Between Two Worlds: Concert-giving and Rioting in the Post-Yugoslav Area

Authors

  • Ana Petrov

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i7.87

Keywords:

concerts, memory, nationalism, nostalgia, reception

Abstract

Starting in the late 1990s, some musicians from the territory of former Yugoslavia gradually embarked on the project of giving concerts in Belgrade, the capital of the former country. Others refused to perform in Serbia after the wars, which fuelled a negative attitude toward these musicians. In this paper I deal with the reception of those concerts, pointing to the ways they have become specific affective sites of memory. I focus on two major issues: the discourse produced in the concerts by the performers themselves and members of the audience and the discourse produced by various protest groups (which resulted in the organization of protests in Belgrade against performances by musicians who ‘hate Serbs’).

Author Biography

Ana Petrov

Academy of Arts, University of Banja Luka; Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade
Serbia

assistant professor

References

Assmann Jan, and Tonio Hölscher ed. Kultur und Gedächtnis. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988.

Erll, Astrid, and Ansgar Nünning ed. Media and Cultural Memory. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110207262

Katherine Baker. “The Politics of Performance: Transnationalism and its Limits in Former Yugoslav Popular Music, 1999–2004.” Ethnopolitics 5, 3 (2004): 275–293. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449050600911075

Lee Klein, Kerwin. “On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse.” Representations 69 (2000): 127–150. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2902903

Olick, Jeffrey K., and Joyce Robbins. “Social Memory Studies: From ‘Collective Memory’ to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices.” Annual Review of Sociology 24, 1 (1998), 105–140. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.24.1.105

Palmberger, Monika. “Nostalgia Matters: Nostalgia for Yugoslavia as Potential Vision for a Better Future.” Sociologija 4 (2008): 355–370. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2298/SOC0804355P

After the end of Soviet hegemony and the fall of socialist regimes in Central and Southeast Europe, the consideration of the relationship between art and politics seems urgent. The experience of more than two decades of political and structural changes toward the development of institutions of global capital also contributes to this urgency. The debate over the (political) nature of art becomes necessary, taking into account that this question has been superseded by a marketplace wherein all designations and forms of Art are available. It shows (itself) to be the best vehicle for manipulation and instrumentalization towards the current doxa that ‘everything is possible’. Moreover, the issue of the political aspect of art has been complicated by the dominant intellectual opinion and denunciations that all forms of utopian and social dimensions of art, as in the case of revolutionary and emancipatory perspectives of the avant-gardes, are responsible for the horrors of totalitarianism and terrorism. The aim of this issue therefore is to address the question of how to constitute and affirm an active Art today without slipping into essentialism. Focus Issue Editor: Bojana Matejić

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Published

15.04.2015

How to Cite

Petrov, A. (2015). Between Two Worlds: Concert-giving and Rioting in the Post-Yugoslav Area. AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (7), 39–45. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i7.87

Issue

No. 7 (2015): Issue No. 7, April 2015 - Topic of Issue: Art and Politics: Agency, Autonomy, Emancipation

Section

Articles

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Publisher: Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia

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