An Older and More Beautiful Belgrade

A Visual Chronicle of the Milosevic Era
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-963-386-630-6
Verlag: Central European University Press

Buch, Englisch, 226 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 485 g

This substantial essay depicts urban collapse in an exceptionally difficult period of the Serbian capital. The author has marshalled facts, reflections, photographs and other imagesto demonstrate the transformation of Belgrade during the Miloševic years. With the theoretical grounding of cultural anthropology, history studies, culture of memory, history of art, and urbanism, Mileta Prodanovic considers changes to the built environment and urban landscape in the city in the 1990s. He covers many visual aspects of life with great ingenuity: shopping centers, unregulated construction and “wild” modifications of buildings, new buildings (broadcasting studios, shops, homes) that do not fit the surroundings, bad taste in home furnishings (camp, kitsch), boondoggles such as the international art center, problematic historical markers like the obelisk of the eternal flame, billboards, store displays, electoral propaganda, graffiti, grave-markers and cemetery memorials, coins and paper money, calendars, beer labels, and even religious icons (and more). All this information is provided with some critique and much implied comparison to past standards.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Prodanovic, Mileta

Horvitz, Robert

Weitere Mitwirkende

Milojkovic, Maria

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte Europäische Regional- & Stadtgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Editor’s Note
Foreword. Interrupted Memories, Transitory Identities: Urban Culture in Belgrade
Author’s Summary
Addendum for the English edition

1. New Forms Of Sacrilege
The Icon: Between The World And God
Differentiating Icon from Idol
Profane Icons: A Socialist Innovation
The Icon in Serbia’s Post-Socialist “Popular Awakening”

2. Pathopolis
Money as an Image of the State
Belgrade as a Patchwork City
Urban Downfall in the Shadow of War
The City as a Forum
“Targeting” in the Urban Environment
We Won (1): Medals as Reflections of an Incoherent Ideology
New Houses for New People
Celebrity Charlatans
Interlude: How the Past Travels
Požeška Street as a Manifesto of “Anti-bureaucratic” Architecture
The Way Something Is Written Is as Important as the Content— Maybe Even More.
Interlude: The Fine Art of Image Destruction (Iconoclasm Revisited)
Elections in the Urban Landscape
Megalomaniacs
We Won (2): The Eternity Which Lasted a Few Months

3. Necropolis
Princes, Living and Dead
Rulers’ Graves
Subjects’ Graves
“Hush Thou Night. ”

Millennium Bug in the Graveyard
Millennium Bug in Republic Square
Biographies
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Prodanovic, Mileta
Mileta Prodanovic -- painter, writer and a major cultural figure in Serbia -- was born in Belgrade. He studied architecture and painting at Belgrade’s University of Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts. Prof. Prodanovic was Serbia’s representing artist at the Venice Biennale in 1986. Retired now, the author’s last academic positions were as a full-time professor and Dean of the University of Art, Belgrade.

Milojkovic, Maria
Maria Milojkovic lives in Belgrade and works as an English/Serbian translator. She has a master’s degree in postmodern English literature and is an online content creator for Medium.com

Horvitz, Robert
A US citizen living in Prague since 1991, Horvitz began visiting Serbia and the other Yugoslav republics in 1993 as the Open Society Institute's regional consultant for electronic media and journalism. More recently he has been producing policy studies for the European Commission, the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, and national governments on the regulation and use of radio frequencies. He currently teaches at Anglo-American University in Prague.