Alienation Effects

Performance and Self-Management in Yugoslavia, 1945-91

• Author(s): Branislav Jakovljevic,
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Pages: 369
• ISBN_10: 0472053140
  ISBN_13: 9780472053148
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Art / History / General , Art / Performance , History / Europe / General , History / Europe / Eastern , Performing Arts / General , Performing Arts / Theater / General , Performing Arts / Theater / History & Criticism , Political Science / Political Ideologies / Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism ,

Description:... In the 1970s, Yugoslavia emerged as a dynamic environment for conceptual and performance art. At the same time, it pursued its own form of political economy of socialist self-management. Alienation Effects argues that a deep relationship existed between the democratization of the arts and industrial democracy, resulting in a culture difficult to classify. The book challenges the assumption that the art emerging in Eastern Europe before 1989 was either “official” or “dissident” art; and shows that the break up of Yugoslavia was not a result of “ancient hatreds” among its peoples but instead came from the distortion and defeat of the idea of self-management.

The case studies include mass performances organized during state holidays; proto-performance art, such as the 1954 production of Waiting for Godot in a former concentration camp in Belgrade; student demonstrations in 1968; and body art pieces by Gina Pane, Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovic, and others. Alienation Effects sheds new light on the work of well-known artists and scholars, including early experimental poetry by Slavoj Žižek, as well as performance and conceptual artists that deserve wider, international attention.