10. 2017, 10:00
Workshop for the participants of the seminar:
Socialism in Yugoslavia and the question of social reproduction
Mentors: Vladimir Simović i Tanja Vukša (Center for Politics of Emancipation)
When analyzing a specific system, we will have to start with the question of social reproduction and the ways in which a system reproduces its own reproductions. Socialism in Yugoslavia was a specific historical system which authors often understood in various ways. Some interpret socialism as state capitalism, some approach it through the question of consumer society, while other authors remain stuck in the frameworks of totalitarian theories. Contrary to these interpretations, we can advocate for a more layered approach to understanding the socialist past, and the concept of contradictory reproduction, developed by the Canadian economist Michael A. Lebowitz, can assist us in this attempt. Using this apparatus, we can better understand and point out the various contradictions which used to permeate and greatly influence the development of SFRY.
19. 10. 2017, 10:00
Workshop for the participants of the seminar:
Political and economic contradictions of the Yugoslav system
Mentor: Domagoj Mihaljević
The topic of discussion is directed at the critical reconstruction of political and economic events in Yugoslavia between 1950. and 1990. with a focus on the crucial impact of market factors and international economic relations. The goal is to emphasize the integrational journey of the Yugoslav system and global flows of capitalism, and point out the social consequences of those integrations on the internal and external levels. The aim is especially to contribute to the understanding of the interpretative framework in which political and economic contradictions of the Yugoslav system can be more clearly explained.
19. 10. 2017, 19:00
Public lecture:
Long Strides into Capitalism: The Phenomenology of (over)ruling the middle class or the quasi/citizenship of Yugoslavia
Lecturer: Dragomir Olujić Oluja
The key/crucial/fundamental/starting point for understanding both the socialist Yugoslavia and its demise, lies in the 60ies – the first post-war recession of capitalism to the first energy crisis, and the second crisis of real (soviet) socialism, and the final stages of anticolonial revolutions and the rise of the first post-war generation (baby boomers and ‘68-ers) on the public scene with a bunch of emancipatory ideas (and practices), “small” (financial) and “large” (social and economic) reform in Yugoslavia followed by (not just) worker strikes. Everything after that is “development!” The lectures will offer, first, a political-economic framework for understanding the problem, the “place of discussion” and the actors (in Yugoslavia) – the workers and leftist students, Maspok, Kosovo (’68 and ’81) and others, primarily the (“new”) middle class.
Post-lecture discussion:
Dragomir Olujić Oluja, Domagoj Mihaljević, Krunoslav Stojaković
Moderation: Kontekst kolektiv
SEMINAR II
01. 12. 2017, 18:00
Self-management and Nationalism. The Role of Workers’ Strikes in the Dissolution of Yugoslavia
Lecturer: Goran Musić
Since the end of the 1980s, when the journalist Jagoš Đuretić described the workers’ strike from Rakovica in front of the Federal Parliament in Belgrade with the words: “They came here as workers and returned as Serbs”, this quote became a phrase often used so that the responsibility for the triumph of nationalist policies in Serbia would be placed on the working class. Liberal intellectuals all over former Yugoslavia, routinely view workers and lower classes as the main supporters of nationalist ideologies. As a response to those claims, the commentators who are sympathetic to the heritage of Yugoslav socialism, often try to maintain the image of Yugoslav workers as an anti-nationalist group which in a moment of carelessness was tricked by manipulative leaders.
What both sides have in common is that they deny the workers the possibility of autonomous action and reflection regarding their own position in the midst of decisive social changes. This lecture will represent the most important workers’ mobilizations in the years before the dissolution of Yugoslavia and explain how the main contradictions of Yugoslav socialism within factory halls were perceived. The main question that the lecture will try to answer is to what extent were the institutions and the practice of workers’ self-management a fertile ground for spreading the politics of brotherhood and unity, or chauvinism.
Goran Musić is an economist, historian and long-time activist in students’ and workers’ initiatives. He obtained his PhD on the topic of strikes in later Yugoslav socialism. He is employed as a researcher at the CEU in Budapest. Author of many articles in scientific magazines, as well as the study “Working Class in Serbia During the Transition 1988-2013” (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2013).
01. 12. 2017, 19:30
From Socially Owned Flats to Self-built Houses: Housing Provision in Yugoslav Socialism and its Post-socialist Privatization
Lecturer: Rory Archer
This talk explores the provision of housing in Yugoslav cities during socialism and in the immediate post-socialist era. Although contemporary Yugo-nostalgic myths claim that “everyone got a flat”, in practice this was not the case – only 25 per cent of the housing stock was in the social sector and so most Yugoslavs lived in family houses, many of which were paid for, built and maintained by family networks. All Yugoslav workers however – regardless of their housing status – paid into the housing fund though involuntary contributions (taxation).
Blue-collar workers were systematically discriminated in housing allocation as white collar workers were more likely to receive subsidized socially-owned flats which were distributed as benefits-in-kind in the workplace and as a means to induce labor mobility (aiming to attract skilled cadres). In a context of perennial housing shortages, the allocation of flats was one of the most contested issues in the workplace. Thus, housing represents an instructive proxy for various societal discontents in Yugoslavia and as a means to interrogate state-society relations.
Housing provision paralleled different modes of organization of the Yugoslav economy. Market socialism in the 1960s saw an increased role of the market while during the 1970s impulses to gain political control over the economy saw growing attempts (albeit largely unsuccessful) to allocate housing according to social need. The 1980s economic crisis and the stabilization programs enacted after 1981 saw liberal impulses in social sector housing gain inroads, finding full expression in the first privatizations of the socially owned housing stock in the late 1980s. The 1990s saw a comprehensive privatization of the housing stock take place resulting in a transfer of wealth from (former) socially owned firms to individuals and the cementing of social inequalities that had crystallized in the previous decades.
Rory Archer is a social historian who primarily works on the 20th century Balkans. He is interested in labor, gender, (post)socialism and the ways in which macro level events and processes are experienced, understood and negotiated in micro, everyday contexts. His PhD dissertation (Graz, 2015) used (non-)access to housing among working class Belgraders as a means to explore patterns of social inequalities and discontent in late Yugoslav socialism (1974-1991). He coedited a book on this topic, Social inequalities and discontent in Yugoslav Socialism (2016, co-edited with Igor Duda and Paul Stubbs). Since 2014 he has worked on a research project Between class and nation: Working class communities in 1980s Serbia and Montenegro financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), at the University of Graz. Rory continues to explore the role of politicised labour and working class subjectivities in the crises of late Yugoslav socialism and the demise of the state as Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University College London (School of Slavonic and East European Studies).
02. 12. 2017, 19:00
“Hardworking Slovenians” or how an error in translation caused the rise of Slovenian nationalism during the 80s
Lecturer: Bojana Piškur
The title of the lecture will serve as a small provocation. Namely, in 1981, a translator from Slovenian to Serbian misread a word and made an error in translating a sentence of a Slovenian politician, who said: “v Jugoslaviji obstajajo revne in manj revne republike” – instead of the word “reven” (meaning poor), the translator read “revan” (meaning hardworking). So his translation of the sentence was: “In Yugoslavia there are hardworking and less hardworking republics”. That way, as the magazine Problemi wrote, we can see the old fabricated image that Slovenians have about themselves as “hardworking” as opposed to their “lazy southern brothers”.
Of course, this argument does not imply that the story of nationalism began in 1981, especially not that nationalism in Slovenia was caused by a grammatical error. The goal of this argument is to emphasize how the Slovenian society had already began intensively dealing with the questions of nationalism, national culture and other political topics in the early 80s, on many levels, and especially in culture: through the analysis of literary and artistic work, political theory, psychoanalysis, sociological analysis of public opinion etc.
Unlike today, when culture is almost unnoticeable and much less important, in the 80s it played a significant role, it was part of discussions, often very polemic, even in the congresses of the Alliance of the Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia. The lecture will discuss also about civil society and its antagonisms in Slovenia, the role of culture and alternative culture in those processes, and the research about the 80s conducted in the Modern Gallery in Ljubljana, between 2013 and 2017.
Bojana Piškur is a writer and curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana. Her research focuses on political issues and the way in which they relate to, or are manifested in, the field of art looking specifically at the regions of former Yugoslavia and Latin America. She has contributed to numerous publications and lectured extensively on topics such as post avant-gardes in former Yugoslavia, radical education, cultural politics in self-management, and the Non-Aligned Movement.
Partners on the project „Pertej/Beyond/Preko 20 godina”: CZKD and Kosovo Glocal, Vida Knežević and Marko Miletić (Kontekst kolektiv), and a wide network of collaborators, lecturers, mentors, and twenty participants from the region.
Project Team:
Kontekst kolektiv: Vida Knežević and Marko Miletić
CZKD: Borka Pavićević, Luna Đorđević, Aleksandra Sekulić, Ana Ćosić, Ana Isaković, Slavica Vučetić, Ivica Đorđević, Ljubica Slavković, Adam Ranđelović, Dejan Pantić, Dragan Škorić, Vanja Banković
Kosovo Glocal: Shkelzen Maliqi, Majlinda Hoxha, Besa Luci, Qendreza Kastrati, Genta Sylejmani, Jack Butcher
Supported by
EU Delegation – EU/IPA (Support for civil society).
Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia.
Embassy of Switzerland in Belgrade.
The project is supported by the Embassy of Switzerland in the Republic of Serbia and in Montenegro.
Kosovo Foundation for Open Society (KFOS).